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| it's definitely back there... the elusive Monte Fitz Roy! |
Hello! Hope all is well & you are gearing up for a nice holiday weekend. I am still in Minnesota, where it snowed about 8 inches the other evening. Whoa! I had started a painting my mother's house project when I arrived & the abrupt change in the weather has put the kaibosh on that for the time being. I am enjoying my time in Minne, catching up with some pals, taking care of details for school and Maine. I'll be setting out for the Portland of the east on Monday. I'm taking my cat, Circe, with me! I'm so happy about that, I've missed her! She has been living with and being supremely spoiled by my mom since I moved to Italy. (thanks mom!!!!)
Here is... my final So. Am. blog post! It is now exactly a month since I've returned. Aaaaah! It was such a great trip! Here are my photos of visiting El Chalten and Perito Moreno Glacier. Some fabulous sites if I do say so myself, Patagonia really outdoes itself in the scenic sites category. I took a bus from Puerto Natales, Chile to El Calafate, Argentina and then another on to El Chalten. El Chalten is a very small town that mainly serves as a base for trekkers and climbers to visit Monte Fitz Roy. Fitz Roy is an 11,000ft peak with some crazy, sheer granite faces. It is located in the northern end of Parque Nacional Los Glaciares.
For mountaineers, it is known as one of the most technically challenging peaks on EARTH. I read somewhere that while 100 climbers may reach the top of Everest in one day, possibly only 1 person will reach the top of Fitz Roy in 1 year. I'm not positive this is accurate but, you get the picture. So, I figured this year that person will be me! Ha, just kidding, I am a crappy climber these days but, that didn't stop me from wondering what it might be like up there. It would be COLD & WINDY!!! I was in Chalten for several days & took many hikes trying to view Fitz Roy & the tops of the other peaks near it only to be foiled by clouds & wind most days.
I had planned to do a 3 or 4 day backpacking trip but, the weather was foul & I was still sick so I decided to stay in a hostel & do day hikes. This turned out to be just fine because most of the hiking in that area can be done as a day hike from the town, saving me the pain of carrying my pack & also from sleeping out in the cold/wind/rain/snow. I met a lot of nice trekkers & some climbers in the town. One Austrian guy was there for two weeks with his 70 year old father (WOW) to put up a first ascent on some pillar out amongst the glaciers. They had been put off by bad weather and were just waiting for their window of good weather to do their climb. I gather that this is pretty common & when people come to climb Fitz Roy they will often spend ages (like weeks, maybe months) at base camp just waiting for their chance. I was glad I wasn't waiting to do any climbing, I am a fair weather climber & the whole time I was there we had hellish winds & COLD! My illness had morphed into a stomach problem I call "THE GASTRO", this was fairly uncomfortable.
Here are some maps! For general orientation, on the first one, you will see the entire area I had been traveling in, in purple. You will notice the Patagonian ice fields, home of some of the most massive non-polar ice sheets!
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| closer view of the region, El Calafate at the bottom, base for visiting Perito Moreno glacier, El Chalten at the top. |
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| first hiking, El Chalten |
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| the small town of El Chalten |
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| it's a really beautiful setting |
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| that little mobile trailer is a tiny store for hikers to buy snacks |
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| this looks familiar. i would sit and wait patiently for these clouds to clear to get just one glimpse of the top of the peak. |
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| the pretty lenga leaves again |
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| here's Laguna Torre, the destination of my hike. here you are meant to get a sweet view of Cerro Torre, another hot spot for climbers. can't you see it? it is right there behind all those clouds! great hike despite poor vis. |
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| continue to love the bright blue icebergs |
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| Cerro Torre again. what, you still can't see it? me neither. |
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| walking through pretty forests of lenga trees |
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| it was so cool to come across this unicorn in the forest one day, like it was just waiting there for me. |
And finally, it happened! One special day, the view of Fitz Roy was clear!!!!! So, I had to snap one million photos from every viewpoint I came across.
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| that view was particularly cool with that nice hanging glacier |
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| ooh yeah, getting close! |
This day, since it was clear, I hiked up to Laguna de los Tres, where you can get the best view of the peak. It was a steep and tough hike and there were about a hundred other folks doing it with me. It was well worth the toil. I was trying to make it up as early as possible before the weather changed & it seemed some clouds were just rolling in as I arrived. There was always one pesky cloud just resting on top of the peak, a spoiler.
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| map for reference |
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| as you can imagine, i was in my gore-tex ninja suit & the wind was gusting something fierce, like it could blow you right over. serious. |
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| all those smaller surrounding peaks are popular for climbing too. |
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| and down I went back into the magical forest |
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| views of Fitz Roy range on my hike back to town |
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| the lovely rio de las saltas, the water was so bright due to glacial marl |
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| the town of El Chalten is totally devoted to tourism, there are some cute spots |
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| walking to a waterfall. there are endangered deer, huemules, in the area & signage up all over the place about protecting them. i never saw one. |
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| strange growths on tree |
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common view of the Patagonian steppe from the bus
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After spending enough days in Chalten, I bussed back to El Calafate, where I would spend two nights. Calafate is another tourist base town, this time for visiting Perito Moreno glacier, also in Parque Nacional Los Glaciares, the southern end. Perito Moreno is a hugely popular destination, being located about 50 miles away from El Calafate, it is very accessible. Perito Moreno glacier covers about 250 square km making it bigger than the area of the huge city of Buenos Aires! It was unlike anything I have ever seen in my life. Perhaps the coolest thing I have ever seen in my life! A neat thing about the glacier is that you are able to get really close to it & you can hear the thing moving & witness huge ice chunks falling off of the glacier into the water. Amazing! Unlike many other glaciers, Perito Moreno is actually growing rather than shrinking. Good news.
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| ha ha. i met this great Chinese guy on my trip to the glacier. he kept busting out this huge camera for photos from the bus. he had brought a small, rolly style suitcase just to haul his camera stuff. |
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| first view, Perito Moreno glacier. |
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| first i took a short boat trip to view the glacier from the water |
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| could not take enough photos! |
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| then we went to a viewing area where you could get really close to the glacier on this massive array of viewing platforms. |
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| a boat going for viewing |
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| those Patagonian clouds... gorgeous |
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| I really was there! and you guessed it, it's COLD! |
Oh my, that glacier experience was truly spectacular. The next day, I flew back to Buenos Aires. It was so lovely to be back in the warm & humid weather!! I had REALLY missed it. I was just in BA for a couple days before flying back to the USA. Just enough time for a couple of yoga classes and a couple more evenings of tango. I lost some of my tango skills during my time in the Gonia, now I am more anxious than ever to pick up tango again out in Portland, Maine, where I have already been researching my tango options. :)
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| last views, fancy tango shoes... |
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| BA city scenes |
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| Argentine folklore dance performance at one of our favorite spots |
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| just a bit more cool graffiti |
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| and suddenly i'm flying over some amazonian river basin |
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| dude, my suitcase got thrashed on the flight! still trying to demand something from that airline for this travesty... |
There you have it, friends, my trip to Argentina and Patagonia comes to a close. What a fantastic time I had! I am so grateful to my friend Lisa for being a great host & also that I had the time to do the trip! A once in a lifetime adventure for sure. Since being back, I've been thinking about something. How traveling can really spoil you for "real life". After going on a sweet trip I generally return to life in the USA thinking... ho hum, where & when can I go travel again?? And, feeling like regular life is a bore compared to being in a foreign country, where even the smallest things can seem exotic, interesting, exciting. I guess things can't always be so exciting and part of finding happiness in life is being able to find a balance between the highs and lows & everything else. The silver lining is knowing how much fun it will be to plan the next trip and have something to look forward to! :)
I am already on to my next big adventure, the nursing school in Maine adventure!!!! Could be my biggest & best one yet! I am really hoping for major success & hoping also that all my transitions during the next month or so go smoothly. There have been some stressful obstacles on my path so far, let's just clear the path of anything futher. Please & thank you. Wish me luck! Stay in touch! Come visit me on the east coast! We'll go to Acadia National Park!
xoxo
A
