Well Mr. Crowley is here and doesn´t feel like writing in the blog because he´d rather watch a lame spanish talk show that neither of us can understand, so I´ll just summarize what we´ve been through. We met up in El Bolsón, where I´ve spent most of my farming time in Argentina. After catching up and gathering supplies, we spent an hour and a half trying to hitchhike up to the farm at which we were crashing for a few days: the home of Lea and Cristel, my former wwoof hosts. When we´d nearly given up hope, thinking that no one would pick up two Americans in boat shoes and jeans, an angel arrived in the form of a burned-out British wood toy maker named Ralph. Although we were eager to get to the farm and crash (we had a big day of hiking ahead of us), Ralph convinced us to join him at a ¨party¨ he was attending with the other Brits who live in the area. This party turned out to be a group of five old British guys drinking extremely strong gin and tonics, smoking a pile of tobacco, and using all sorts of awesome dirty English phrases. After a few hours of damaging our lungs with secondhand smoke, Crowley and I walked (okay...walked and sometimes stumbled) through the dark and over rocky dirt roads, pricker bushes and barbed wire fences, finally arriving at our destination. We fell asleep only to wake up 5 hours later and hitchhike once again down to town in order to start our first trek. After asking around town and buying a few more supplies, we finally set off to summit Piltriquitron, a beautiful granite ridge that overlooks the town. Two hours of exposing our thumbs to the harsh sun later, we were picked up by a local couple, spent 20 minutes in the back of a rusted old pickup, bumped our heads several times on the cover, and finally made it to the base of the hike. The rest of the trip went swimmingly! We got some incredible views of El Bolsón and the surrounding area at the refugio for summiting Piltri, and the next morning we were able to summit without a problem. This thanks in part to our companion for the trek, the refugio dog, whom we named Venga. As we started our morning hike, we noticed her leading us from a distance. We figured she´d stay with us for a few minutes and head back. We were wrong. For the two hours it took us to make it to the summit, Venga could always be seen somewhere off in the distance, blazing her own trail and keeping tabs on us as we hiked. As we neared the peak, she joined us on the path, and even kept us warm by sitting next to us at the summit! We were impressed. After a few hours of downhill hiking and a delicious meal of cold crappy pasta and cheese sandwiches, we were back in town in time to catch a bus (thank God) up to Mallin, where Cristel and Lea were waiting to cook a delicious meal with us. So we stuffed our bellies with cheeseburgers, Argentina style, slept very well in the tent, and were off again the next day, ready for our 26 hour bus ride down to El Calafate, the gateway to our adventures in southern Patagonia! I´m tired of writing. Crowley´s turn.
Hello readers, it´s B-hottie wit da body. From El Calafate, our first stop was the Perito Merino Glacier. Dan tried to tell me that it is the only advancing glacier in the world, which is untrue--it´s one of a few advancing glaciers in Patagonia. Hennyway, the glacier was awesomely huge and fun to explore. We opted for an hour long boat excursion that went up alongside the glacier and got some great views. The remainder of our time at the glacier we spent on catwalks that provided views from almost every angle as we patiently waited for massive chunks of ice to fall from the glacier and crash into the water below. Having spent a solid 3 hours admiring the expanse of ice and snow, the two of us grew tired of the tourist-packed and overpriced venue and waited another 3 hours for our return bus to El Calafate. The next day we were off to Parque Nacional los Glaciares and our first multi-day trek in the Fitz Roy sector.
In order to get to the park, we had to catch a bus to the tiny town of El Chalten, the self-proclaimed trekking capital of Argentina. The town was thrown together in 1985 in the midst of a border dispute with the evil Chileans, and as a result there are tons of half-finished buildings and development projects in the works. The town´s only function is to serve the tourism industry, and it has a whopping population of 100. Trail heads to the Fitz Roy hikes were found at the edge of town and we made our way to our first campsite at the base of Cerro Fitz Roy. The hike up to the lookout the following day was incredible and that was where we made our first friend, Lamar, a math teacher in NYC.
If we continue to detail our travels like this then the next 2 weeks will be spent sitting at this computer writing this post, so here begins a much briefer summary:
We enjoyed fair weather in Fitz Roy and headed back to El Calafate for one night before catching a bus to Puerto Natales, Chile, gateway to Torres del Paine National Park.
Dan here. I´d like to clarify that I mentioned hearing or reading somewhere that the glacier was the only one advancing, but that it didn´t make sense and probably wasn´t true. Crowley sits on a throne of lies.
Torres, in a word, was stunning. The best hiking I´ve ever done, easily. This is due in part to our incredible luck: in our six days of hiking, we only had one cloudy day. The rest were filled with sunshine and incredible vistas. This is unheard of in Patagonia, a place known as much for its summer blizards and knock-down winds as it is for its wonderful hiking. We were fortunate enough to have time to do the full circuit, a trip that took us around the back of the towers before heading over the mountain range to do the ¨W¨, the more popular and crowded section of the park. So for the first few days, we were able to hike through some stunning scenery in almost complete isolation, going hours on the trails without seeing another soul. This was wonderful, but at the same time, it´s easy to see why the W is so much more popular. Standing on a rock surrounded completely by mountains, glaciers and pure, clean glacial streams was an experience I´ll hopefully remember forever. Not to mention our sunrise hike to the towers on our last day: seeing the first bright orange light of the day spread across the formation was as warming to the soul as a good peppermint hot chocolate in February. Mmmmmm.
After our incredible trek, we treated ourselves to showers, pizza, delicious pastries from the supermarket and a big bottle of damn decent wine (for $3). Then we were off to Punta Arenas, where we are now, awaiting a tour of a penguin colony tomorrow!
All for now. Peace out cubscouts.
Friday, February 24, 2012
Friday, February 3, 2012
I´m pathetic at this
Okay so I´m sitting in a bus station in Mendoza with nothing to do for six hours until my bus comes, and even though I haven´t eaten anything in 15 hours because the damn chilean airline I was on promised a meal and forgot to pack it onto the plane (?), all the shops in Mendoza are closed for siesta! So this is my way to not think about the delicious cheese sandwich and fresh apple that await me at the corner bakery in an hour.
I am clearly terrible at updating this blog, and I feel like highlights aren´t enough...I have to go into story mode, so this is going to be a stream of conscience style post that hopefully not digress into romanticized food poetry. the last time I updated this was November 18. That´s kinda a long time ago. As you might guess, some things have happened since then. Among them, delicous Argentine asados, beautiful hikes into the mountains of northern Patagonia, poorly suppressed freakouts in internet cafes at the incompetenece of DHL in Argentina, and a mad dash through Mendoza to grab my passport before catching a bus to Santiago just in time for my flight to Costa Rica. okay the shift button on this computer sucks so i´´m ditching the caps. anyways, after screaming at a computer and pulling my hair out with at least 10 people eyeing me, i finally figured out that the new passport i had ordered to be shipped to me had not even left the embassy the day before i had to leave for my fligh, despite dhl´s assurance that it would arrive at least two days prior. this i discovered despite the dhl employees deliberately ignoring my 10 emails inquiring asto the location of the passport. luckily i was able to shift bus tickets around and get my passport shipped to mendoza, where i had to go anyways, just in time to pick it up.
after 3 days of travel, i made it to costa rica and got to see my family for the first time since september. we had a blast of a vacation in two beautiful spots: the osa peninsula on the southern pacific coast and orosi, a cool little town just outside of san jose. we went snorkeling, night hiking through the jungle, and toured an awesome national park. we saw white faced monkeys sneak into the resort kitchen and make away with a loaf of bread, then we heard them howling and fighting over it in the nearby jungle. a few minutes later, a monkey actually jumped into the living area (full of people), lifted up the cookie jar and made away with two cookies! crafty little buggers. we also saw parokees, toucans, squirrel monkeys, howler monkeys, sloths, and all sorts of poisonous frogs. christmas was relaxed and awesome. after a day of river rafting, we sat around and played cards all day. one of my favorite christmases to date. I was sad to see my family go the following morning and pretty apprehensive about my next stay, but I hopped on a bus and headed to puerto viejo to see my cousin Dave, who runs a hostel down there, and whom I hadn´t seen in like 5 years.
so I´ve traveled a reasonable amount through central and south america, among other places, but i´ve never found a town as compelling, relaxed, inviting and fun as puerto viejo. i had such a good time living in a hostel, helping dave build bunk beds and doing random cleaning and what not in exchange for a room. i tried to get a job, but most of them paid about a dollar an hour, so it didn´t seem worth it. eventually I found a job bar backing at an awesome, awesome bar called tasty waves on tuesday nights. god, that was easily the best job i´ve ever had. i got paid to stack beers, shoot pool, dance, drink and generally be debaucherous. amazing. the people there--all of dave´s friends--were some of the coolest people i´ve ever met. as dave put it, the people who stay are the people who get it. true. good thing i´m heading back there for at leat half a year at some point in teh near future.
living in a hostel, especially one as cool and relaxed as dave´s, means meeting people--interesting, adventurous people--from all overthe world. and they cycle through, so there´s a constant supply of new fun characters. i learned a lot about the environment, writing and rocks in school. I learned a lot about argentine culture and the spanish language in argentina, but i think i learned the most about people and life and what´s really important in puerto. just way too many interesting, excited individuals who want to share ideas, meet people, have fun and generally do all the awesome things that go along with traveling.
of course, there were some downsides. for one, i burrrned through money. costa rica is not cheap, and i was frugal as ever. still blew a lot of it. oh well. worse, though, was don klause. he´s this old german dickbag who rents out the hostel to dannie (dave´s girlfriend, who is awesome) and dave. basically the double d´s do all the work, all of it, and don klause makes most of the profit and just gets in the way of all the improvements they try to make. the hostel doesn´t have internet, for example, and everyone knows it needs it, but trying to convince this guy was like talking to a brick wall. if at any point he sensed that you were winning the argument, he´d just wave his hand in your face and say he was done talking about it.
but tha wasn´t the worst of it. the guy would show up periodically (twice in teh five weeks i was there) with a small suitcase that, as far as i could tell, he would never open. after three days of not showering, he really just reeked of bo. after four it was unbearable to be in a normal sized room with him. it probably didn´t help that he spent every night pounding two liters of box wine by himself with his back turned to everyone else sitting around and talking in the hostel. and, as it tends to go, when he got plastered he would share his opinions. some unsuspecting well-intentioned backpacker would usually strike up a conversation with the mysterious antisocial alcoholic in the corner who smelled like when the raccoon got in the copier, and klause would talk at this backpacker until he or she was able to escape. he would tell them about himself, about how incredible a person he is, because he loooved to mention that he is ¨a very important person¨. it was never made clear why he thought this. he´d also share his views on economic gaps and race discrimination, because as don klause knows and is willing to tell you, poor people arepoor because they are dumb, and rich people are rich because they are smart. i won´t go into what he said about race, but suffice it to say that you would easiy drop your jaw at his opinions. and again, you could not argue with this guy. ever. brick wall.
so besides don klause being a terrible, terrible person, i had a fantastic time at the residencia. even got a visit from that badass mofo neil for a week, which was a blasty blast. he´s set on coming back to pv for a longer stay as well. although i was sad to leave costa rica and all teh awesome people in puerto, i´m absurtly pumped for my upcoming adventure with crowley through patagonia, so i can´t really complain. hopefully i´ll be better at updating this and will be able to get into actual stories instead of generalized summaries, but that´s probably not going to happen. anyways, 20 minutes until food! then a 22 hour bus ride to el bolson to meet up with b hottie and start the great patagonian adventure!
I am clearly terrible at updating this blog, and I feel like highlights aren´t enough...I have to go into story mode, so this is going to be a stream of conscience style post that hopefully not digress into romanticized food poetry. the last time I updated this was November 18. That´s kinda a long time ago. As you might guess, some things have happened since then. Among them, delicous Argentine asados, beautiful hikes into the mountains of northern Patagonia, poorly suppressed freakouts in internet cafes at the incompetenece of DHL in Argentina, and a mad dash through Mendoza to grab my passport before catching a bus to Santiago just in time for my flight to Costa Rica. okay the shift button on this computer sucks so i´´m ditching the caps. anyways, after screaming at a computer and pulling my hair out with at least 10 people eyeing me, i finally figured out that the new passport i had ordered to be shipped to me had not even left the embassy the day before i had to leave for my fligh, despite dhl´s assurance that it would arrive at least two days prior. this i discovered despite the dhl employees deliberately ignoring my 10 emails inquiring asto the location of the passport. luckily i was able to shift bus tickets around and get my passport shipped to mendoza, where i had to go anyways, just in time to pick it up.
after 3 days of travel, i made it to costa rica and got to see my family for the first time since september. we had a blast of a vacation in two beautiful spots: the osa peninsula on the southern pacific coast and orosi, a cool little town just outside of san jose. we went snorkeling, night hiking through the jungle, and toured an awesome national park. we saw white faced monkeys sneak into the resort kitchen and make away with a loaf of bread, then we heard them howling and fighting over it in the nearby jungle. a few minutes later, a monkey actually jumped into the living area (full of people), lifted up the cookie jar and made away with two cookies! crafty little buggers. we also saw parokees, toucans, squirrel monkeys, howler monkeys, sloths, and all sorts of poisonous frogs. christmas was relaxed and awesome. after a day of river rafting, we sat around and played cards all day. one of my favorite christmases to date. I was sad to see my family go the following morning and pretty apprehensive about my next stay, but I hopped on a bus and headed to puerto viejo to see my cousin Dave, who runs a hostel down there, and whom I hadn´t seen in like 5 years.
so I´ve traveled a reasonable amount through central and south america, among other places, but i´ve never found a town as compelling, relaxed, inviting and fun as puerto viejo. i had such a good time living in a hostel, helping dave build bunk beds and doing random cleaning and what not in exchange for a room. i tried to get a job, but most of them paid about a dollar an hour, so it didn´t seem worth it. eventually I found a job bar backing at an awesome, awesome bar called tasty waves on tuesday nights. god, that was easily the best job i´ve ever had. i got paid to stack beers, shoot pool, dance, drink and generally be debaucherous. amazing. the people there--all of dave´s friends--were some of the coolest people i´ve ever met. as dave put it, the people who stay are the people who get it. true. good thing i´m heading back there for at leat half a year at some point in teh near future.
living in a hostel, especially one as cool and relaxed as dave´s, means meeting people--interesting, adventurous people--from all overthe world. and they cycle through, so there´s a constant supply of new fun characters. i learned a lot about the environment, writing and rocks in school. I learned a lot about argentine culture and the spanish language in argentina, but i think i learned the most about people and life and what´s really important in puerto. just way too many interesting, excited individuals who want to share ideas, meet people, have fun and generally do all the awesome things that go along with traveling.
of course, there were some downsides. for one, i burrrned through money. costa rica is not cheap, and i was frugal as ever. still blew a lot of it. oh well. worse, though, was don klause. he´s this old german dickbag who rents out the hostel to dannie (dave´s girlfriend, who is awesome) and dave. basically the double d´s do all the work, all of it, and don klause makes most of the profit and just gets in the way of all the improvements they try to make. the hostel doesn´t have internet, for example, and everyone knows it needs it, but trying to convince this guy was like talking to a brick wall. if at any point he sensed that you were winning the argument, he´d just wave his hand in your face and say he was done talking about it.
but tha wasn´t the worst of it. the guy would show up periodically (twice in teh five weeks i was there) with a small suitcase that, as far as i could tell, he would never open. after three days of not showering, he really just reeked of bo. after four it was unbearable to be in a normal sized room with him. it probably didn´t help that he spent every night pounding two liters of box wine by himself with his back turned to everyone else sitting around and talking in the hostel. and, as it tends to go, when he got plastered he would share his opinions. some unsuspecting well-intentioned backpacker would usually strike up a conversation with the mysterious antisocial alcoholic in the corner who smelled like when the raccoon got in the copier, and klause would talk at this backpacker until he or she was able to escape. he would tell them about himself, about how incredible a person he is, because he loooved to mention that he is ¨a very important person¨. it was never made clear why he thought this. he´d also share his views on economic gaps and race discrimination, because as don klause knows and is willing to tell you, poor people arepoor because they are dumb, and rich people are rich because they are smart. i won´t go into what he said about race, but suffice it to say that you would easiy drop your jaw at his opinions. and again, you could not argue with this guy. ever. brick wall.
so besides don klause being a terrible, terrible person, i had a fantastic time at the residencia. even got a visit from that badass mofo neil for a week, which was a blasty blast. he´s set on coming back to pv for a longer stay as well. although i was sad to leave costa rica and all teh awesome people in puerto, i´m absurtly pumped for my upcoming adventure with crowley through patagonia, so i can´t really complain. hopefully i´ll be better at updating this and will be able to get into actual stories instead of generalized summaries, but that´s probably not going to happen. anyways, 20 minutes until food! then a 22 hour bus ride to el bolson to meet up with b hottie and start the great patagonian adventure!
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