Dave & Meredith’s Travel Blog

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?

Dave is an incredibly talented photographer. But how about some of these shots that *I* took:

Dave Doing What He Does

Guanaco Doing What It Does

Taking It All In

A Fox Who Thought I Had Food

The downside is that we’re supposed to be in Quito, Ecuador by now but due to some missed connections, we’re in a hotel in Lima, Peru tonight and will get to Quito tomorrow mid-day. The upside is that we finally have a fast Internet connection again so I’ve posted a few galleries of pic’s so far. Just some quick edits for now, nothing fancy in terms of image enhancement. Here’s a link to pictures from the first portion of the trip on Peninsula Valdes. Then try here for pictures from El Chalten. Onward to pictures from El Calafate. Finally, there are a few pictures from Torres del Paine in Chile. Hope you enjoy them!

We’ve also updated a few of the past posts below with a few pictures.

We´re getting ready to go to the airport to travel to the Galapagos. Last night we had our farewell dinner with our tour group.

Last Group Picture

We had dinner in a private room at our hotel in El Calafate. When we arrived, we saw a slideshow of pictures that one of our tour leaders, Melissa, took on the trip. They were great photos of both landscapes and people.

After a tasty dinner and some of that fabulous Argentine red wine, our tour leaders Irene and Melissa said some really nice things about all of us and the trip, Dave showed some of the pictures he has taken, and I sang “I´ll Be Seeing You”, which I thought was an appropriate goodbye song.

We had an amazing time in Patagonia, and we made many new friends. Dave and I have met people on every trip we´ve been on. Usually, we find one or two that we bond with and keep in touch with afterward. This trip to Patagonia is different - we plan to keep in touch with everyone we met. Such a warm, friendly, interesting group of people. And they have our blog address now, so, I´ll officially welcome Irene, Melissa, Alex, Cathy, Rainer, Joy, David, Laurie, Jim and Donna to our blog.

In our last episode, we were in El Calafate, about to leave to cross the Chilean border and enter Torres del Paine National Park. It was a long day of travel but it was sunny and the views were outstanding which made it pretty pleasant. When you enter the high plains near the border, the winds accelerate to an incredible level. It was amazing. We got out to take the cliche picture of me near the “Welcome to Chile” sign and the second I stepped off the bus, my hat flew off and I spent the next minute or two chasing it down the road. Every time I thought I had it, I’d reach out for it and it would blow away. Like a cartoon. The rest of the group had a good laugh.

The “Paine” in Torres del Paine was a local native word for blue so the name means “The Blue Towers”. Although the park is very large and contains many lakes, glaciers, and other mountains, the centerpiece is a set of spires made mostly of granite but, due to a quirk of formation, each has a band of darker, sedimentary rock at the top (the “blue”). We stayed at a ranch, did several hikes while there, and had a great drive around the park. It was incredibly hot but we took a hike out to a lunch spot one day that overlooked a turquoise lake with mountains behind it. Outstanding views! The guides said that just a couple of weeks before, the winds were so strong (which apparently is typical) that that group could not make it that far down the trail.

I was able to spend an early morning heading out before sunrise to a decent spot to photograph the alpenglow on the towers. The shots came out very well.

We fly out of El Calafate in a few hours to travel to Quito (via Lima).Since we’ll have no Internet on the boat in the Galapagos, we’ll try to post one last time before leaving Quito. Ciao.

Today we took a boat ride to view several glaciers and icebergs. When we got to the boat at the dock, our guide confidently led us past rows and rows of seats already teeming with eager tourists laden with cameras, binoculars and extra fleece. I was starting to get a little worried that all the seats were taken, when our guide opened a door at the front of the boat labeled, “The Captain’s Club”.

Enter All Ye Who Have a VIP Badge

It seems we had arrived. Literally, at least to our seats. One of the nice things about going on a tour is that you don’t have an itemized list of the cost of each activity. If we were travelling on our own, we might have said, “VIP section? We’re not worth all that fuss. We don’t need to pay extra. Let’s just go in the regular section.” However, it was pretty sweet.

The best perk of living the high life on our all-day navigation around Lago Argentino and its surrounding glaciers was the ability to see everything. In The Captain’s Club (”TCC” from now on), we had two private decks from which we could view glaciers and icebergs for the 16 privileged people in the VIP section (Dave got some great pictures). We could also see the people who were not VIPs (commonly referred to by those in TCC as “the masses” or “steerage”) on their viewing deck below.

View from TCC down onto “the masses”

As you can see, there’s not nearly enough room on these lower decks for the 150 people on the catamaran that were in steerage. I think they actually had to take turns in order to take pictures. At one point in the trip, I felt like going out on to the TCC viewing deck and singing “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina” to the people below.

One other perk about being in TCC was the fact that we were able to go down to the bar and get soda, coffee, tea and water for free, instead of paying (we all had badges, properly identifying us as members of TCC). However, I know some of us were quite afraid of going out amongst the masses in order to obtain our liquid refreshment - you never know who might get jealous of our higher stature and iceberg viewing position. So, it was a very good thing that we found out that we could also order drinks from an attendant in TCC named Daphne. Whew!

Half-way through the trip, one of the crew members was able to pull up a small chunk of ice from the pristine water. We all got a piece in a glass, over which Daphne poured some Scotch (don’t worry Dad - it was a blend, not a single malt, so the ice didn’t ruin it!). It was quite tasty.

Dave and Other TCC Members Living the High Life

Unfortunately, like all good things, this excursion came to an end. But it was fun while it lasted, and we got some great pictures.

We’ve had a great time in the Argentinian side of Patagonia the last few days. After spending last weekend on Peninsula Valdes seeing wildlife, we flew south to El Calafate which is the launching point for glacier viewing and rock climbing. The word Calafate is the Spanish word for caulk. When early explorers needed to repair their ships, they needed a resin to do so and, because there were no native trees, they finally found it in the berries of a local bush. They named the bush Calafate and, since there was a lot of that bush in this area, they called the town the same name.

We didn’t linger in El Calafate - we came back to it a few days later. Instead, we immediately drove a couple hours to a town named El Chalten which is small and quaint (it reminds me of Homer, Alaska) and basically has three types of businesses: hotels, restaurants, and stores that sell climbing gear. It seems to be populated mainly by young, outdoorsy types (read: bohemian climbing bums). It’s the town where almost everyone who intends to climb the Fitz Roy Massif or Cerro Torre launches their effort.

Although this trip is not a photo-centric one, I did get some quality photography in Tuesday morning. I got up before sunrise so that I could catch the morning alpenglow on the Fitz Roy Massif. After that, we went on a 10-mile hike via the Fitz Roy basecamp. We passed many scenic views of amazing mountains and glaciers around us. It was a long haul for some in the group and after it, many of us enjoyed a cold Quilmes, the local beer. I thought I found a little slice of heaven when I soaked my feet in the hot shower but then I found out that one of the other guys on the trip put a chair in his bathroom and soaked his feet in the bidet!

Picture of the Fitz Roy Massif at Sunrise

The next day we took a boat across Lago Viedma to the Viedma Glacier for a glacier hike. We hiked to the base of the glacier and strapped on some crampons and spent the next few hours exploring peaks and ice caves. The lower ice that has been compressed under the weight of the glacier is an amazingly deep and intense blue. I hope my pictures do it justice. When we were at the highest point of our hike, our guides surprised us by chipping some ice out of the side of a wall and handing out cups filled with the ice and some Bailey’s. The best Bailey’s I’ve had in a while.

Pictures from our Glacier Hike

Yesterday, we drove back to El Calafate in the afternoon and today we spent the entire day on a boat in Lago Argentino looking at larger glaciers - the Spegazzini, the Upsala, and the Onelli. It was incredible to be on a boat floating past vast icebergs that have calved off of the glaciers. Most had melted into smooth forms, some round, some angular, some blue, and some clear.

Pictures from our Glacier Cruise

Tomorrow is a travel day. We’re driving all day across the Chilean border to Torres del Paine. We’ll spend three nights there, hiking and exploring the mountains. Talk to you soon!

Oh my God I am so sore.  Taking the day off from hiking today.

Dave & Meredith with Crampons              Gene Simmons with Spikey Boots

We hiked on a glacier today! I don´t think I stopped smiling the whole time I was on the glacier (2 - 3 hours). It was amazing and I wasn´t really that sore from doing the all-day hike yesterday.

Dave & Meredith in an Ice Cave

Today we did an all-day hike around the base of Mount Fitz Roy. It was beautiful. I haven’t done an all-day hike in a few years. It was challenging and really rewarding. Feeling really good about getting back into the gym for the last couple months to help prepare!

Scenes from our All-day Hike