EL CALEFATE to TORRES DEL PAINE
It's so nice to be in the, both factually and metaphorically, cool part of our trip. Buenos Aires was very warm and humid, while Patagonia is in the high 50s (with a wind chill of anyone's guess).
Kathy reminded me that I neglected to mention the breakfast fare in our El Calefate hotel, Kosten Aike. As a picture is worth a thousand words:
Variety is a challenge for restaurants as everything has to be shipped to this remote town, but the food and coffee are good. I especially liked the musli and fruit salad. They also had dulce de leche, the ubiquitous, indulgent, high-caloric Argentine treat, as a breakfast spread. It is like caramelized sweetened condensed milk, served in crepes, over ice cream, in pastries, etc. It is rich and yummy, and it's probably a good thing it hasn't caught on in the US.
We had a 5:45 wake up call and 7:15 departure for the long drive to Torres del Paine national park in Chile.
The circuitous drive to the Argentinean-Chilean border took about 4 hours. At the border our bags were again inspected for animal or plant matter. In addition to the scanner, a very cheerful dog hopped in and out of the bus baggage compartment until convinced we had no smugglers among us, at which point he trotted back to his crate and obediently lay down with the cage door wide open.
We changed to our Chilean bus, met our new local guide, Alexandra, and continued on our way. Add in Argentina, we saw occasional guanicos and rhea. But the topography quickly changed from the flat high steps of Argentina to rolling hills and then mountains.
Rheas are well camouflaged and difficult to spot unless they are in groups, as this brood with little ones. Fun fact: male rheas collect the eggs from all the females with which they mate into one nest and then hatch the whole batch at once. They leave a couple of eggs outside the nest to break and attract insects, so they have something to eat while sitting on the eggs.
While guanicos are a bit easier to spot.
We had glimpses of Torres del Paine while still in Argentina, but now we had wonderful views of the snow covered peaks, the towers and horns. Alexandra was quite excited that the crystal clear air afforded a view all the way (she estimated 100-120 miles) to the southern ice field and the Andes, exclaiming it was very rare. I did not tell her about my weather karma, so she thought it was merely a lucky day.
Torres del Paine
Ice fields
Next we came upon some obliging guanicos who were happy to pose with the mountains. Unusual for this tourist driven region, they refused tips for their troubles.
Ready for her close-up.
We entered the national park/world heritage center through the eastern entrance and exited much later at the southern entrance. Torres del Paine is considered by many to be the finest national park in South America, and people come from around the world for the 10 day trek around the central mountain features of towers, glacier peaks and horns. Over 60% of the park's 150,000 annual visitors come from other countries.
It's a large park, 934 square miles, with 62 miles of gravel road. While excellent views can be had from viewpoints along the road, only trekkers and hikers can reach the interior, where they can circle the mountains in a 10 day trek or hike alternative routes, staying in camping shelters or tents along the trails. The park is trying to control access to preserve the pristine beauty and wildlife in the park. Fodor's mentions that the frequently changeable Patagonian weather is the only blemish in this park, but we dodged that bullet here today. We'll see what tomorrow brings.
Our hotel, Hotel Rio Serrano, sits on an alluvial plain in an oxbow, just outside the park's southern boundary.
And the view from our room is postcard perfect. It will be interesting to watch it change throughout the long daylight hours.
We enjoyed an excellent buffet dinner with our group of 18 at the hotel, and will try to stay up to see the sunset if the clouds beak. Sunset is just so late here!
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THURSDAY, February 2
TORRES DEL PAINE NATIONAL PARK
We spent an amazing day touring this gem of a national park. The views are striking and constantly changing with the fickle Patagonian weather. The flat grassland surrounding the iconic Paine Mastiff sit at around 300 ft elevation, from which the mountains shoot up suddenly and dramatically to 10,000 ft.
Our first hike was 6 miles out to a Gray Glacier viewpoint. We drove about an hour to a trailhead which led across a suspension bridge, then through a mature forest of mixed deciduous and evergreen southern beech trees to a beach of glacier stones. Greg, Charley and Kathy quickly found their 5th geocache of this trip.
Gray Lake, dotted with icebergs from the glacier, stretches 9 miles to the glacier. Grey Glacier is 17 miles long and covers 94 square miles, though is shrinking rapidly. It, along with 46 other glaciers, originates from the same Patagonian ice field as the Perito Mereno glacier.
Without a visual reference point, the scope of everything was hard to process. The mountain tops are nearly two miles above us. The glacier is 10 miles away. You can see the tiny people walking on the beach below.
After our morning hike, we headed back to a restaurant near our hotel for a long lunch which included a pisco sour and wine. After another 45 minute drive during which nearly everyone nodded off while Alexandra explained the options for our second hike, we arrived at the Salto Grande trailhead. It was a little difficult to get motivated to start out again, but once we got moving, it was, of course, great.
We walked an easy trail to a waterfall of glacier melt.
And then continued past a lake to a viewpoint and turquoise lake at the base of the horns formation. Or more accurately, probably a mile or two from the base. Hard to tell.
Here are the horns yesterday
And today
Twelve of our 18 made it to the lake at the end, including these hearty souls with hearty soles.
This is an especially windy area, apparently sometimes to the point where you cannot walk.
Fortunately, it didn't get that bad for us. But as the picture of the horns show, we did run into our first "weather". Glad to have a raincoat over my fleece, and glad we had our trekking poles. We climbed the equivalent of 100 flights of steps today and will probably pay for it tomorrow, but how lucky we were to have this opportunity.
This park is a marvel. It is the high season, but never felt crowded. There is no litter, not even a bottle cap along the trails. The animals are, for the most part, unafraid of people. And people leave them alone. The park management is doing this right.
PS We saw an armadillo!
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FRIDAY, February 3
TORRES DEL PAINE to PUERTO NATALES
This morning we visited the national park visitor's center where Alexandra showed us on a model of the park all of the places we've been. Thanks to the exceptional weather we had on Wednesday, we've seen just about everything one would hope to see without backpacking into the most remote areas. The peaks were hidden again in the clouds this morning. Apparently, like Alaskan tourists hoping to view Mount McKinley, it's not unusual for visitors to stay for days without getting a glimpse of the full mastiff.
The visitor's center had diagrams, charts and models explaining the creation of the unusual rock formations which make the towers, horns and mountains. They are not part of the Andes, which were formed by uplift from colliding tectonic plates. In Torres del Paine, sedimentary rock (dark) was layered over granite (gray). Magma seeped up and spread under both layers, lifting the overlying rock into the towers and horns seen today. The dark caps on the horns are remains of the sedimentary rock, which has eroded from the gray tower formations. The magma layer lies below the the base of the mastiff.
We reluctantly said goodbye to Torres del Paine and settled in for the hundred mile drive to Puerto Natales, mostly along a bumpy gravel road. The former coal mining and sheep wool shipping town is on a fjord which connects to the Pacific Ocean's.
It's still a port, but now largely tourist driven as it's a good jumping off spot for Torres del Paine. It feels like a little frontier town, with lots of gear shops, adventure tour providers and restaurants serving barbecued lamb.
This is our last opportunity to pick up essentials for our Antarctica cruise, so people were dashing around buying toothpaste, conditioner, waterproof pants, and most importantly, wine 🍷 as it's expensive on the ship but you can have it in your room. Chilean wine is about the same price as soda here, but Charley scored the best deal with a box of wine for under $1.50. We splurged and got four middle range bottles for $15.
Seems it can be quite windy here, too.
This is probably the last post for a while, as tomorrow we board the expedition ship to Antarctica!
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