Ruta 40 and a Travel Plan Fail

El Chalten has one ATM and it's usually empty. We knew this so we'd stocked up on Argentine pesos. Admittedly we chose a conservative sum, knowing that our days in Argentina were drawing to a close.

What we hadn't factored in, is that we would need to pay for the bus fare from El Chalten all the way up to Bariloche – a little over 1300km – in cash. For two tickets we needed over 900 pesos or over $300. Now forget over the phone credit card payments or asking the guy in the both next door to process the transaction then pay him back, cash was it and without it we weren't leaving El Chalten. What's more, buses from town only headed north every few days and we were running out of time.

After desperately trying the cash machine three days in a row, the ticket seller offered to hold our seats until the morning of the scheduled departure. The same day we would be returning from the Laguna Torro walk.

So we returned to town after racing back from our camp, with soaked boots and still wearing our beanies from when it had been snowing on the mountain. Actually, I think our gear scared a large guided group of day walkers we passed who probably wondered what they had gotten themselves into. Incidentally some were already complaining about how difficult the walk was. Pussies!

Our last hope was that the ATM had been refilled in our absence especially since the ticket seller had 'a feeling' it would be. Clearly his intuition was off.

We jumped on a bus that left at 12pm which we could pay for by credit card, but that only travelled half the way we needed to go. 

Glaciar Viedma: I'll be back!

 Ruta 40 is supposed to be the wild road trip to do in Argentina. Chile has an equivalent in the Carretera Austral and we'd spent a fair bit of time debating if we should hire a car to do the road trip thing. Unfortunately returning the car in a different location would have cost us two legs and an arm each so we settled on the bus thing.

Thank goodness. If you've ever driven anywhere outside of the coastal route in Australia you've probably seen about as much as Ruta 40 has to offer. Nothing. In fact, if you've ever driven somewhere that was so boring you wanted to remove your own eyeballs with your camping spoon just for something to do, that would be the equivalent.

After a night in Perito Moreno we arrived in Esquel the following afternoon with the brilliant plan of jumping across the border into Chile, catching a bus to the Chaiten and then a ferry to Isla Grande de Chiloe. Geographically this made a lot more sense than travelling north to Puerto Montt and then south to the island. 

We were obviously getting a little complacent with the photography side of things. This was taken in Esquel at least!

Great idea, but once we spent some time glued to the computer while sitting at a picnic bench next to our tent – with snow capped mountain views I might add, ie internet addict/outdoor enthusiast heaven – we realised there was only one ferry a week. Although the bakery in Esquel - Panificadora Esquel - sold amazing cakes and it was fun doing nothing we didn't have too much time to waste. 

And Esquel also had some very artistic graffitti.

 We'd decided before we left that our “Chile and Easter Island” Lonely Planet guidebook published in May 2003 wouldn't be that outdated as to be useless. Sure accommodation and restaurants might have changed and prices gone up, but the towns and natural places would still be there right?

Correct, unless your town happens to be near a volcano. See the reason there were so few ferries between Chaiten and Chiloe is because in 2008 Chaiten had been evacuated and subsequently partially destroyed by Volcan Chaiten which erupted for the first time in hundreds if not thousands of years. Given that it's still a bit unstable, lingering in the area is not highly recommended.

Needless to say, we chose to go the circuitous route to Chiloe via Bariloche and Puerto Montt. And you know what? As we passed back through El Bolson, even it seemed quite pretty this time round!

Or just outside of El Bolson, by the time we got the camera out.

Los Glaciares: Laguna Torro...rained out

After so many days of sunshine the Patagonian weather gods were clearly bored. And our luck ran out.

With the sky in an obviously cantankerous mood, we walked away from El Chalten – in a different direction – for our last overnight hike with Sebastian and Hannes.

Maybe it was because we would soon be heading in different directions after two weeks of travelling together, or I was still tired from the last four days or maybe it was just the steep hill we were hiking up, but the one thing I was sure of was that I didn't want to be there.

We'd been warned that the track was boggy in places which wasn't great news for my boots that were losing their sole. Yes, that on top of worn inner padding. But in the end, it didn't really matter. We had a few good moments of bright sunshine and happiness, until we hit the boggy section and it started to rain. Hoping that things would improve we were carefully picking our way through the mud to avoid wet boots.

Then, for the first time in our hiking history, it started really bucketing down. No we're not sheltered, just really lucky. Oops, I don't think I should have written that.

Add to that gusts of wind which were almost knocking us off our feet, along with driving rain so hard it felt like needles on my cheeks, so I didn't even want to look up from under my hood. Effectively there could have been pink elephants flying through the air and we wouldn't have seen them.

By the time we reached camp after walking for 4.5 hours, our pants were soaking wet as were our boots, because at some point it had seemed useless or even impossible to avoid the bog. The camp site was empty and it was still pouring, but luckily there was a tiny shelter about 3m by 2m where we could hang up our clothes and wait out the afternoon. We crowded in and pooled all our sweets, eating them all for lack of anything better to do. With the way things had turned out, we knew that Jeff and I had missed out on seeing Laguna Torro and the last glacier.

The next morning, the rain had turned to light snow and the ground was still frosty from the cold night. As we left camp at 7am to get back to El Chalten before noon, the sun was just coming up over the mountains. With the clear skies we got to see what we'd missed the previous day.

Well except pink elephants of course.

So while the weather gods smiled once more for us, the ATM ones did not. But that's a story for another day.

Los Glaciares: Four days, five glaciers

There's two videos uploaded to this post, so if you're an email subscriber click through to see them. Other video's you may have missed:
- Penguins sounding like they've swallowed a harmonica at Seno Otway
- A short clip of the outdoor concert in Valparaiso

If day one offered only a glimpse of a glacier, then day two was all about getting up close to them. Too close for my liking in fact, but let's be sequential about this.

Two close and too far

I was extremely excited that morning, as I'd read about a day trip to Cerro Electrico from this camp site that would take me 'well into the realm of mountaineers'. “Well hello there Challenge, I'm very pleased to meet you. And yes I would love to take you up on your offer, Challenge,” I said looking from my beloved guidebook to Cerro Electrico and back. Well, at least it was in the general direction of Cerro Electrico.

And what did the other members of the group say to Challenge? Well, they snubbed their noses mumbled a 'meh' and all agreed to go to the supposedly beautiful Lago Electrico. Needless to say that was the easy trail option and I was outnumbered three to one. 

 

“Pussies,” I muttered under my breath as we started walking around the great big rock that sheltered our camp site and along the flat valley floor. Admittedly the landscape was stunning.

After a bit of a climb we reached the desolate hook of Lago Electrico, before turning left and picking a path up towards Glaciar Pollone.

As we climbed over the moraine wall, we were hit by the view of the lake, the glacier and completely cloud free granite towers directly ahead. Of course this glacier was no Perito Moreno, but to be honest I was more blown away as we stood silently, completely alone in this extraordinary rugged landscape. 

 

But we weren't anywhere near snow, so Sebastian decided to go on an exploratory trip around the lake to the patch we could see on the other side. After a few minutes he'd disappeared amongst the boulders. As it seemed like a great idea, Jeff and I followed, while Hannes stayed on the shore having a nap. After climbing over the boulders for about half and hour and only just reaching the the far shore of the lake it hit home how absolutely immense this terrain was. 

   

Our little beach on the other side of the lake looked minuscule and certainly the person sleeping there was no bigger than a flea. 

 

The access to the far bigger and more significant Glaciar Marconi involved a glorious scramble over boulders and moraine debris all the way along the shore of Lago Electrico. 

 

Along the way we met a few small groups decked out with ropes, plastic slides and ice climbing gear. They'd spent the last few days on the glacier we were heading towards and had planned to hike a 6 day circuit from El Chalten, across Glaciar Marconi, to the much bigger Glaciar Viedma and then back into town.  

Unfortunately the weather had been so bad, they'd spent a few days in their tent before deciding to turn back on what had turned into a glorious, sunny day. Needless to say, not only was I spellbound by the idea of ice trekking on the Viedma Glaciar, but now I felt like a pussy! 

When we finally arrived at the terminal face of the glacier, I was reminded of our very different experience when we'd gone ice trekking on the Franz Josef Glacier in the New Zealand. 

There the terminal face had been cordoned off at least 50m before it and the warnings indicated that getting any closer could result in death. In Argentina, we were clearly expected to use common sense which arguably we didn't as we posed for pictures next to massive chunks of ice that had recently fallen from the face.

Next, Sebastian decided to walk into the chamber under the glacier from where the melting ice flowed to form a river. Jeff followed him.

 

Three in one

The next day we trekked back to Glaciar Peidras Blancas that we'd seen on the first day. Again, it was just us and the glacier, at least for a while, so we sat on rock on the edge of the lake just watching as little blue icebergs bobbed about occasional disturbed by the ice falling on the other side of the lagoon. And remarkably, the towers stood in the background almost completely unobscured by cloud. 

After pitching camp Campamento Poincenot, we headed towards Glaciar Rio Blanco via a barely discernible track that followed the river. 

Although I kept polling everyone on which was their favourite, I don't remember what anyone thought, so I'm going on a limb to say this was the best. At the far side of Laguna Sucia the glacier hung off the cliff face, with Fitz Roy just behind it. The ice falls produced surges in the water level pushing and dragging water in and out of the river we were sitting next to.

Sorry about the angle. If you know how to turn videos around, leave a comment or email me!

 The last glacier of the day was above us over a ridge. To get there we would have needed to go back to camp to start the trail up to Glaciar de los Tres. Too lazy to do that, the guys figured we should be able to climb up to the ridge as they had seen people there. After scrambling up slippery loose gravel, falling down in knee deep sections of snow then looking down to see just how steep the slope was I figured that some people have a strange definition of 'lazy'.  Needless to say this was one of the most fun parts of our trek!

When we finally crested we found a frozen Laguna de los Tres covered in snow, with Fitz Roy still standing naked and a stunning 360 degree view.

One for the many

The lookout at Laguna Los Tres is another one of those places where keen people slog up the hill to watch the first rays of sunshine touch the granite spires. Just like at Torres del Paine, we'd gone to the lookout the previous afternoon because the guys all wanted to stay snuggled in their sleeping bags until well after dawn. But as soon as I saw sun, I went for a wander around the camp site on the still frosty earth. 

 

The last glacier is part of a popular day walk from El Chalten. So after enjoying the other glaciers in near silence, I have to admit that sharing Glaciar Torre took a bit of a shine off it despite the crystal clear day.

On the way back we ran into another hiker who'd done the 'W' virtually with us, but had continued on to do the full circuit. He'd been caught in extremely bad weather and had sworn that he'd tell everybody and anybody to not bother doing the full 9 day loop. Of course other people had told us it was amazing. Well that's Patagonia; beautiful one day, blow's you away the next.

Los Glaciares: An Introduction (because I waffle)

Well provisioned and with blisters healed, the four of us walked out of El Chalten and civilisation headed once more for the hills.

Actually it depends on your definition of 'civilisation'. Mine includes a good internet connection and allegedly the fierce Patagonian wind kept on knocking out El Chalten's connection. If your memory stretches back to dial-up...well it was a lot slower. And I suppose I only dare mention it because good free WiFi was the norm everywhere we'd been so far. Well, El Chalten definitely lived up to it's frontier town reputation!

The northern section of Los Glaciares National Park is more famous for it's granite towers and particularly Cerro Torre and Fitz Roy, than for it's glaciers despite being set on the Heilo Sur, the largest ice cap outside the earth's polar regions. Perhaps this is because of a need to compete with the more famous - and Chilean - Torres del Paine, since some unfortunate travellers are actually forced to make the tough choice of hiking one or the other.

It could also be because those peaks are some of mountaineerings greatest prizes. Either way the comparison between the two was constantly at the back of my mind. You know, just in case someone actually asked my opinion on the matter!

Any guide book will tell you that one great advantage of the area is that most of the walks can be done in a day, meaning no need to carry a heavy pack. Yes, we saw plenty of day walkers and smugly thought to ourselves 'pussies!'

Now I'll clarify that I think the word to use here is 'wusses'. At least that's the good and proper Australian school yard term of phrase given that, pussies is more commonly accepted as to be referring to something else unless of course you're in an Agatha Christie novel in which case it's completely different. Anyway, from day one Hannes insisted on the word 'pussy' so that became the official word for the trip.

But what the guide books don't mention is how much the scenery changes. Unlike in Torres del Paine where it gradually seemed to evolve, at Los Glaciares we had a wonderful taste of everything on the very first day.

We started by climbing up the hill alongside the wide river bed surrounded by snow capped mountains.

Next was a detour to Laguna Capri where we got a first glimpse of Fitz Roy, with low clouds hanging around it's peak.

Then we hit the plain where we had lunch observing the granite towers.

And staring at the reflections in the pools of water along the trail while listening to the gurgle of the crystal clear river.

We saw a glimpse of Laguna Piedras Blancas and it's glacier, while spotting little tiny figures down among the moraine debris.

We played in the forest.

And turned towards the Refugio Los Troncos passing through a broad valley flanked by coloured mountains like the ones we had been mesmerised by around Salta.

On the approach to our camp spot we met a couple horses, that try as I may, were not interested in a pat. Well, at least I could still smell them if only from a distance.

Finally we arrived at the refugio and our camp spot for night which was nicely positioned in the shelter of a large rock that had been plunked down in the middle of the valley floor surrounded by more colour in the mountains and the beautiful evening sky.

El Calafate: Sometimes you just have to look away

Argentina has a stray dog problem. Apparently that's because the Argentinians don't believe in de sexing as this would make the males less...well...masculine. You see, the macho culture goes right down to the dogs!

Yet unlike the mangy dogs of Bulgaria the Argentine ones appeared well looked after. It was not uncommon to see little piles of dog food laid out for them on city sidewalks and parks. Obviously they left their own little piles around the place too. Of course they were very friendly, happily chilling out with any human wandering or hanging out in their city. And surprisingly they displayed pretty good road sense which is more than I can say for most of the human inhabitants.

Unfortunately we'd been given strict orders by our travel doctor to not touch any warm blooded creature because of the risk of rabies. While we ignored that directive when it came to horses, the house cat sleeping in the bunk next to us in Salta and when picking fights with coatis trying to steal our lunch, the fluffy coats of the stray dogs mostly went without a pat. Yes, I felt very bad.

But dog poop on the footpath or rabies for that matter seemed hardly an issue compared to what we witnessed the day we were leaving El Calafate.

With a couple of hours before our bus to El Chalten we'd wandered down to Laguna Nimes - a prime bird habitat alongside the shore of Lago Argentino.

Inevitably a few of the local stray dogs had followed us from the hostel all the way down to the tiny administration building. While we went inside to pay the entrance fee, the dogs continued into the supposed nature reserve.

Picking up the loan binoculars and surveying the lagoon we could already see the flamingoes, ducks with their chicks and birds of prey. But the peaceful scene was quickly disturbed by the stray dogs who had made it through the boggy grass and jumped into the water.

Chased down by the dogs the flock of flamingoes took flight in a pink cloud while other birds swam frantically out of the way. Shocked we pointed out to the administration officer what was happening to which he shrugged, acknowledging that they had a bit of a stray dog problem. The solution was to fence the area, but that project was only partially complete.

Most of the birds had moved away, but those with chicks were struggling to find a safe place. The dogs were chasing them down separating the family. But that wasn't all. Slowly the chicks were also disappearing until there were none left. Tears filled my eyes and I couldn't look any more as the guys seethed at what appeared to be a lack of interest in preserving the wildlife unless there was a financial gain.

That scene reminded me of another place in the north of Argentina where we'd spent the day, but were so disappointed we didn't mention it. We'd left with just this photo of Corrientes which shows nothing of the sadness we'd felt that day.

There in tiny public zoo, we'd seen depressed monkeys in enclosures so small that they would have more appropriately housed a large bird. In the same repetitive pattern the monkeys would frantically climb along bars from one side of the cage to the other and then back again. For as long as we'd stood there horrified watching them they just kept going.

So we were delighted when at the parks administration in El Chalten the passionate rangers enthusiastically told us everything we needed to know about walking in the northern section of Parque Nacional Los Glaciares. Not only did they care enough to emphasise our role in preserving this pristine environment but they were very encouraging of getting off the tourist trail and to the more remote parts of the park. Admittedly I thought that was as a result of Hannes' travel beard which made him look like a well seasoned hiker.

And on top of the rangers enthusiasm, the glimpses of Fitz Roy from the bus had certainly got us excited in anticipation of the next 4 day hike.

I'm sorry, I tried to write a blog post, but the view was just too distracting!