Day 6, 7 & 8

Our days at Patagonia Camp consist of excellent meals, attentive staff, good drivers, good-luck weather, and interesting travelers who have also chosen this remote hotel/camp. Each night we pick what we would like to do the next day. An assortment of activities are organized!

We take a “half day” excursion to a private ranch where steep cliffs rise up from the flat river plain. We stride up the gentle side of the hill to peer off the edge of the precipice where the condors live and nest. See the pictures below.

Another day, the choice is not to drive anywhere. We decide to stay around the camp, hike the nearby trail to find good fishing in the glacier lake.

Another choice is to take a van for the afternoon to “miradors” that are view points simply spellbinding vistas. On the crystal clear day that Michael and Joan went, their photos are the best of the entire trip.

And at another time, Joan and Paul decide to take a hike along the desert mounds and plateaus to see wildlife: herds of guanacos; puma tracks, carra carra birds, calafate berries, traces of cave paintings, and finally rheas. A rhea is a small brown ostrich like bird that blends into the landscape.

And, as a finale, I joined 6 others from Patagonia Camp for my second trek to the base of the Torres and back! 11 kilometers each way! 12 hours was good time!! After I finished that trek, I know that I can do it again. It was one of the most beautiful views I have ever seen in my life.

Pictures are worth a thousand words. The next photos are the best way to describe the beautiful days and nights at the Patagonia Camp – and how l will end this saga of 36 days of travel.

Torres Del Penne Park entrance, south gate

Hike to the Cuernos – The Horns

Hike to the Cuernos – The Horns

Condor cliffs

photographing a condor in the cliff below!

Here he is!

small tuft vegetation survive wind & snow

thorny mounds where insects & small birds live

Michael on the other condor cliff

reverse view of the valley

Ramelle

sheep fences in the middle of nowhere

brown fox sunning himself

Group of 9 who I climb with to the base of the Torres Towers

Day 4
February 19, 2014

The Hotel Quijote wasn’t bad at all. We actually slept. Note to self: need more research and development on surviving tourist town – or avoid El Calafate completely.

Thinking we will need a picnic of some kind (as we did when we were here 3 weeks ago) I headed out with Joan to the bakery to find sandwiches before the 9:00 am pick up. The good bakery didn’t have sandwiches, but we could buy two small cubes of white bread with a bit of cheese and ham in there – pretty rude to the gluten free taste, but it was ok for the rest of us who might be hungry! With a little time left, we continued the search, hiking up to the main drag, Ave. Liberator, for a look around. One mini market had some long rolls in the window, so we bought one of those. They made it this morning, she said. (What “it” was became the question of the day!)

Joan and I are back in time to meet the bus. A warm welcome is offered from a young woman who will be our guide. The tours of Perito Moreno glacier are run by the Argentine national park service, and we find that they are done very well. We will hear Lilly all day – in English and in Spanish. As we pick up the other members of the group, we turn out to be only 9 of us – a couple from Spain, a single traveling guy from the US, and two others.

The long straight drive crosses again along Lake Argentina. The bus is quiet, but our guide does a beautiful job keeping the information flowing. The lake is the largest in Argentina; then comes Titcaca and then Bariloche. (Michael and I have been on all 3.) This one is 100 kms long and 20 kms wide. It is filled by glacial run off in a dry landscape and it doesn’t freeze because of the climate and because of the sediment from glacial run off. The lake is deeper than sea level at 300 meters here in the valley. It has perch and moyen and trout.

2 hours on Rte 11 is 80 kilometers. This road to the glacier opened in the 1960’s. The area became a world heritage site in 1981.

A water tank drives by leaking water all over the road. The moisture evaporates instantly. White sheep, black matella shrubbery & occasional guanacos & rheas dot the flat landscape. Above, enormous thick clouds blow into wild stripes that signify the wind up there – not the weather down here. Here, it doesn’t rain! Nonetheless, somehow, the road has a natural border of flowers lines the road. There are small white ones that are whipping about in the wind, and rows of red leafy grasses that make their distinctive undulating patterns. The wind keeps it all moving. It is flat and it is moving.

Hours later, in the national park, we stop at a Mirador! Just like the guidebook! The glacier is beautiful. It is moving 2 meters a day in the middle and 50 cms a day on the edges which means ice is falling off the massive cliffs with thnderous crashes all the time. This is called calving.

We learn how young Moreno, an expert climber, came here at age 25 in 1877. He didn’t see the glacier! but he was honored later for his work marking the borders with Chile that were established by 1902. (Barros Arrano was the Chilean representative).

This is the Southern Patagonian Ice Field. It is in a huge depression surrounded by the Andes. 30% of this is in Argentina. Like Upsala Glacier, it snows most of the year here.

Onward to the most spectacular mirador where we walk on balconies built on an entire hillside for viewing the glacier from various angles. The longer we watch, the more fascinating it becomes. There is even an elevator to take us to lower levels if we prefer to avoid the ramps or the stairs. WAM!

There is a cafe here and a gift shop. The food line is enormous. We eat our sub sandwiches. It looks like shoe leather. We called this “lig” when we were served similar stuff at school. We weren’t hungry. And we didn’t get sick!

We appreciated our guide, our day, and by now our other co-travelers as we weave back to our hotel.

Perito Moreno Glacier from the Mirador (outlook)

These peaks will calve at any moment

The glacier is moving towards us-faster in the middle section

Impossible to walk on These surfaces – larger than Buenos Aires in area

Joan & Paul watch the ice as it calves!

Moreno Glacier is crawling toward the land mass!

Lenge tree starting to change color for the fall!

Lake Argentina is the largest fresh water lake in the country

Torres del Penne Peaks in the distance – that is Chile

Clouds!

More clouds!

Day 3
February 18, 2014

A Estancia Cristina for our second day! The landscape is beautiful here. Only those who come to the ranch will see this glacier, as there is no other access.

The excursion this morning begins at the relatively reasonable hour of 9 am after a lovely breakfast. Three 4 x 4 pick up trucks are filled with 10 passengers: 5 each in the back, 5 in the front. This is our group for the day. Some will make it a round trip in the vehicle. Others can take the downhill walk back through the Fossil Canyon to the estancia – about 4 hours round trip.

We bounce along a very steep and rocky dirt road for almost an hour, clutching the roll bar that runs the length of the truck bed. As the last guy near the back window, I share the view with one of the guides, Pill is her name. It is so noisy, I can’t hear what she is saying. Miguel, our guide from yesterday, is also with us in the other van. These two are extremely knowledgeable guides. Miguel will give us a perspective on the life of a glacier that is the best I have heard on the whole trip.

We reach a metal quanset hut brought up here 50 years ago – somehow – to provide a way to watch and study the glacier that was then this far down the valley.Now it is back on the other side of a lake. All the bare, scraped rocks here are brand new to the air – in geologic time! Inside the hut, we are out of the wind and can hear each other. Miguel explains the layering of snow, the movement of the ice, the balance of this environment. Some glaciers are receding, some moving forward and some are in stasis (Perito Moreno). While more are receding now, not necessarily all of them are; there are various signs of global warming, but some glaciers are healthy ones!

It is another 50 yards to the top – a breathtaking magical majestic expanse of rock and ice across the valley. Wow! The glacier looks like it hangs off the mountain.

Why are there glaciers here? Because It snows on these eastern slopes 300 days a year. The snow packs down into ice. The winds from the Pacific ocean blow over the peaks and keep it moist and cold all year. The snow mounts up to 1000 millimeters which is so heavy that it packs down into ice. Ice is clear with no color. The white is crystals, like snow, where air is still embedded; blue ice is when the air has been compressed, the molecules are dense and turning into water.

The wind is so strong here we can’t stay long, but we can stand up. Sometimes, they say, we would not be able to be on this outlook at all.

The Belgians are having a blast. Paul is recruited to be their photographer for the group picture. It’s pretty fun.”Click, click”

Joan borrows Paul’s raincoat to keep her warm, as he will be heading down in the 4 x 4 for a welcome afternoon of rest. Joan will hike in her latest new style of windproof walk wear. She is wrapped up with dark glasses, a tube scarf, several layers of fleece and down, and now a black raincoat! “Click”.

Our walk back through the morraine weaves us through patterns of rock scraped and polished and brushed as recently as in the last 100 years by ice. The fossil canyon contains, spiral shells and fish like forms from a distant age when when this area was covered by the ocean. Fossils of large shells and thin fish spines are left in clear relief. The glaciers came later to smooth off the surface of the rocks revealing these remnants of life along the ocean floor.

Sunbursts of living orange lichen explode on the rock surfaces. The dormant ones turn black, but they could regrow again as lichen.

In the lower elevations, we are in the lenge trees. Some have “false mistletoe” growing in them that is a mass of yellow, green and red spores. It can kill a part of the tree. Then there are the dead branches that sprout out of the green leafy parts of the tree trunk. This is where the trees are so old (+200 years) that select branches start to go dry and die while the rest of the tree continues to flourish. Looks like a blight, but it how they are.

As we make the 4 hour hike back downhill to the estancia, we chat with new friends who I will not see again, including the Belgian folks along the way. Fun folks who take trips together each year. The cheerful, chatty human energy is in contrast to the solitude of this place. The colors, the variety of rock, the patterns are completely unusual.

After a few WOW’s, we have to make up a new expression…for now it is BAM – beautifull, amazing, majestic!

On the last stretch of our hike, we follow loosely formed pathways formed by roaming cattle to a lake to enjoy our box lunch and salad. The soft ground cover is very prickly making us jump to our feet and move to the softer gravel beach. Plenty of time here to get a good nap after lunch. Siestas in Argentina are the best!

Day 1 of Trip 3
February 16, 2014

We are planning a trip to Patagonia to see the Chilean National Park to experience the mountains, the lakes and the glaciers on these long summer days on the 50th parallel at the tip of South America.

We fly from Buenos Aires to El Calafate, a small tourist town. Here we meet our friends and fellow travelers Paul and Joan Kopperl from West Stockbridge, Massachusetts. In a few short hours, we are on the landing strip of the farthest southern point I can imagine! El Calafate airport has a mural map depicting the complex geography of the national parks, the lakes and the long straight roads that connect this small town to the other towns, trails, boat landings, glaciers, and camps. Camps here can be any level: from primitive tent compounds to expansive five star hotels. Stay tuned – more to explore!

A driver is waiting with a small van that we fit into nicely. Off to our hotel down the straight, unadorned open road without curves; it is a barren landscape of windswept desert. It is mid-summer here. These plains must be snowy cold in a few months! We see a few guanacos (wild llamas) and a rhea (small ostrich) across the pebbles, blending right into the landscape. There may be a carra carra bird, sitting along on the ground. There are sheep, herds of sheep that look like the large white river rocks against the dirt. There is Lake Argentina, the largest lake in the whole country. And there are large patterned clouds floating against bright blue sky. Analogies to Texas or Nebraska might be reasonable, but here there are no phone poles, no markers by the road, no guard rails, no green signs with white reflective lettering, and no exits. It is oddly soothing.

We know that El Calafate is a tourist town; the place for transfers, barbecue or lamb stew dinners and tourist supplies. I pick up another trekking pole (I left the first one right by my suitcase in the lobby at the hotel in BA).

We settle in to our hotel, and take a welcome walk into town a few blocks away. We wander the main drag, Avenue del Liberator, enjoy calafate berry ice cream – a bit like blueberry. (They say if you eat the calafate berry, you will return!)

We continue our walk to the small museum. There is an informative video about glaciers and a history of the Patagonian peoples. In the museum, huge dinosaurs’ bones of the maladon (we saw the maladon cave last time) loom in one back room with plenty of examples of flaura and fauna. Michael orders a matte tea that comes in a traditional round cup with a straw – very bitter tasting to me – but the popular drink among locals.

Matte is a drink or more a custom begun by the indigenous people of Uruguay, that took a while to be accepted in Patagonia. Now widely accepted as a communal activity, with a singular host who fills the cup up and offers the warm tea like drink, one at a time to those around him. The receiver is expected to finish the cup and return it to the host who will refill the cup and pass it along. This sharing continues and if one is done and doesn’t want to receive the cup he again, he or she politely says “thank you” when returning the empty cup to the host.

We find a delicious dinner at El Cucheron (“the ladle”). Wait staff is friendly, menu features a lentil dish, a lamb stew (called locro) a fish dish and several other choices. White wine is only sauvignon blanc, as usual, and the red wine is malbec, as usual. All very tasty.