On to Pucon

I escaped the authorities once again and I'm now back in Chile, Pucon to be exact. After Eric left I realized that this is more or less the first solo traveling I've done in my life if you don't count work and single travel days. I stayed in Bariloche an extra day to try and figure out my next move. This guy from North Carolina wanted to rent a car and drive the 7 lakes - I agreed to join on the condition that he also wanted to hike the volcano. We didn't have immediate luck in funding other passengers to defray costs, but when I sent a facebook feeler to our Chalten hiking buddy he already had a car rented for the next day with two open spots. Count it.
This started the most culturally exhausting two days of my trip. We made friends and cooked dinner with another American, an Aussie and Kiwi. Then I had to meet up with the car group - my German friend living in Spain and two Spaniards (only one joining the car ride) whose English was worse than my Spanish. So i had my first night out speaking almost entirely Spanish. The next day we drove up the 7 lakes trail, but it was cloudy and I didn't take many pictures - pretty, but similar to northern MN with mountains instead of rocky cliffs. We found a cool youth hostel and our Spaniard ran into a Catalonian doing a round-the-world she had met in Ushuaia. Devon and myself booked out bus to Pucon and then we had another night out of dinner and Spanish. Exhausted we went to sleep and got up for our 6am bus across the border. Beautiful sunrise views of Volcano Lanin, although it clouded up by the time the bus stopped for customs and immigration. We got our hostel and booked our guide for the Villarica volcano hike tomorrow - then check my mail to find a friend knows people here. So I'm waiting to hear back from them, but I'll probably go check out the guy's pub tonight an maybe get enough insider info to stick around here a little longer.
If the weather is nice I'll make sure to post tomorrow about the volcano hike. If the weather is looking bad we postpone...

Not a Fisherman

You know the saying - Teach a man to fish and take the fool's money. Or something like that. Joking, although I did look like a fool:
Hey who knew it was going to be 35 degrees at 9am and misty enough on the river to block the sun. But eventually the sun broke through and we had our 65 an sunny day we had planed for. Manny did the best he could with the talent he was given, but Eric and I just couldn't put it all together in time - Eric had on big one on his line for 10 seconds before it got away. I had a couple nibbles which also could easily have been rocks. But regardless the Limay River (which means "clear" in Mapuche) was beautiful. We learned to fly fish - wet and dry flies, wading and floating, in a picturesque Patagonian setting. As it turns out we were fishing during the season where there aren't many fish in thr water, but the Brown Trout that are present are lunkers. So maybe we aren't as bad as we appear. If it weren't so expensive I wouldn't have any reservations about the experience.

Still in Bariloche - Eric punked out to Burnos Aires today on his way to Peru. I checked the weather forecasts and hostel prices in Arg and Chile an made the informed decision to stay here for a couple more days. Tomorrow I'm trying to wrangle up a group to rent a car and see the 7lakes route. Then it's on to Chile for real to climb the pansiest of the three volcanoes I've found unless I can find some more adventurous hiking buddies now that Eric is gone.

More Photos

One of the high points if the Torres. We were barely able to see it's immensity through the clouds from the top of the John Gardner Pass, but we got to hike next to it for hours the next day with perfect weather and were able to walk almost right next to it.


One of the more interesting sections of the Torres. Vertical ladders sections tied together with thin lengths if wire, precariously tied to poorly rooted shrubs on the side if the cliff which "get blown out occasionally by flash floods" according to the guidebook, "use your wits".


Step 1 of hiking the Dientes circuit takes you straight up to the top of Cerro Bandera (the Beagle Channel in the background named after the ship Darwin first sailed through with it's Captain Fitz Roy). Awesome views with Ushuaia visible on the western shoreline, not pictured.


View from the top of Paso de los Dientes, on my day 2 day hike from camp, giving first views of the spongy lowlands of Isla Navarino with foggy views if Cape Horn in the background. Cape Horn is the literal end of the Americas beyond which lies only Antarctica and the roughest seas in the world.

Perito Moreno Glacier

I already wrote a bit about the hike on the glacier. This goes along with the backlog pics, but Internet is starting to get boggy so I didn't want to try to post too much at one time. Here is a view of the group heading out to the glacier:

And of course no glacier hike would be complete without complementary scotch on the thousand-year-old rocks (they fished icebergs over the deck of the boat to chip off and use as ice):

Backlog pics

Finally got a few pictures transferred from my camera although I tripled my time limit just getting 6 pictures so this'll have to do for now. Beside it's my third post in one hour. This is a shot of the Torres del Paine at sunrise. I woke up to the view from my Refugio bed and ran out to take some pics. Wish I had the energy to wake up at 4am to hike up and see it up close...next time: After spending the night in Punta Arenas Billy left for home and I had a double bus ride to El Calafate to meet Eric up. This is a shot I took on my layover in Punta Arenas (my favorite city so far). Small, beautiful, backpacker friendly, the best burger and beer I've had so far. This is the view from the edge of the city over the Last Hope Sound:

Hostel 1004 mini-post

Just thought I'd post the view from this awesome hostel we found (maybe the only help this Lonely Planet guide has actually given me this trip). There is no sign, it's on the 10th floor of an office building. The doorman makes you take a hidden, decrepit elevator if you walk in with your backpack (michillo). The elevator takes about a minute per floor - there was a dog passed out in it when we went up today. You walk out into a hallway with dirty standard door numbers except for a brightly lit sign at the end of the floor, with security cameras, saying 1004.
Awesome kitchen, great amenities and the best views of Bariloche to boot:

Nahuel Huapi Traverse

Eric and I just got off the trail yesterday from I think the consensus toughest hike in our lives. According to my plans this was supposed to be the cake walk hike but a combination of weather, overpacking, and me not reading the description close enough made it otherwise. Although instead of a lazy walk through summer lake country we got a difficult, but rewarding hike continuously up and down mountains with a story to tell.
Day 1 started with a cramped ride up a cable car to the near peak of Bariloche's local ski mountain - Cerro Catedral. We had the pleasure if being sandwiched in with a couple from Washington on their second lunamiel on the same hike. All campsites were next to refugios - we had full camping gear but a lot of people we met were hiking hut to hut with daypacks. The hike was tougher than expected, but well marked and only slightly cold.
The next morning we awoke to frost and decided to get a late start to let the tents dry. The hike was tough. More or less straight up and down a couple mountains, but we made great time an introduced our friends to Pass the Pigs (easily the greatest travel game of all time - packable, a huge hit on the trail, and probably my best pre-trip purchase behind my hiking boots).
Another freezing cold night, I didn't sleep much but we awoke to great weather and word that the Refugio administrator had cleared us to attempt the next section of the hike. There were sections bordering on rock climbing that aren't safely traversed in wet or icy weather, much less with a full pack, and the route is poorly marked so good visibility is key. The hike was brutal gong from valleys to hiking 2000+ meter ridge lines and back again, but we could see for miles including their mammoth Mt. Tronador and Chile's Volcan Osorno. Photo from the peak of Cerro Navidad:
Made camp at a great sheltered site which was key because the wind was gusting and it was getting cold. Only enough energy to make dinner and fall asleep. Woke up at 3:30 am to freezing rain. We had discussed a rest day or half-day if needed to let our legs rest since we had extra food, but upon waking decided it didn't matter how our legs felt - the toughest day was behind us, but this one would take the silver and freezing rain and wind strong enough to blow me over weren't ideal conditions to hike in. We sat inside the tents till lunch to see if we could attempt the first half as there was actually a park site en route. The second half of the day was spen inside of the refugio laughing at the horizontal winds, rain and snow while playing cribbage and trying to freeze slower...even inside we could see out breath. Eventually we actually decided to head to the tents to warm up - at least we had sleeping bags there. I crawled in with about every piece of clothing I had with me. Made a terrible dinner and went to bed hoping the weather would pass and we could finish the hike.
Well sleep is a strong term, it was more like tossing and turning. I think I was more sore from all the laying around than I've been from hiking around this whole time. We woke up to a few inches if snow covering our tents, again straight-line winds and drifts up to my knee. This completely axed our plans and on top of that I was pretty sick from my dinner although I'm not sure what I ate. At the time of writing this I'm just starting to feel better 2 days later. We packed up in the snow and hiked out an alternate route at much lower altitudes and camped at the Swiss Colony. Here is a sight I hope to never see again:

Added photos:
Picture of the sites at Refugio Jakob. High exposure to the wind and too rocky to properly stake the tents - glad we didn't get bad weather here.

Picture of the ice needles we woke up to each morning it was freezing cold, but not snowing. I'm not sure on the physics here, but these needles would grow overnight - pushing the top layer of dirt up with it. Its not a race, but the winners measured up to 2" long. Pretty impressive.

Biking and the end of the Caja

Eric and I went biking around the Chico circuit today. Kinda touristy and overblown, but a cheap, active way to blow a day. It looked like a decent distance on the map even though we knew it was in km, but it still only took 4 hrs with a stop at the Berliner to pick up some bebidas para llevar and another to eat lunch and chill the drinks in the lago Nahuel Huapi. We missed most of the rain and got back just in time to bid farewell to our Israeli friends who introduced us to some food called shakshuka or something like that. I'll have to research it more at J-garden when I get back.


The bigger news of the day was that we finally broke the chains of our white box! In Calafate, on our second day there we decided to buy a couple things and send home some others that we didn't feel were necessary to carry around. Well that day the post office (correo) closed before it's posted hours so we had to bus it up to Chalten. No big deal right? The next day we take it to the Chalten correo only to be told that 6kg is too heavy to send - but they can do it in Calafate. Ugh. So we have to pay to store it at the campsite while we hike, we're forced to come back to the site to pick it up, and have to bus it up Ruta 40 to Bolson. Of course when we get there they tell us it's too big but they can help us out in Bariloche. So we cart it around all over Bolson including the long walk to our campsite out of town. Finally we arrive in Bariloche and are sure our troubles are over. Run by the post but it looks closed for siesta. We return again 2 hr later only to realize that we misread and on Saturdays they close for good at 1. And of course they are closed on Sundays. I'm not even convinced there really is a post office - just an elaborate network of correo fronts to promote job creation. But then finally after putting off hiking till it's gone the box was mailed for an obscene rate today...but I think they could have named their price we were so happy to be rid of it.

Hiking starts again tomorrow - back in the countryside for 5 days.

Bariloche - Part 1

High winds and projected rain delayed our biking today, but morning was sunny down by the lake:

To the left you can see the mountain ridges by where we'll be biking. Their ski mountain is over there somewhere as well. Hiking/fishing would be in the same direction, but further south (left) offscreen.

Going to try to find March Madness, but not holding out much hope (for finding the game down here). Go Blue!

El Bolson

Bolson is a neat not-so-little touristy town living in the shadows 4 hrs south of Bariloche. Bolson gives of the petchuli (sp?) hint of a hippie town although I heard we missed the worst of it by a few weeks. As it was it was a pleasant place to spend a couple days unwinding between hikes. I've never seen the word "artesian" on more business signs in my life. Crafts, breads, jellies, and pleasantly enough beers. We spent the first night in a nice hostel and met a shocking amount of Americans.
The next day we wanted to move to cheaper camping arrangement so we walked 1 km to camp at the largest brewery in town, just in time for St. Patricks day right? Wrong. I won't say they've never heard of the holiday, but we didn't see anyone celebrating and we were literally the only ones at the campsite...and it was kinda dirty. But it still had it's perks and we stayed there 2 nights. We struck out trying to fish - there is surprisingly little tourism infrastructure, but the town was fun and still had great views of the surrounding mountains. We did a short day hike instead.
Packed up this morning and bussed to Bariloche. So far all I know is that the town is huge and there are lots of options. We were hoping to hike up Volcano Lanin, but learned the travel time wouldn't be worth the investment even though the hike would be awesome. Plenty of other options though. Biking, fishing, and hiking in the Nahuel Huapi NP for the next 10 days.

No real pictures from Bolson because we didn't really do much. If we get out biking tomorrow I'll take a pic and sent out a short update. The lakes here are beautiful and remind me a little if northern MN!

El Chalten

Eric and I spent the last week in a city called El Chalten. It is the gateway to the famous Fitz Roy and Cerro Torre spires as well as general access to Los Glaciers NP including access to the southern patagonian ice fields. The city itself is a stark contrast to the Torres - the city is only about 600 ppl and you can see the tips of about most of the peaks from the city...a lot of what we did could be reached by day hikes.
We met some awesome people on the bus ride there and scoured for camping right as the weather started to turn. I had caught a glimpse of Patagonia weather in the Torres, but this was full on. It didn't stop raining for 24 hr and the winds threatened to blow our tents over. On top of that it was pretty cold so we took the day to supply ourselves and headed out the next afternoon. We struck immediately for the furthest point from town. Disgruntled that the campsite was on public property and we had to pay to both camp and day hike we discussed hiking to the pass and on to the next site down the following day. In the morning we learned that day hiking was free for campers. A fortunate turn of events considering we got lost on our hike where we accidentally followed a rescue mission to the mouth of the Marconi glacier instead of to the pass. In half defeat we discussed giving it a second go in the morning when our soon to be German friend Raik stormed in and formed an international alliance to hike to the pass in the morning.
I'm still not sure if this was one of the dumber things I've ever done. The first but was just really steep, but that gave was to melting ice, a glacial river crossing and the finally a 30 minute walk up and around a glacier (without crampons - above a crevasse). Eric and I wouldn't have attempted alone, but the snow was in fact perfect and Raik had a bit more experience with such things and said it was safe. We lived to type the tale and the views were stupendous. The clouds around Fitz Roy opened up a half hour after we got there.
We moved sites the next day and the the following morning hiked up to Laguna de Los Tres which us where this pic is from. Once again perfect timing. We hiked out the same day and booked our tickets to Bolson for the following morning up the infamous ruta 40. Packing our frost covered tents and 24 hrs of bus riding later we are checked into a hostel and ready to sample any of the 10s of microbreweries we've seen here already. Oh and ruta 40 is a pain although not too bad - although the layover town of Perito Moreno (no relation to the glacier) is a rundown town not worth visiting.

The view from Laguna Los Tres. I tried to fit everything that was going on in 1 pic. You can see both lakes, Fitz Roy in the background and the glacier streaming down on both sides of some no-name hill:



Added pics:
Cerro Torre from Paso Cuadrato. The othe great peak of the region. The mountaineer we met on the pass said he was here for a month a few years back and it didn't come out of the cloud once...more finicky even than Fitz Roy.

Fitz Roy from above Laguna de Los Tres...similar to the other picture but better focus.

Picture of 2 mountaineers following our footpath across the glacier up to Paso Cuadrato.

Chile to Argentina

I had a computer a few days ago and was in the process of transferring pictures when the power went out. It is all a conspiracy to deter over-tourism. The weather has been amazing. I haven't seen rain since the Torres. Even the famed Dientes near Tierra del Fuego was nice if only just a tad on the side of it's country's namesake. I made sure to take a pic on our first day so I had something to post:

After hiking the first portion and heading back we got to unwind in town, then another night in Punta Arenas. Then sadly Billy had to leave - big ups for joining when you could Bill! I go lucky and caught both legs of the bus ride to Calafate by way of Puerto Natales. A full day of travel but I seamlessly met up with Witham already owning the town. Argentina is so different even though i am only a 4 hr bus ride from where i was in Puerto Natales - the accent, the rediculous degree of mate drinking (which i love by the way). We spent one day doing laundry and taking in the city and booked out glacier hike. Touristy yes, but less so than envisioned. The one company that has a monopoly actually ran a longer excursion than we knew of
And it took things to another level. Instead of hiking 30 min up the side of te glacier we got to take a 3+ hour trip to the middle, take lunch on the glacier, and view up close some caves and sink holes. Amazing experience and loved finally getting to use crampons. It cost about as much as my last two weeks combined, but I was expecting about as much. Calafate is expensive, but we're on our way to El Chalten in 4 hrs to hike Fitz Roy and Cerro Torre for a week, or less if the weather cooperates.

About to go rogue again - hope to post from Chalten, but it's small. Bariloche at the latest. Hasta luego!