Patagonia Vacation: Part II and Picture Extravaganza

Well, we said Patagonia was beautiful, and now we have pictures to back it up. Below are the major rock formations that make up the park. On the right are the Cuernos, and on the left is Mount Doom. I made the second name up, but I think it fits. We actually don't know the real one. Its summit, however, is perpetually shrowded in clouds...and mystery. This picture is from the first day of hiking and at the bottom is Lake Pehoe.

Here we have Erin and I on the shore of Lake Pehoe. Since this is also the first day, we still appear happy. Erin is yet to utter the words, "My feet hurt," and I'm yet to respond, "Maybe if you stopped talking about it, they'd feel better."

Here is our camp site from the first night. Having successfully transported our stove through Chilean airport security, we used it to make a delicious meal of rice and Cup of Soup.

Moving backwards in time, this is once again from the first day's hike. That's Erin in the picture, walking through the field of brown grass. Mount Doom looms ominously in the background.

Our second day was spent in the effort to reach Glacier Grey, which ends in a glacial lake. It's a pretty amazing site, and the whole lake was full of little iceburgs that would break off and float around until they finally melted.

Continuing on down the trail...we reached our campsite for the evening. We stopped to claim a site and set up our tent before we hiked on to the glacier lookout. This is me, chewing on my fork while contemplating just how good that Cup of Soup is going to taste tonight.

And Glacier Grey, or at least as close as we were able to get to it. To reach the view point took an hour of hiking up very steep trails, but I think it was worth it. Afterwards, we hiked back down to our campsite for dinner and sleep.

The view back down the valley from Glacier Grey.

It wouldn't really be a trip if we didn't have some camera problems. This time, we ran out of juice on our memory card. Apparently we managed to take 106 pictures in the first three days. After a day or two pictureless, I figured out how to delete pictures without the use of the LCD screen. The only downside is that we have no idea which ones we deleted. And we'll never know. Skipping ahead to the last day, therefore, we have the river valley that runs all the way to the Torres of Torres del Paine. The trail through this area was a lot steeper than it looks, and on the way down, Erin was nearly knocked off into the river below by a pack horse, which is used to carry supplies to the hostel. Strangely enough, this land is privately owned.

And finally, Las Torres. Erin chose to skip out on this section of the hike, so she missed out on the incredibly steep hike up the terminal moraine and the crazy-strong wind. Still, it's pretty nice I think.

This brings us to Argentina. After an evening in a hostel in Puerto Natales, Chile, we were back on a bus and crossing the border. Argentinian Patagonia, in our experience, was like the luxury Patagonia. I preferred Chilean Patagonia. The landscape seemed a little bigger, the area was more remote, the hikes were longer, the sites were more beautiful, etc. That being said, Argentina had its own upsides, the first and foremost being the food. It's cheap and mostly consists of giant, mouth-watering steaks and log-fire-cooked lamb. But I digress...

We started our trip through Argentina in El Calafate. As you drive in, the tourist office located a mile or two before anything else lets you know that El Calafate exists primarily to suck money from tourists. It's a small town with a disproportionate number of fancy restaurants, hotels, chocolate shops (which were awesome), and outdoor stores. We opted not to stay, although we did opt for a nice dinner. We caught the bus the next day to El Chalten, which is where the real activity is. Parque Nacional de los Glaciares is the Argentinian equivalent of Torres del Paine, and includes among other things, Mount Fitz Roy. While not as cool to look at as Mount Doom, it's pretty good. Unlike Torres del Paine, however, all the hikes are day hikes, and most people stay the nights in hostels in town. The hikes, themselves, we soon discovered were also substantially easier, over mostly flat ground. We were having none of that, though, and slogged off into the woods to stay at one of the three camp sites in the park. A sign on the way in warned us that if we saw a puma, we were lucky, but we should take care to throw rocks "aggressively." Check.

Our first morning in the park, we woke up to find a layer of sand covering everything in the tent. The wind had picked up to a ridiculous level overnight and had managed to carry huge amounts of sand up under our tent's fly, where they dropped down onto us below. We were perturbed to find out that the wind had no intention of letting up that day, and that, combined with frequent spots of rain kept us bravely confined to our tent, where I beat Erin repetitively in cards. Here she is looking cute in our tent.

By early evening, the wind and rain subsided, and we ventured up the valley to take pictures of the glacier. It was good. Here's Erin on one of the many moraines that cross the valley. Also, the bathroom.

After our day of bad weather, we woke up on day two to beautiful blue skies and perfect weather. We took the opportunity to hike back out of the park and catch our bus out of town.

Having had our fill of El Chalten, we returned to El Calafate for a night and then skipped town in a plane the next day. Our last stop on the trip was in the southernmost city in the world, Ushuaia. Ushuaia was fun. Like everywhere else in Argentina, there was beef, which was enough to keep me happy. Erin and I were pretty worn out from the whole trip at this point, so we spent a lot of time lounging around our hostel, which was very nice, and taking trips to the chocolate shop to buy hot chocolate, which they make fresh using bars of chocolate and hot milk. Our one day of hiking was spent in Parque Nacional Tierra del Fuego. The land of fire, as you might expect, was interesting. It was very pretty, but we never got to see the southern lights for which I believe the area is named. It was always too cloudy. The park did not disappoint, though.

The majority of our time in Ushuaia, however, was spent in the futile attempt to ride a sail boat. We booked a trip for every single day but got weathered out every morning. It was disheartening, so we finally decided to take a ride on an old, steamboat-ish ship that takes a three hour tour (a la Gilligan's Island) around a series of islands populated by local wildlife. Here we are on our last attempt at a sailboat ride. We actually made it onto the boat and ate some breakfast before we were sent home on this try.

Here is the boat we finally managed to go on. The Barracuda. The name prompted Erin and I into singing on more than one occasion during the ride.

Cormoranes, sea lions, and seals! Can you tell the difference between a sea lion and a seal? Each of the male sea lions, which weighed like 800 pounds apiece, had at least six or seven females, who he used primarily as pillows as far as we could tell. Every once in a while they would start yelling at other males, making a noise very similar to a pig's oink. This is truly an advanced social system.

Me with the only penguin we saw on the whole trip (unfortunately)...and a beaver?

A view from the deck of the Barracuda.

And it's captain. Check out his manly beard. God, he just reeks of manliness.
The lighthouse. Pretty.
And finally...what's better than two and a half weeks in Patagonia? 4 a.m. flights home.