Go West

Do you want to know how you get VIP treatment in Argentina? Well, easy... book LAN Chile Airways.

Yesterday, Kerstin and I went to Calafate airport from where we were supposed to fly to Buenos Aires. After two hours waiting we found out that our flight was cancelled since a bird in Ushuaia has hit the turbines. LAN only has 5 planes in Argentina so it was soon clear that this is going to take time.

After 2 more hours we were handed out vouchers to a hotel including "food". This sounds pretty straight forward but you have to remember this is Argentina and not well organised and structured as in Switzerland. I was happy for every single hour of Spanish lesson at university otherwise I think we would still be sitting at the airport.
The airline was not sure if they could manage a flight during the night, so when I asked if we would have to stay and wait at the hotel for more information, the said "yes of course and you have to eat". I should have gotten suspicious by then...

They spread all the passengers over the hotels in El Calafate and Kerstin and I ended up in one of the best hotels in town!!! We in our dirty and smelling trekking clothes, hikking boots and backpacks in the 4 star hotel with a "welcome" cocktail to start with. Not bad at all. We did not have much time to find out all the features in our fancy hotel room as the phone rang. They "ordered" us to have lunch immediately (it was already 15.00). Ok, we and the other 5 guests of this hotel were driven by bus to the restaurant (5 minutes walking distance) were the rest of the stranded people were already munching on their lunch. Again, one of the fanciest restaurants in town. And we got a 600gr Steak including starter and dessert (helado...).

By 8 p.m. we were sure that there would not be any flight that night. Since included in this voucher we then had to have pre-ordered dinner in the hotels 4 star restaurant and guess what... Steak again, only about 500gr this time.
Later that evening we got a message that we would be picked up today 11.30 a.m. but we will not go directly to the airport. Of course the average argentinian traveller can not fly without lunch. So, we will be picked up and driven to the restaurant again! Probably we skip the steak this time and go for a walk instead.
Our flight is only at 17.00 and lunch is planned between 11.30 and 14.30, no thanks! Our meat consumption has reached the yearly average after these hours.
If everything goes well this time, we should be in Buenos Aires tonight around 20.00.

We have arrived in a small place called El Chalten. It has around 600 inhabitants and 20'ooo visitors during high season, lying at 400 m above sea level (but feels like in the alpes). The main attraction apart from the lamas and guanacos standing on the main street, is the 3000 m high Fitz Roy massive for climbing, hiking and mounta¡neering activity. It is spring time now in Patagonia, meaning the warmest days can be around 10 degrees but due to the constant wind it does not feel at all like this.

The road to El Chalten is pretty spectacular as you can see from the picture. From El Calafate it takes around 4 hours to get here, half of the road unpaved tough.
The town is pretty sleepy, only a small supermercado available, some locutorios to do your phone calls and of course the usual number of hostels.

The past days I catched a cold in El Calafate. There were so many people sick in the hostel and sleeping in dormitories does not exactly help to prevent catching bacteria. We also found out about some of the usual Patagonian problems. El Calafate has some water supply problems, so it happened that we were cut from water during our stay. Of course living in the swedish forrest you get used to these things, but when we arrived in El Chalten electricity was cut for a couple of hours. We were really looking forward to our warm and clean double room (luxury for a backpacker!!!).
Shopping food is a challenge here as well. Basically you can buy what the truck delivers that day and this can be very, very different from day to day. Kerstin manages quite well on her own now in spanish (no one speaks english in the small shops here) but it took her yesterday 1/2 hour in the panaderia to make the people understand that we want our empanadas warmed. At the end, half of the village was involved in trying to translate from english to spanish.

The last two days Kerstin and I did only smaller tours to the mountains for 4 - 6 hours. Today she went on the "supertrekking" tour, approximately 12 hours, hiking, crossing glacier and ice climbing, leaving me to cook dinner and to recover from my cold.

The youth hostel here in El Chalten is a funny mixture between mountain hut, restaurant and hostel. Everyone meets here and exchanges tales about possible sightings of pumas ("you are lucky if you meet one"), the glaciers and the weather forecast. By 9 o'clock all those superactive people go to bed and the town is dead.

We will fly back to Buenos Aires on Tuesday, back to the warmer weather, meeting our new friends, the noise and the pollution...

Hasta luego
Tanja

We have now been three days in El Calafate a small town in the middle of nowhere in Patagonia, between Pampa, sheep and wild cows. I have exchanged the surf shorts and flip flops with thermal underwear and ski socks as it is only a couple of degrees warm here. The air is cristal clear and very dry, a big change from Kihei and Buenos Aires.

Kerstin and I visited the famous Perito Moreno glacier yesterday and today we went to see the Uppsala glacier and on a boat trip on the huge Lago Argentino. The lake is so big and blue, our lago Moeckeln is just a little brown water hole compared to this one down here in Patagonia. The landscape is just breathtaking there are actually big ice junks swimming in the lake as if you are down in the Antarctica region, well we are close.
Unfortunately, I can not provide you with any pictures as the general internet speed connection in Calafate town (when working at all) is only 256KB. Impossible to upload pictures without waiting until your steak is ready, but if you check for the Perito Moreno glacier on google, you will find the details. Or wait until we are back with the fantastic photos.

Tomorrow we will take the bus to El Chalten, a five hours bus ride to an even smaller town, just at the entrance of the national park where you can find the Fitz Roy mountain area. We just heard that in this town there is no cash machine or exchang office, so we are pretty curious to find out what else we will miss there. For emergencies, we still have some Knorr soups with us.
Depending on the weather we will be hiking for the next three days in the Fitz Roy area. Probably Kersting will do some hikes on the glacier, while I have to get some rest.

Now we will go back to our youth hostel and cook some delicious pasta including a bottle of wine. Salut!

Take care!
Tanja

I have had some very busy days here in Buenos Aires since I arrived last monday. The weather is quite ok, the Argentinian newspapers say it is 25C but it feels more like 15. Most of the time it is sunny.

Not that Kerstin and I get to see a lot of daylight. The days are completely different from Maui. We go for dinner around 23.00 p.m. and we have not gone to bed before 5 o'clock in the morning. We have met some really nice people in the youth hostel and we went to an open air festival with some of them yesterday in a football stadium a bit outside Buenos Aires.

It was a challenge itself to get tickets and since this is a latin country it was a bit chaotic to get into the stadium. But once we were there (we missed to see Starsailor but heard them while standing in the wrong line) we got to see a fantastic performance of Travis and The Killers. One of the best shows I have seen so far.

So tomorrow morning 6 o'clock our plane to El Calafate in the south of the country is leaving. Probably we go directly to the airport from the club. Next week it will be a lot of outdoor activities and instead of traffic jams hopefully some mountains.

I have the exchanged the bikini, towel and suncream with hiking boots, gloves and fleece sweaters. See you in Patagonia!

Tanja

After 3 fantastic weeks in Maui, I will fly to Buenos Aires tonight.

The last days have been fantastic. We went up to the 3000m high Vulcano Haleakala to see the sunset.

It was pretty cold up there and for the first time in 2 weeks I had to wear socks again! Jeremiah was even complaining that he cant drive his car in decend shoes. No wonder, when they wear flip flops all the time.

I also went camping to the other side of the island, in a tropical rainforest. It was wonderful but unfortunately also raining during the nights, so everything was soaked after two days.

And we spent lots of the time at the beach. I learned surfing now and tried my first rides kitesurfing. Difficult, but I can understand why everyone is really addicted to this.

So hasta Buenos Aires then!