Brett's Southern Crossing

El Calafate is a popular destination in Argentina, but seems to be entirely a tourist town, with expensive hotels and restaurants and not much to do.  The main draw of the area is the famous Perito Moreno Glacier in the Los Glaciares National Park.  For me, it seemed like this was just about the only thing to do in the area.  There were a few tours to other less accesible glaciers as well.

Visiting the glacier involves taking busses with about a thousand other tourists to the park, where they have built a series of boardwalks to give good views.  There’s also an optional boat you can take to approach the face of the glacier more closely.  For a bit more money you can trek on the glacier with crapons.

It’s definitely a spectacular view of a glacier, and I was told that depending on whether it is cloudy or sunny the glacier appears a totally different color.  There wasn’t a cloud in the sky when I went (which is unusual) and the glacier was bright white.  But I’ve seen a lot of photos of this glacier where it appears a really rich shade of blue, and apparently this is how it looks on an overcast day when the sun is more diffused.

I think it’s worth visiting, but given the distance from other places in Argentina I’d recommend combining it with a trip to El Chaltan, a town a few hours away on the bus that has a lot of really excellent hiking available.  I actually skipped El Chalten, which is almost sacrilegious according to a lot of people I spoke with.  But having just finished “the W” trek I was in the mood for a break from hiking and decided to move on directly to Bariloche.

Check out more pictures of this amazing glacier:

Ushuaia is the most touristy place I’ve been so far.  It attracts travelers by land and air from Chile and Argentina, and has a port for cruise ships to dock.  People come to see the wildlife in the area, to say they’ve visited the world’s southernmost city, and to board ships headed for Antarctica.

I enjoyed it here, but I don’t think I could rate it as a must-visit place for a trip to Patagonia.  The most popular activity seems to be a half day boat trip in the Beagle Channel.  The channel is named after the famous boat that Charles Darwin was on when exploring this area.  The islands in the channel have a variety of birds and sea lions to view, and they stop on one island to show shell mounds built by an indigenous people called the Yaghan.  These days, there’s just one aging Yaghan woman left.  The view of the wildlife was decent, though Puerto Madryn will be hard for any place to beat.

Also nearby is the Parque Nacional Tierra del Fuego, which has some very nice scenery and a bunch of short trails to hike through.  I bought a shuttle ticket and spent a day in the park.  First I hiked along a nice lake with mountain views to the border with Chile, known as Hito XXIV (the name of the marker on the border).  Then I walked down the road to several short trails through a forest, a peat bog (with interpretative signs), and an area that has beaver colonies.  One solid day was enough for this park, although there were enough trails that I could have gone back for one more day.

Ushuaia is fairly expensive, with lots of parrillas (argentine barbeque restaurants) for tourists, although many of them offer tenedor libre (all you can eat, literally translated as “free fork”) for $60-70 pesos (about $15-18 USD) not including drinks.  The museums here are the most expensive I’ve seen anywhere.  The archaeology museum cost $50 pesos, leading a French guy staying in my hostel to rant “this is more expensive than the Louvre!!”  It’s apparently a nicely designed museum, but I thought the French guy had a pretty good point.

After the minor fiasco of Viedma, my next stop was Puerto Madryn.  This town is located a convenient distance from two major tourist attractions: Península Valdéz and Punta Tombo.  Both of these are day trips, and seemed fairly priced at $150 pesos (about $30 USD) for a 12 hour tour with a bilingual guide.  Although located in a fairly desolate looking part of Patagonia, these reserves are overflowing with wildlife.  In the week I spent here I saw lots of sea birds, dusky dolphins, southern sea lions, southern elephant seals, magellenic penguins, armadillos, llamas, and foxes.

A lucky visitor to Punta Tombo might see an Orca feeding on sea lions.  There were no attacks when I visited, but the videos show the Orcas beaching themselves onto the shored to get at the sea lions before somehow flopping back into the gulf…unfortunately the entire Orca population is only a few dozen individuals, so seeing them at meal time is uncommon.

The other major attraction here is the Southern Right Whale.  These whales come to the area to breed later in the year and there are so many that you can watch them right from shore if you don’t want to take a tour.

The most unique tour was a morning visit to snorkel with a colony of sea lions just a 10 minute boat ride from the beach near my hostel.  The sea lions will come out from the beach to swim with you, and it was a great experience.  They come close enough that I was able to reach out and touch them several times.  One sea lion came right in front of my mask and started blowing bubbles – I don’t know if it was just exhaling a bit, but some people say they’re imitating SCUBA divers that come to the area.  The tour operators claim this is the only place in the world where the sea lions will swim with snorkelers, and it’s definitely something I would recommend to anyone that visits.  The cost was a bit pricey, at $500 pesos ($125 USD)

While I was here I decided to also do some SCUBA diving.  It has been several years since my last dive and I wanted to refresh my skills a bit, so I signed up for a PADI Advanced Open Water certification class.  This is basically just 5 dives from different categories.  I did wreck diving, deep diving, underwater navigation, and underwater naturalism.  Puerto Madryn has dozens of dive shops lining the beach, which seems a bit strange since the diving is really not very good.  The water is cold (which means a 10mm wetsuit and lots of weights), the visibility is poor, and there isn’t much to see.  Cold water means no coral and few fish.  I was interested mainly in the refresher, but I don’t see why so many shops can stay in business.

Finally, I have to recommend the hostel I stayed in, Hi Patagonia (not associated with Hostelling International, by the way).  It’s a residencial house in a convenient area, with great staff, nice rooms, and cozy down comforters.  One of the best hostel’s I’ve stayed in.  It is midsize, probably housing about 30 people when full.  But this area doesn’t have the mega hostels some cities can support.

The Rio Negro divides Buenos Aires province from Rio Negro province, and twin cities on either side of the river mark the farthest south and farthest north cities of the respective provinces.  Viedma is the capital of the province, and while the cities barely rates a mention in my Lonely Planet I decided to stop in briefly since sometimes these out of the way places can turn out to be amazing.  It also worked out as a convenient place to rest since it is a 12 hour night-bus ride from Buenos Aires (city).

I began to get sick with some kind of stomach bug just before leaving, and I ended up spending the entire first day locked in my room.  The second day I felt a little better and decided to try exploring.  The guidebook seems much more positive about Carmen de Patagones, so I began by taking a ferry across the river (in this case a small boat with a capacity of around 8 for $1.50 ARS.  Carmen de Patagones seemed entirely dead, without even a cafe open.  There were quite a few people setting up sound stages and shopping stalls for some kind of festival scheduled for the weekend.  Although the architecture is kind of interesting, with plenty of old spanish-era buildings, they’re low and a bit run down which to me didn’t make them as attractive as the Lonely Planet author seemed to find them.

Viedma looked like a surprisingly nice place to live, and had a few museums.  The tourist office  was filled with enthusiastic people and had lots of nice brochures and maps available.  But the museums were only open from 10-12 and 6-8, and the timing never worked for me to see them.  Welcome to South America…siestas are very long!

The only other thing to do in Viedma is to visit El Condor, the small beach town 30km down the river at the mouth with the gulf.  Since it is out of season the town was basically deserted, and the tourist office had closed early.  The main attraction here is that the largest colony of parrots in the world live in the cliffs near the beach.  They’re called Burrowing Parrots.  Since the tourist office was closed I wasn’t sure exactly where the cliffs were and had to explore myself.  Two stray dogs near the office began to follow me, and spent the the next two hours walking behind me (just bored I suppose).

Eventually I found the cliffs and sure enough, packs of parrots were flying around well above me.  It was dusk so I only was able to see their silhouettes.  Eventually I did see a parrot up close when my canine friends found a dead one in the bushes…they promptly tore it to shreds and ate it wings, feathers, and all.  Keep it classy guys…

This might all sound a bit depressing.  Many days are a bust, but these days weren’t altogether unpleasant, just a bit unproductive.  From here I’m heading to Puerto Madryn which should have lots of wildlife and lots of activity.  As for Viedma, Carmen, and El Condor, my recommendation would be to only come in January and only if you’ve got plenty of time.  January would have the advantages of warmer weather, the peak of the season for fledgling parrots, and it would be vacation season in Argentine so the beach town of El Condor would be active.

On my last day of class last month I was lucky enough to witness a tradition I had heard of for new University graduates (my classes are run through a well known University here).  Most of the Argentine students are off in January and February, but a few were still working and apparently had finished their final exams that Friday afternoon.

In Argentina it’s customary to “celebrate” completion of final exams by a friend or relative by mercilessly pelting them with food.  I only saw the end of this ritual, and my video isn’t very good.  It’s a shame, I can imagine this would be great to watch start to finish!  In the brief time I was there I saw them hit with raw eggs, flour, a jar of honey, shaving foam, feathers, and who knows what else:

And a few closeup photos for detail:

One of the world’s great bookstores is in downtown Buenos Aires.  There are half a dozen El Ateneo locations in the city, but the most well-known is the one at the intersection of Avenida Sante Fe and Avenida Cabildo.  The owners bought a historic theater called the Grand Splendid, restored it, and turned it into the largest bookstore in the city.

You can read books in cushy chair in the opera boxes and visit the cafe located behind the curtain on the stage.  The ceiling is somewhat domed and painted by an Italian artist.  To be perfectly honest, although it’s probably the largest bookstore in the city they could do better…the first two floors are books, the third floor is CDs and DVDs and the fourth floor is empty and closed.  Lets fill this place to the top with books, ok?

If you like the look of this place, I found an article about some other amazing bookstores.  I only wish I had time this summer to see the one in Maastricht!

In the last week we’ve had a lot of rain in Buenos Aires.  I enjoy watching from my balcony for some reason when it’s really pouring.  There aren’t storm drains here, instead the streets have a notch cut in them about a foot from the curb.  The notch is about 3 inches wide and deep and allows small amounts of water to be carried away.  I’m not sure where it eventually drains…there must be storm drains somewhere.

A few days ago it was coming down hard, and the streets were totally flooded.  It’s fun to watch the rivers of water and a few poor people dashing along trying to get out of the rain.  Someone who lives just a couple of blocks from meet took this video:

A collectivo (bus) like you see in the video tried to detour down my street, but was too large to make a turn from Huergo onto Avenida Chenaut.  He ended up wedged in so that parked cars were pinning him in front, on the side and in back.  That provided a half hour of entertainment as they tried to find a way to direct him back out!

Here’s a map showing where I live and where the video was shot.  If you’re interested, you can zoom out 5-6 levels to see where my neighborhood is in Buenos Aires.  Downtown is the eastern part of the city near the water.

View Larger Map

I thought I’d share a few interesting things I learned about Argentina since I’ve been here:

• The president of Argentina, Cristina F’ernandez Kirchner, thinks eating Pork can be better than taking Viagra, saying that after a meal of pork “things went very well that weekend, so it could well be true.”

• The national sport of Argentina is Pato…described as a combination between polo and basketball.  The game is played on horseback and the object is to put the ball (pato) through a metal hoop at the opposing side of the field.  However originally the game was played using a live duck instead of a ball!  Pato is the spanish word for duck.  In the early days it was a dangerous sport due to the likelihood of a knife fight breaking out.  I’m looking forward to seeing a match once the season starts later this year!

• The Jorge Newbery Airport, Buenos Aires’s airport for domestic flights, is built on land that was reclaimed from the Río de la Plata.  The river was filled with rubble from the wreckage of London after bombing during WWII (it was carried as ballast in freighters).

• Argentina is the 5th largest wine producer in the world, but consumes 90% of its production domestically.  The average Argentine drinks 12 gallons of wine per year!  The beer selection here is really small, so it makes sense to take advantage of so many great choices of wine.

• Up to 60% of Argentine’s are at least partially of Italian descent, though as you would expect Spanish ancestry is most common.

I planned to learn a lot more about Buenos Aires and Argentina before I left, but moving always takes way more time than you expect.  So I’m going there knowing embarrassingly little about the history, culture, and political situation.

But here’s what I do know, and am looking forward to:

• A multicultural and somewhat European society.  Buenos Aires has had tons of immigration from Spain, Italy, the UK, and even eastern Europe.
• Lots of good food and wine.  Argentina is known for its beef and asado (barbeque), for its pizza and pasta (I’ve read 60% of Argentines are part italian), and for producing excellent wine.
• An active and sporty society.  Futbol, rugby, polo, and other sports are popular.  The Tigre river on the north side of the city has lots of rowing clubs too, so I’d like to continue to row from time to time.
• Natural beauty…the ocean on the east coast, the Andes to the west, Patagonia and Antarctic regions in the south, the famous Iguazu Falls at the northern border, the pampas (plains) where cattle and wine are produced, and who kn0ws what else!
• Buenos Aires is known as a party town…with dinner not eaten till 9-10pm and lasting past midnight, plus music and dancing through the night.  How do these people get to work??