Southbound

We have just arrived in Patagonia...well actually is has been a few days now but it is pretty unbelievable to be in this place that we have constantly been dubbing as the southernmost destination of this crazy trip! In Chile, we spent a couple of days in Valdivia, a beautiful city in the Lakes District but which is actually surrounded by 2 rivers that eventually arrive at the pacific ocean. I wandered around the town and talked with several young people who are students in the city during the school year and who work in tourism during the summer months. It was nice to speak some legitimate Chilean spanish and use the traditional kiss on the cheek Chilean greeting! When I arrived at the river the first thing I saw were crew boats practicing and I got very excited realizing that my sport existed so far south! Brad and I also made our way out of town to the Kuntsmann brewery, a very popular microbrew throughout Chile. We had the sampler which consisted of a blonde, a lager, a red, a honey and a wheat beer as well as several others of the same designation except they were not filtered. We were appreciative of different flavors but we grew quite nostalgic for the varitey of brews available in Portland.
After Valdivia, we spent a night in Osorno and then crossed the border into Argentina on a bus that broke down twice. The first time we were able to contiune our journey and the second time required a rescue bus to take us stranded passengers into Bariloche. We made the somewhat unwise decision to leave our backpacks on the stranded bus so that we could make it to Bariloche but the we had to wait one hour for our backpacks to arrive, which they thankfully did. When we were reunited with our backpacks we hopped on a micro headed toward the center of town but only minutes later I discovered that our tentpoles were missing. Usually they are secured into place by the ties in my backpack´s side pockets but they were no longer there. We immediately exited the bus and sprinted back to the bus station where we were reunited with the poles at the lost and found office. It was a close call considering how many nights of camping we have ahead of us in Patagonia!
I spent one night in trendy Bariloche where many rich Argentine tourists were spending their vacations and then I headed 2 hours south to El Bolson where Brad had gone the night before and where I was joyously reunited with our tent. Since it is high season in Argentina, there were almost no vacant dorm beds and I wandered around Bariloche until I found a place to bed down for the night. It is much easier to find a place to sleep when you have your own tent. El Bolson is an amazing little hippy town surrounded by rocky rideglines and green forests. When I exited the bus on Saturday I was immediately confronted by a fair full of dreadlocked hippies selling amazing crafts, artisan foods and microbrews. I was completely contented to spend several days there enjoying the bounty of delicious foods and creativity as well as a hike or two into the beautiful green wilderness littered with mountain climbin refuges.
From El Bolson Brad and I caught a southbound bus for the tiny town of El Chalten, located directly in the middle of Parque Nacional Los Glaciares. It was amazing that to arrive in that northern area of Patagonia even though it still took 30 hours. We left El Bolson on Wednesday night and didn´t arrive in El Chalten until Friday morning and we didn´t get any movies or food along the way.
El Chalten at 7am is a little bit of a disapointment but we had taken some benedryl and we had slept very well so we felt very revived when we stepped of the bus to brisk winds that made us immediately want to change into every layer of clothing we posessed. We pitched our tent and then went to talk with the national park ranger who recommended a trip into the park immediately because of a substantially good weather window. So we repacked our tent and headed off into Parque Naional Los Glaciares. But first we ran into our NW buddies Molly and Ryan who were camped at our campsite and we ended up heading into the park to see the star attraction Cerro Fitz Roy. It was a great hiking day and we saw some amazing blue glacial lakes at the base of Fitz Roy and all of the amazingly pointy peaks that surround it. There were some clouds that covered the summit but by the following morning they were all gone and we had an unbelievable view of Fitz Roy and the surrounding peaks. We did more hiking that lead us to a glacier and a lake and then were headed to the other side of the park where we had a fairytale view of Cerro Torre, the snowy spire of rock that shoots up straight from a glacier that feeds Laguna Torre at it´s base. It was an amazing couple of days and we felt extremely lucky to be able to view so many amazing sights without a breath of wind or a hint of rain.
On the third day we hiked back into El Chalten to the comfort of a delicious pizza, a microbrew beer and many clouds that gathered until this morning when we hopped on a bus to the next town farther south, El Calafate. We are currently in this town waiting to catch a tour in to see the giant star of the Patagonian show el Perito Moreno glacier. Maybe we will go tomorrow. It is hard to believe that we have reached so far south after so many months of anticipation!
Hope everything is well!
Love,
Anika