Punta Arenas, Chile

Tierra del Fuego - the island at the bottom of the continent, and our final destination - takes a bit of explaining because of border technicalities between Argentina and Chile. To get to the very bottom, you have to enter Chile, cross the Magellan Straits; then, once on the island re-enter Argentina.



Argentina in White, Chile in Brown

 Crossing into Chile it became immediately obvious that this is a country which, economically and adminstratively at least, has managed to get it right. The roads are 21st century, the border officials are efficient, even the ink on the passport stamp contrasts sharply against the Argentinian smudge.

Having given up on the idea of rushing for the last car ferry, 100 kilometres of intellectual debate (about why some countries get rich while others languish in their past) eventually brought us to the Chilean city of Punta Arenas. This place is living, breathing proof that the Chileans have managed to do something with their oil reserves, copper mines and 20-year economic boom.

Our hotel for the night.

Oh...alright then, I guess we can stay for two.

Down in these parts, the main items on the menu also change as Bife de Chorizo and Parilla food in general comes a distant second to king crab in cream, octopus in garlic butter, and the nice-sounding but ultimately disappointing conger eel.



King Crab a la creme.

 By the end of day two, we were itching to get away, which just goes to show. Nice as it was to arrive in after a tiring drive, Punta Arena was a bit like what I imagine Copenhagen would be like. Orderly, pleasant - but just a bit bland.


...kind of like this photo and, come to think of it, the King Crab too.

Off we went towards the car ferry, an easy drive 100km back the way we had come, but not before unbelievably another wrong turn once again led us an hour or so in the exact opposite direction to where we needed to go. Still, we made the 1pm with plenty of time to spare, and a half hour later, landed in Teirra del Fuego.



The end of Route 40, but not quite the end

At Rio Gallegos, the hotel was nice enough for 200 pesos each (35 pounds) although the room was the hottest I have ever stayed in. Even with the temperature being around -3 outside, the room was pumping out so much heat I could only (just) manage to sleep with the window wide open. From what we gathered, the town exists largely thanks to the oil industry so my guess is they didn't need to economise on fuel.

If you imagine the letter "Y" upside down, the centre of the character is what Rio Gallegos is - basically, a fork in the road. To (your) right is the final stretch of Route 40. The road to the left goes down much further, all the way to Tierra del Fuego, the island territory divided between Argentina and Chile and our final destination, the southernmost city in the world, Ushuaia.

First, though, we were determined to see the end of Route 40, a very rough stretch of gravel, sharp stones and pot holes, 200km long. All the way we'd wondered how, if we had actually kept the Corsa, the little car could have survived the wear and tear. At least two more burst tyres, I reckon. The decision to switch to Chuck, then, far from being a frivolous extravagance, was in fact a masterstroke (of good fortune).

So here it is - the symbolic end to our road trip, if not the actual one. The 0km distance marker and the lighthouse at Caba Virgines. And although Graham had by now gotten over the absence of penguins, that one iota of hope meant he was still a little disappointed when he reached the deserted beach head.

Chuck

A useful suggestion from Senor Cuthbert has prompted me to include a map with this blog. Unfortunately Blogger's own 'interactive' map gadget is a bit of a nightmare to operate, and my fear is that rather than show where I am, it will probably show the precise location of where you are - defeating the object entirely. So just in case I've added a plain ordinary map to put on the side. Let me know which is better.

For your information the previous three posts have actually been side trips during the 4 days or so that we anchored ourselves in the town of El Calafate. Looking at the map of Argentina, this town is already quite near our end destination at the very bottom of the continent.

This is hugely misleading because distances take on a different meaning to Hong Kong and England. Gravel tracks can't be driven at more than 50kmh, and as we have found, a simple wrong turn can lead to two hours of fruitless driving before realizing that you are in fact heading towards China. With this in mind, and seeing as our 10-day contract for the little Corsa had expired, we made an executive decision to replace it with 'Chuck', a no-nonsense Toyota Helix 4x4 Turbo pick-up truck, for the remainder of our journey south.



Get out the way bitch

  It cost just a little more; two and a half times more per day to be exact. And it made no difference to us that the remaining journey could be entirely driven on the smoothest tarmac. Epic fail in terms of route management, but a resounding win for team morale.


Apparently Top Gear spent a entire programme trying
to destroy one of these. And failed!

Such was the excitement, another team decision was made to abandon the comfort of Route 40's newly paved asphalt for the eastward R9, a moody, muddy and physically brutal track which took us all the way to the seals and penguins of the Leon National Park (200km north of Rio Gallegos) - something we had both very much looked forward to seeing.

Imagine a horizontal line from Calafate, east to the Atlantic.
Route 9 - a notoriously rough road.

Or. At least it would have done had someone told us beforehand to come here in January, as opposed to April, when the seals and penguins are actually around.

"Not even one??" enquired Graham at the tourist office. He´d been wanting to get a photo of himself and a penguin all holiday, and it didnt matter if the thing was in fact dead. Sadly, even the old penguins who were on their last legs had been washed away some three weeks earlier. Slightly dejected, we drove the remaining 10km east for our first view of the Atlantic Ocean.

Eco Camp, Chile

I can recall many instances when I have done something and, in retrospect, have asked myself why did I do it. The case in point here is the decision to spend a night in Eco Camp - a 'sustainable' resort at the foot of Torres del Paine in Chile. As Graham will readily admit, back at the tourist office at El Calafate, it seemed like a good idea at the time.

We were told there will be no electricity and no communications with the outside world. The tents looked decent and the whole back-to-nature thing seemed like quite a laugh. Just one request, er, separate tents please. Sounds good. Thumbs up. Across went the credit cards. Let's go eat.

The journey there has already been covered in the last post.

Arriving at Eco Camp (late, because they forgot about us) we were greeted in the main tent with a log fire, one drink each, and a plate of salmon, sour cream and cream crackers. Devoured within seconds.

Graham: can we have more salmon please?

Waiter: (puzzled)

Graham: Can we please have more salmon?

Waiter calls manager. Manager comes out. Er, sorry no.

Graham: can we have more biscuits please?

Waiter: (puzzled)

Same routine, except, this time, we were told to share the hors d'ouvres with the Australians in the table next to us!

Graham: 'forget it'.

We were then told that dinner will be starting so please move to the dining tent. There were four other people at Eco Camp. An Australian honeymoon couple, and a sort of Austrian aristocrat from the Habsburg era with his wife, bizarrely, from Manchester.

Quite why we all had to dine at the same table when there were FOUR OTHERS available is still a mystery to me, but as is always the case in these situations I found myself sitting next to the worst person. This is why i don't go to dinner parties - the cool, good looking and funny people are always at the other end of the table, while I invariably end up sitting next to either the freak, the child molester, the wart hog, or the crashing bore. On this occasion, it was the woman from manchester. Fuck she was awful. So while Graham was having a perfectly jovial time drinking, laughing and sharing travel stories with Ludwig von Trapp and the Aussies, i was lumbered with the mentallist. We had already made introductions before dinner so i couldn't exactly pull off the 'i dont really speak english' thing. Just had to grin and bear it as she, seeing as I was of some sort of Asian descent, explained Manchester was a place where "you know, Manchester United play their football matches?" Purgatory.

In the end, instead of smashing my head into the table, I made an early exit and headed for bed in my 'dome' - a sort of Mongolian igloo tent.

I barely slept that night because the torch they provided in the dome had no battery, so from 2am till 6am i was fumbling around all my possessions in sub-zero pitch blackness figuring a way to keep warm and stay alive. The iPhone was my saving grace, not so much to phone Graham in the next tent (there was no signal), but to use as an emergency lamp. That, sadly, died at 3am.

When finally wrapped in every warm item of clothing - including socks, wooly hat, tracksuit, fleece jacket, hoodie, a self-made scarf balaclava, and curled up under two duvets and four blankets - then came the timely and irrepressible urge to pee.

Because this is Eco Camp, there is no toilet in the dome itself. You have to go to a COMMUNAL one! In 1000% darkness it took ten minutes just to figure out how to open my door. Like the emperor penguin, I marched against the brute force of the antarctic wind trying to locate this goddamned toilet which of course had no lights on to save energy. Once i was there, i realised the 'toilet dome' is designed with concentric circles much like a maze. When you are looking down from the top view, it's a doddle. But when you are actually in it you could be there forever. So after locating the ladies toilet, I then went 360 degrees in the opposite direction and eventually found the men's, the showers, the basins, and finally the bogs and the single urinal at the very epientre of the circle. 

Back outside my igloo, even though i was half way to getting frost bite, the urge to have a ciggarette proved too much and so I did. Now relieved of ten tanks of urine, i smoked in complete silence. The wind had died down, the sun hadnt come up yet, and when I looked up I saw the milky way. It felt like the past four hours had all happened intentionally for this one solitary moment. It was 6am.

So when, two hours later, Graham came knocking on my door to announce that our 8-hour hike up the mountains was about to start, with no guilt or sense of missing out, I just told him through my balaclava, "I'm not doing it".

Enter Chile, Torres del Paine

Long day starting with a sunrise drive to the Chilean border with a bus full of day-trippers.

 (On the border, cold.)

On the adventure bus, we amused ourselves about what to
put in the immigration form, under 'occupation'. Chilean officials
are known for being honest and by the book, so in this spirit we arrived at
a few options.

"Taking a sabbatical"
"A bit of time off"
"Career break"
"Motivational hiatus"
"In between things"
"Re-evaluating"

All of which we felt were better spoken (with eyes wide open and using
fingers to denote inverted commas) than written, so we just stuck with
boring old advertising and finance.

During the day-long circuit of the national park, the tour guide kept referring to us as "our two friends who we will be dropping off at the designated point where they will hike their way to camp" which made me feel very special. John the explorer, mountaineer.

All was going well till he asked if we knew what to do in the event of encountering a puma.

"I'm sorry, but no one at Patagonia Extreme ever mentioned anything
about a puma."

"Not 'a'. Quite a few at this time of year. You know what to do, right?"

"Run."

Condescending smiles all round. No John, you do not run. You definitely do not run. What you do is look the puma straight in the eye. Do not go forward or turn your back. Make yourself as big as possible with arms outstretched. Clap your hands, make lots of noise.

Blinking for several seconds, I tried imagining myself doing this. In terms of weaponry, I had half a bottle of orange squash and Graham had his blackberry.

"Just out of curiosity," I asked, "if a puma got in a fight with a Rottweiler, who would win?"  I had been coming up with 'good questions' all day while he was explaining the peculiar formation of the mountains, to the point where he actually answered "i dont know, im not God." Here, the hesitant pause and blank stare convinced me that this was another one. "Rottweiler. Probably."

Up the hills, the first third was fun, chasing guanacos and trying to get close-up shots. Surprisingly difficult, this. Guanacos are relations of llamas. Timid animals, but born with instinctive caution and good hearing. Mind bogglingly, Graham was under the impression that yelling at them while running at full pelt would somehow entice them to come closer, so I distanced myself from him. Slowly, I crept up to one that just seemed defiantly comfortabe in my presence. One shot was all it gave me.

Entering a very quiet valley, the company of guanacos gave way to
guanaco bones and skulls, and later, the still more unsettling sight
of hollowed out guanaco carcasses still bloodied from the kill. This
was not the work of a rottweiler.

Pushing on, I took the lead in double time, my radar panning from left
to right like the guards at Tianenmen Square. At its worst, every ten
yards produced a fresh carcass.  Any rock or bush bigger than a
football were a potential puma. This eerie loneliness was accompanied
by daft yet uncontrollable thoughts of what it would be like to be
eaten alive.

For the rest of the walk, I debated with myself whose side I was on.
Is it better for the guanaco to get eaten or the puma to starve? No
question, between the bull and the matador I would side with the bull
and hope the matador gets the nasty mauling he deserves. But this is
not so straightforward. For sure, there are a lot of guanacos around,
but when you see the carcass in real life, it does make your heart
bleed. I have a photo but have decided not to show it.

Two hours and no conclusion later, a sharp descent signified safety
and the return of my pulse and nerve. I would love to say that one
last look back at the boulders rewarded me with a lone puma silhouette
looking down, as if it had been following all along with the same
curiosity and caution. As you can see, it didn't, and the closest I
came to death was from boredom, waiting a whole hour for the camp's
pick up truck to arrive very late in the cold Chilean wind.

Glacier Perito Moreno

We were praying for good weather, and our prayers were heard. It's like the Forbidden City. It's one thing to see pictures of it on the internet or in the travel books, but coming face to face with it in real life is really something else. I was actually lucky enough to be at the right place at the right time to film a big block of ice collapse in the water as well as the ensuing mini-tsumani - all in HD. The file however is too big, so I thought you might like to see a few more Christian rock band photos.

(Somehow, Graham managed to get BOTH me and the glacier out of focus on this one.)

(Christian rock band album, inner sleeve.)

 

(The forest and bushes were also an awesome sight.)

Blood Sausages and Bife de Chorizo

We'd been told, of course, not to expect a great deal of variety in Argentine cuisine. This has never been a problem for us because what they do, they do very well. We have also learned that Argentinian Spanish is slightly different from Spanish spoken anywhere else. Hence the word 'Parilla' is pronounced 'Parija', with a soft J. Not that this made any difference; we were understood perfectly well wherever we went even with Graham's shockingly un-Spanish English accent.

Blood sausages, which I hate to confess are better than Irish black pudding, are called Morcillas, also with a soft J.
 The other interesting thing to note about food is that Buenos Aires is the only place where cooking steak rare is the standard. Everywhere else, you have to make double, triple sure with the waiter, otherwise your Bife de Chorizo will be as charred as they do it in Singapore. We have both now perfected the art of saying RARE in super slow motion using exaggerated hand motions, and always asking again if the waiter is absolutely sure he knows what we mean. This nauseating routine has paid off handsomely.

That said, my main man Rodrigo never got it wrong. And even if he did, neither of us would have told him for fear of getting our eyes mutilated and skulls crushed.

Glacier Viedma

This is the big glacier, albeit not so famous. From tip to source a whopping 40km and about 100 feet high we reckoned. Bus from El Chalten, then a ferry ride in the milky blue lake.

Everyone except us seemed to have packed lunches and all the gear you would need to climb the Everest. After 20 mins of photos in front of the glacier face, we disembarked to go hiking on ice.

(New album cover for our Christian rock band)

Glaciers never interested me at all in geography, and the rather lacklustre tour guide's explanation of how this one formed did little to change that. I did, however, love climbing the volcanic rocks, and hiking with crampons. The tour only brought us about 1km in, but it felt like we had climbed several hills, such was the magnitude of this block of ice. Finishing the hike with Baileys on glacier rocks was also an excellent touch, we thought.

Only bad thing to happen was me slipping on the rocks on the way down, cutting my hand. Crampons having been removed, my New Balances just werent made for this type of smooth rock surface. Admittedly it could have been much, much worse, but the pain was enough for me to release the word 'CULT' with such ferocity it echoed several times against the glacier walls. A few moments of stunned silence later, people came to my aid with moral support and alcohol (for the wound).

Just writing about this has reminded me of the need to get insurance, something I haven't been bothered with this far. I have never made an insurance claim in my life but now I understand that that's not really the point.