Mar 06 2008

Top 8 Unexpected Things In Patagonia

Published by at 5:15 pm under Patagonia,South America

Sure this is late. Sure we left Patagonia a while ago. So I found these notes lying around 2 weeks later. You know you’ll still enjoy them. Here’s a short list of the unexpected aspects of the Patagonia portion of this trip:

  1. The ice cream is excellent in Argentina (not so much Chile). It’s very rich and creamy with lots of strong flavors.
  2. Seeing penguins and armadillos in the same place.
  3. Wild cows near Lago Onelli. I prefer to call them feral cows. Sounds more dangerous and therefore we look more adventurous if we say we hiked near them.
  4. It stays light out until 10:30pm.
  5. The pilot’s strike that affected Aerolineas Argentina (and therefore us) when we arrived.
  6. Aside from ice cream in Argentina, the flavors for sweet things like snacks or desserts (chocolate, caramel, etc.) are very weak. Sometimes I only knew something was caramel from the label. We had a chocolate cake in El Chalten that had no chocolate flavor and we all agreed it had a slight taste of caraway seeds. Weird.
  7. The great weather. Patagonia is known for unpredictable weather and for being extremely windy. It has been rainy or overcast only a little. It’s mainly sunny with a few clouds. We only experienced high winds during the day when crossing the high plains of the border between Argentina and Chile. Though there was that one night in El Chalten where we thought the winds were going to blow the hotel down.
  8. Almost every single meal had some form of ham & cheese. We must have eaten a whole pig while we were there. The thing is, we see lots of cows, sheep, etc. when we drive around. Where do all the pigs we keep eating come from?

One response so far

One Response to “Top 8 Unexpected Things In Patagonia”

  1. Russ Mendola says:
    March 22, 2008 at 11:29 am

    Nancy remembers the Argentinian beef from her International Fellowship student days. She also remembers the caraway seeded chocolate, but no recollection of the ice cream. She says….Darn! Aside (I never met anyone who ate as much ice cream as her in her college days). She believed in the ice cream diet and it worked for her. Must be what drew me to her.