Beagle Channel Cruise
For the next few weeks we´re on an organised trip. We´re travelling with Dragoman, on a truck, which has all the equipment we need for camping. There´s 19 people on the trip, a mix of English, Aussies, and Dutch. At the start of this tour we had one more day in Ushuaia, included in our trip was an old person tour of the look outs in Tierra del Fuego national park with a couple of 10min loop walks to show the local fauna. I´m glad we´d already done the Guanaco trail as this tour didn´t really show you enough for you to get a feel for the park. You got a better feel for the type of tourist that visits the park!
In the afternoon we went on a cruise on the Beagle Channel. It was amazing. We saw lots of minke whales and more sea lions and sea birds than you can shake a stick at! We also went to see some penguins...they shunted the boat ONTO the beach (however we weren´t allowed to disembark as that would disrupt the penguins). We thought there was 1 emporeror penguin, but apparently its a king penguin, similar colourings but smaller. We also discovered that they enjoying editing the photos for their promo materials. The cruise advertising material had a seal lion with light house photo which would not have been possible!
We left Ushuaia and headed north: we bush camped at an abondoned estancia (sheep station= on the shores of the magellan strait. There was a good opportunity for some artistic photos, there were also some boats that had run aground and provided good foreground for the photos of the straits. Apparently you can see dolphins, whales, etc on the straits however we only saw ducks!
The west coast of Patognia is the end of the Andes range. Here the peaks are not so high (1,500m) but due to the cool climate and the influence of the roaring 40s the snow line is usually only around 800m. However the peaks quickly drop away to the Patagonian Steppes. I´ve never seen a more desolate grassland. It´s not even really grassland, a wasteland dotted with scrubby plants only 10cm - 15cm high. It gets very little rain, and when it does rain the wind whips the moisture away. Some animals do make a living on the plains: guanaco (wild relations to the llama) and rhea (bit smaller, and drabber than an ostrich), with plenty of carrion birds too but that the only thing you do see, there´s nothing else!
The wind is relentless - the first day we were going to have cheese sandwiches and the people doing lunch had decided to grate the cheese, however the cheese didn´t even make it on to the plate - the wind got it and the cheese disappared across the steppes (sliced cheese from now on).
The most discreet place for the girls to wee on drive days is behind the truck, luckily because the landscape is so flat and vast you can see any other vehicles about 5mins before they can see more than they should!
Torres del Paine National Park
The first big draw card on the tour is Toress Del Paine National Park, in Chile. Torres is towers, del is of, Paine....not sure...I don´t think they´d call a national park Towers of Pain (though the path up to the towers is quite steep)?! We were doing the W-trek, but doing it in luxury staying at catered refugios (mountain lodges), rather than carrying a tent. It´s called the W trek because that´s the shape of the walk, you walk up 3 valleys. The first view was to the Grey glacier. The glacier was impressive but this area had suffered a bad fire at Christmas and walking through was bleak. You could taste the burnt acrid woodland for most of the days walk.
Day 2 was the French valley. This doesn´t have a ´highlight´ view, its a massive, amazing ampitheatre of jagged peaks and glaciers. The woodland was not burnt, but was stunted due to the cold climate, and cold winds it has to endure, though it did help keep us sheltered from the wind.
The wind on the lakes was amazing. It lifted water from the surface and where the winds from the different valleys met the water swirled into water spouts 20metres high. It looked fabulous but we´d heard the lakeside bit of the walk could be quite wet. The day we did that was luckily comparively calm the wind dropeed from 80km/hr (gusts stronger) to 20km/hr so it was quite pleasant.
Day 4 of our walk was meant to be up to the Torres themselves, however as the weather was good on Day 3 we set off early and powered up to the Torres too. The Torres are peaks of pink granite above a glacier and glacial lake. We went back up for sunrise too (90mins walking in the dark, including the climb up the moraine). At sunrise there was a wisp of cloud that wouldn´t quite move but the morning sun made the peaks a fabulous fiery colour. I thought the postcards had all been enhanced to make them look more pink but maybe not.
Los Glaciares National Park
Glaciers National Park is aptly named. We saw 5 glaciers in 3 days. Starting with Perito Moreno: a 5km front of glacier, 60metres high, that comes down onto a lake. The glacier moves about 2metres a day which means there´s always bits falling of the front into the lake. The fun bit was trying to capture these on camera. It´s really hard to get the scale of it. A small piece of it would fall off but the noise was phenomonal, the pieces falling off were probably at least the size of a car.
The other glaciers we had to walk to. We had a fabulous day to walk up to Mount Fitzroy view point. Although we´d seen bigger peaks these we´re probably the most picturesque. Again a sheer tower of granite rising above the ridge and the glaciers, nicely framed and well proportioned with its surroundings.
A change of plan
We´re now in Bariloche, in the Argentinian Lake District, we´re meant to be on the Chile side of the Lake district but the truck we´re travelling on has had a few issues. We had an unscheduled bush camp by the side of the road 200km from anywhere. The night time view of the stars was amazing! Luckly the winds drop away over night otherwise I think we´d be rolling across the steppes inside the tents still.
The lake district here is similar to the UK (though a little bigger)its cloudy and rain seems to be common. The weather forecast yesterday was ´smoke´, which is a new one, this is ash from the volcano that´s currently erupting in Chile.
