So much to catch up on – Glaciers, Hiking, Chocolate

Well we officially suck at keeping a blog, so here is a catch up blog to keep our loyal fans up to date. We last left in Ushuaia however as we are now in Peru many thousands of kilometers away we will have to fill you in slowly in parts.

After leaving Ushuaia we headed up to El Calafate- a day and a half drive away. Here we got to stay in a hostel which was terrible exciting after so long in a tent. We also got the opportunity to visit one of the most spectacular glaciers in South America, The Perito Moreno Glacier. Not only was it massive but it is constantly cracking so huge chunks the size of houses would fall off right in front of you although if you blinked you would miss it and would be left staring at some massive ripples. The sound of the glacier was unreal, seeming to sigh and then growl ominously as somewhere deep inside it would crack or break. Check out these wicked pics, it was one photogenic bastard.

When looking at this picture you have to remember that the wall of the glacier is 60 meters high.

So pretty!

So pretty- One of the other Australians (with a serious alcohol problem) got his kit off in the cold

Sam and I re-enact a classic film moment on the boat to the glacier.

I forgot to mention on the way to the glacier we stopped at this small ranch/coffee and cake shop that had all these crazy animals wandering around – inside and out. One of which nearly tried to bite and kick one of our Canadian amigos after she grabbed it by the fur as it tried to walk away from her mid photo.

A guanaco helps out in the kitchen

A ridiculous wooly animal and a sheep-Brilliant!!!!!

Following El calafate we headed to the Fitzroy national park to a tiny very new town called El Chalten nestled in a valley between some seriously picturesque mountains. Here we hung out at this wicked microbrewery that served mean brownies and did some more amazing hiking

Some more amazing views as we hiked

Although we didn’t want to leave El Chalten it was time to keep moving and head north towards Bariloche the Chocolate capital of Argentina. Bariloche is a Swiss style town built on this stunning lake in the incredibly beautiful lake district. As it was colonised by many Swiss and German immigrants much of the architecture is in the Swiss chalet style and it is full of chocolate shops. Here we spent two days indulging our every chocolate fantasy and trying just about all of the many chocolate shops out. Unfortunately we didn’t take any photos, but if we had they would have been of us gorging ourselves with chocolate stains all around our mouths. We actually managed to put ourselves off chocolate for at least a few days, we ate that much chocolate.

More to come later

-Amelia

Sam is a Lazy Sausage

As Sam is a lazy boy he has asked me to continue on from his last post, even though he is supposed to be doing up to our current location. I believe  he left you all at Puerto Madryn. So we left Puerto Madryn another early start and headed across the Patagonian steppe towards the Chilean border and Torres del Paine National Park free camping along the way. The Patagonian Steppe looked like mid-west America, very flat farm land with the occasional small house. We felt very isolated as there were few towns or road houses and subsequently few options to pee along the way as there were no bushes to hide behind so all us girls would get a lot of honks as we all crouched behind the bus and exposed our bottoms to the oncoming traffic.

by the second day of driving the landscape began to change and hills began to appear and finally these amazing snowcapped mountains appeared as if out of nowhere. We then headed across the Chilean border and into the stunning Torres del Paine National Park. By this point the weather had changed considerably and we were very grateful for the blanket we bought in BA as it was Freezing(quite literally )at night. We set up our tents in the rain and wind and attempted to acclimatize and prepare ourselves for the grueling walk up through the mountains to view the granite towers that give the park it’s name.

Amelia has handed back the reigns to me for the last part of the post even though it is clearly her turn to post. Anyway, in order to make the most of the trek to the Torres, we had to get up early in the morning, read 5:30, to meet our transfer to the start of the trek at 8:00. However, not realising there was a time difference between Chile and Argentina, our tour leader forced us up at 4:30! However the walk more than made up for it; the path took us up a mountain valley above the snow line along a fresh mountain stream and up a steep scree-covered slope to a magnificent azure lake surrounded by sharp towers of granite; the inside of a granite intrusion which had forced up the surrounding mountains 12 million years ago. The trek was definitely hard work on the feet but there was a nice hostel at about the half way mark selling cups of tea which was much appreciated. The hostel was so remote that they would bring in supplies by horse and was situated in a valley with amazing views. We decided we would both like to work there for a month or two.  All in all we walked about 20 kms that day which was quite an effort considering over half of it was up mountain sides. We passed many hikers doing the proper hike ie carrying all their stuff doing either the W walk that takes about 5 days or the longer loop walk that takes about 7 days  and have decided we would like to do the whole thing properly one day in the future as the park is incredibly beautiful with lakes surrounded by mountains covered in  snow and glaciers.

The following day we had another early start to make it to the Ferry to take us to the beginning of our next walk the Frances Valley walk. This walk was supposedly much easier than the previous walk despite being 8 kms longer. Supposedly there were less hills.  This was a lie. The walk was amazing but hard work, it took us through a whole variety of landscapes and vegetation from heathland to forests; we had to scramble over boulders underneath a waterfall scramble up rock faces cross raging rivers on suspension bridges that could only hold two people at a time. We had to keep a cracking pace as we were determined to make it there and back  ( we had to make it back in order to catch the last Ferry across the lake to get back to camp). The hard work payed off  as only five of us made it to the top and the view was incredible and it was snowing( and we were all wearing next to nothing having shed layers rapidly as we worked up a sweat climbing and rapidly had to put the layers back on in order not to die of hypothermia.

Next two days we just enjoyed around the campsite due to the fact that getting the transfers to all the walks cost about $50 Australian each. Instead we enjoyed staying in one place and not putting the tent up and down constantly.  We also managed to suss out the nearest 5 star hotel and enjoyed drinking a 5 hour hot chocolate and scabbing free internet and warmth (as it is very cold in Torres) and enjoying the amazing views in comfort.

Four days later we sadly left Torres heading for Ushuaia. We have been staying in the local rugby club which sports great camping grounds and facilities. Camping has been freezing cold at night until we get warm and then it is bearable. Today we just walked around the southernmost city in the world (I (Sam) had to do it in shorts and a t-shirt as it was laundry day, which gave the locals a good laugh at least.) and tomorrow we will visit the Tierra Del Fuego National Park and see the end of the Pan-American Highway. Hopefully we will update the blog on a more regular basis from now on.

-Samelia-

P.S. The time of posting for this post is approx. 1 week after writing.

Catch up pt. 1

Hello all,

Sorry about the blog neglect. Thought it was time to dust off the computer and actually post something.

After leaving Bonito we travelled to Foz do Iguacu on the border between Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay. Consequently we decided it wouldn’t be a bad idea to pop over to Paraguay, if not to buy cheap electronics, then at leas to get another stamp on our passports. We got neither of those.  In our 5 hours in the country, we only encountered gringo” prices for goods, and we didn’t even stop at the border crossing, let alone get a stamp on our passport, so if anyone asks, WE WERE NEVER THERE! However the major highlight of Foz was the Iguacu Falls. Our visit coincided with the end of the wet season so the falls were not at their strongest, but they were still incredible.

 

Beautiful downtown Paraguay           Crazy Paraguayan manikin

Brazilian side of Iguacu falls

We also visited a bird park next to the Iguacu Falls National Park, which contained all types of brilliantly coloured birds up close, including toucans and, my personal favourite, hummingbirds, which just seemed to hover dead still in the air in front of us. We also got the opportunity to hold a baby boa constrictor and a macaw, which was brilliant.

 

 

The next destination was Puerto Iguaçu, on the Argentinean side of the falls. Amelia went on a boat ride under the falls, and we spent a day in the Argentinean National Park. The views of the falls were not as spectacular on the Argentina… with one exception. On the Argentinean side you could go right up to the top of the biggest waterfall, the devil’s throat, which was an amazing experience, seeing so much water spill so far down.

 

A few free camps from Puerto Iguaçu we arrived in Buenos Aires for the second time, which, after experiencing Rio and other South American cities, was actually much cleaner and safer than our first post suggests. As Amelia put it, “I can’t smell the piss anymore.” We fell in love with the city, and since we had already done most of the tourist activities, we had a great time walking the streets at our own pace, visiting markets in Recoletta, San Telmo and Palermo, eating dinner after 12:00 and going out to local bars at night. My one disappointment was missing the Bocca Juniors play Argentinos at Bocca Stadium due to it selling out. Oh, and we got a false 20 peso note in La Bocca (we think) which we have been trying to get rid of unsuccessfully, but it makes a cool souvenir at least.

An Exhibition of painted bears     Shoe shops everywhere in BA(Australia’s bear was done by                                                        Ken Done and was crap)

After saying our goodbyes to Buenos Aires, we headed southwards to Patagonia and free camped (using our sleeping bags for the first time)on our way to Peninsula Valdez, a national park on the coast of Argentina. The landscape was unbelievably similar to Kangaroo Island it was like being home. The park contained various forms of wildlife, including guanacos (an orange llama relative), rheas (a native emu), foxes, penguins, elephant seals, sea lions and even some orcas chowing down on a sea lion.

The Local Penguins

Baby Sea lions frolicking

We stayed the night at Puerto Madryn, a Welsh-settled town just south  of Peninsula Valdez, where the locals apparently spoke Welsh-Gaelic as well as Spanish. They even had their own rugby club. Our two nights there were pretty uneventful, we just checked out the town, leached internet for emails etc.

We’ll try and fill in the rest in the next couple of posts.

-Samelia-

Long Time No write

Oh my god! we have been so busy and so lacking in internet services that we haven’t had any opportunity to update.

Well, where to begin?

We made it to Rio. When we arrived from yet another overnight bus trip to a dump of a (rotovidario) bus station on the out skirts of Rio we were totally overwhelmed by the city and the complete absence of tourist info but managed to get a rip off taxi to our hotel. We then sat in the hottest lobby ever till we were allowed to check in. Rio at carnival was amazing. We were only there for one day but everybody was in the street in costumes and masks and there were street parades and you would suddenly turn a corner and there would be a huge street party. We only had a couple of hours there so we went to Copacabana and Ipanema and the beach areas. They were INSANE! there were so many people on the beach and so many vendors and cyclists. On our way home we got stuck in a street party and were really late to our introductory tour meeting.

A street parade from our hotel window

Copa-Copacobana

Ipanema

The next day we headed off at dawns crack to a little colonial tourist town called Parati it was beautiful with an estuary coastline full of small tropical islands.  The next day, armed with a huge esky full of cheap Brazilian beer and cider and spirits, we took this amazing schooner out and it took us around the islands we went swimming off the boat and pretended we were super rich.

Parati (it is Enesco listed so you can’t drive cars around certain parts of the town so the tourists take horse and carts

The streets were flooded coz of all the rain and the high tide

Following the beautiful boat day we had two long days of driving and camping next to road houses we were all a bit demoralized as there are often not showers and it had rained heavily the previous two nights and all our stuff was starting to get dirty, wet and musty. The two long drive days took us to an area called The Pantanal which is a large wetalnd(swamp) bigger than France. Here we got to stay on a Ranch (with real cowboys). We slept in hammocks, went horse riding and and went on walks through the swamp. We saw a myriad of wildlife including huge Maquaw parrots and Jabaru, humming birds (so many birds we can’t remember all their names), armadillo, capybara, wild pigs, howler monkeys and of course Cayman, the other group even saw a jaguar footprint . It was all very exiting the only problem was the Mosquitoes which were present in mammoth proportions and drove all the poms crazy. They didn’t seem to bite Sam and I very much so we had a great time laughing as they all went a little crazy getting hot and bothered. After the ranch we headed to an eco lodge on the Miranda river where we went swimming with Piranha and Cayman, Sam went Piranha fishing, and we took a boat ride up the river.

Me bonding with my horse (dressed like a stupid tourist)

One of our fellow tour members holding a baby Cayman

The Eco lodge (yay for beds)

Piranha Fishing

Finally after three eventful days we drove on to Bonito where we are camped now on the Rio Formoso. The town is very touristy, and Sam and I can’t afford to do any of the activities which are things like cave diving and abseiling.  But it is not so bad as our campsite is nearby to some great swimming spots like waterfall plunge pools.  The water is crystal clear and full of fish and there are ropes and branches a plenty to dive in off.

Swimming in the beautiful waterholes

 

Having a great time

 

xoxo

-Samelia-