Travel-Trotter

The next day was sunny from the time we woke up, we ate our continental breakfast at the hotel whick included poppyseed cake, dulce de leche and other treats, I think we finally realized the kids are probably getting too much sugar in the morning.  We set off for a hike to the Mirador Cerro Fitz Roy trail.  Our most difficult trail yet with the kids, 8 kilometers, the first half all up hill.  The hike started out with Julie having a huge fit over who got to wear mittens that were brought on the hike.  The rest of the girls took turns whining the rest of the way up the hill and we busted out bars and other food well before we thought necessary but it got us through.  We brought our lunch with us and the ranger suggested a loop at the top to a lake but we were lucky to get to the lookout point.  There were incredible views all the way up the trail of the Rio de las Vueltas and it’s respective river valley.

Then at the top the view of Cerro Fitz Roy was something to behold, worth all the whining and dragging the kids up the hill.  The way back down it was a bit easier but the sun went behinds some high clouds so the temperature dropped a few degrees.

As a reward for finishing the hike we all went and got some ice cream and got some well deserved ipad time.  We packed up our stuff and headed out for El Calafate the next day.

El Calafate

The drive to El Calafate was very easy, all paved roads, we picked up hitch-hikers as this seems to be our default these days.  We entered town and dropped our passengers off and headed off to our hosteria, which turned out to be a good deal for the town, the folks at the place were trying to get us to pay the VAT tax that Argentineans pay but foreigner are exempt from.  They finally relented and we got into our place.  We had a kitchen and living room with beds upstairs but the stairs tread would not meet standards in the U.S. and are a bit scary in the morning.

We ate lunch out in the town and it cost us nearly $100 for a basic lunch ouch, guess we will be eating in.  We grabbed some food at the grocery store and ate dinner at home after walking through town.  Although the El Calafate is very spread out and much larger than El Chalten the down town seemed more condensed into one area.  After dinner we identified a playground out near the shores of Lago Argentino, so we grabbed the kids and walked out with glass of wine in hand.  On our way out we ran into some folks that were staying in our previous hotel lodging.  They of course couldn’t have been nicer, they were drinking wine too and we chatted for a while before being dragged off by the kids to a very nice playground with one of the best that we seen.   The kids played for a while, Maddy chased them for a while and then I took over; we were having a great time until another kid punched Julie in the face, the boy apologized but we decided to leave.  I did go back out for groceries and caught an incredible sunset, just reminded me that we should be doing a better job of watching the orbital bodies in our sky.

The next day was clear-ish so we ventured out to the Puerto Moreno Glacier, the biggest attraction in this area, the glacier is pushing out of the mountains into a system of lakes.  We were able to approach the glacier from the opposite lake shore and got very close to the edge of the glacier.  The glacier was very active and you could routinely see calving of the of ice off the glacier.  When we were there many small bits came off which made spectacularly loud noises when they hit the water.  Overall the glacier was awesome and probably the largest and most active I have seen.

The glacier is also unique that it extends and retracts pinching off the lake from time to time, this can cause an icebridge to form and eventually when the water breaks through a flood of water comes racing between the two lakes but this only happens every 5-10 years.

The next day was a work and school day, the kids and I went to the glacier museum and learned lots about the history and formation of glacier in the area including a 3D movie.  The museum had a good warning about global warming and its effects on glaciers and other issues caused by warming temperatures.  It turned sunny in the afternoon and Maddy watched the kids after she was done with work so I got some time to wander the town after putting the kids to bed I met up with our friend Pejman from Casa Ludwig that night for a drink.  The next day it rained nearly from morning to night, another good day for working and schooling, we did manage to get out to the local natural history museum (museo – centro de interpretacion historica calafate; http://www.museocalafate.com.ar).  We braved the rain and had fun looking at the dinosaurs that inhabited this area of the world hundreds of millions of years ago, they also had a great exhibit on pre-historical man in the area, much of it was in Spanish so I had to continually remind the kids that humans and dinosaurs didn’t live at the same time.  The kids then reminded me that birds were descended from dinosaurs, they are too smart for their own good sometimes.  We packed up our apartment and set off for Torres del Paine the next day.

Heading into Argentina the landscape shifted dramatically, the mountains faded away and a vast arid plain was our landscape for the long drive to El Chalten.  We had mostly paved road for the drive except for 74 kilometers which seemed to go on forever.   Upon entering Argentina we traded the Carratera Austral for the Ruta Cuarente (40) a road famous for running the length of Argentina parallel to the Andes mountains.

Once we turned off Ruta Cuarente toward El Chalten we headed west toward the mountains, the view could not have been more dramatic rising over the Argentine plains growing bigger and bigger with each mile.

Unfortunately the spires of Cerro Fitz Roy were not visible on our approach but the remaining mountains and glaciers made for an amazing introduction.

We stayed at the Vertical Lodge along the river and a massive vertical wall on the other side of the river.  We didn’t have a kitchen so we ate out most nights which was rather expensive; Argentina is more expensive than Chile and Bolivia.  On our first night in Argentina I did treat myself to a rather large Argentinean steak as they are known for their beef.  The next morning it was still cloudy and rainy but we got out of the house and headed to Chorillo del Salto a waterfall just outside of town.

The hike was small but the kids seemed like they were aching to run around because they bounded up the hill ahead of us.  After the waterfall we drove further up the road and got more views of the cloudy Cerro Fitz Roy and several rainbows.  Maddy had a call so we went back to the hotel and finished our school, we concentrated on writing and all the girls wrote journal entries and reports.  Caroline was very interested in the Ozone layer after we mentioned it as the reason we needed to wear sunscreen this far south.  So she completed a report about the hole in the Ozone around the south pole and what caused it.

After completing our writing we went for a short hike and crossed the river over a quite rickety bridge and walked along the vertical wall, it was get starting to get sunny out for the first time since arriving in El Chalten so the views just kept improving.  We chased down lots of moths, picked flowers and had a great time in the sun.

We went back to our hotel to pick up Maddy and we went on another hike up to the Mirador del Condors and we finally got some spectacular views of the Cerro Fitz Roy pinnacles.  The hike was only two kilometers but it was uphill and I was so proud of all the girls for making it to the top.  The views were amazing.

Once we were finished we played on the playground in the middle of town, we met some Australian parents who had kids the same age so we had dinner with them and swapped stories of traveling with kids.

……..Unfortunately the wi-fi is not great in Patagonia, so uploading pictures has been painful.  Come back later for updated pictures.

I couldn’t resist posting more pictures of the marble caves; here they are.

After visiting the Marble Caves we headed out of town toward the border town of Chile Chico, to get there we drove along the south side of Lago General Carrera.  The lake is the largest fresh water lake in Chile and rivals Lago Titicaca in size.  As with the last 7 days or so the scenery was magnificent, the pictures look fantastic but they still don’t do it justice.

It took us a while to get warmed up after the boat ride but we had some lunch in the car and we picked up another woman hitchhiker named Rachel from Britain.  Arriving in Chile Chico we completed our time on the Carretera Austral which has been incredible valley after valley of amazing scenery, termas, volcanos, rafting and great people.  It seems like there are very few Americans in this part of Patagonia but lots of Chileans.  I have to admit that when planning this trip I would have skipped this entire part myself but we had some friend tell us not to miss it and they were right.

We did spot several condors in the air above the lake just before Chile Chico, they must have been Andean Condors and they were huge.

The next day we headed to Argentina and you wouldn’t blame me if I was a bit apprehensive about the border (Frontera) and getting the car through to Argentina, but I decided that we were due for an easy crossing.  That is exactly what happened, we got there early in the morning, cancelled our temporary import permit for Chile and got our passports stamped.  We crossed no mans land and entered Argentina and received our Temporary import permit for 90 days; our customs inspection guy was pretty lax and we were on our way.  Bienvenue Argentina!!!   In Argentina we the landscape changed pretty drastically changing from mountains to deserted high plains.  We had some trouble first getting money out of the ATMs but once we found an HSBC ATM we were in business.  Only 9 hours of driving to get to El Chaltan.

The next morning we got up and quickly packed up the car and went down to the shore to see if we could get a tour of the Capillas de Marmol (Marble Caves).   We found that some of the boats were heading to the Caves despite the wind and rough water.  This was our only opportunity so we bought tickets and hopped on board.  The boat ride out took 20 minutes to get to the caves which are only accessible by boat.

The marble caves were massive rock outcrops of white, brown and gray marble that are eroded where the lake is dissolving the rock over many years and creating large caverns.  The marble layers were folded in some cases making for very interesting designs.  We explored the caves for about a half an hour and then headed back.  The ride back ended up being very rough and took quite a while, everybody was very cold after getting splashed and blown around by the wind.  We learned later that a famous conservationist Doug Thompkins had died a year earlier on the same lake, he was in a kayak in the middle of the lake though with no coat on.

After fixing the tire in Coyhaique we continued along the Carretera Astral south to Puerto Rio Tranquilo, the weather has changed for the worse and rain pelted us for most of the day and in at least on pass there were massive gusts of wind.  We also saw one of the best rainbows of the trip, the kids took pictures of it with their ipads.

We have been completing school in the car this week as we have been moving to a different town everyday, the girls have been doing math apps and reading books, we will need to make up some journal time, but there should be no shortage of topics.  The last third of the road to Rio Tranquilo was unpaved through the mountains but we arrived with no troubles just lots of potholes.  The valleys and mountains were still spectacular in the rain.

Once we arrived in Puerto Rio Tranquilo we learned none of the boats were operating that day to go to the Marble Caves due to the rain and wind.  We had lunch and settled into our latest Cabana, Maddy went out to get food at the Supermarcado and she ran into an American couple Dan and Julia who were from Wisconsin!  We invited them over to our cabana for a visit, they ended up pitching their tent in the backyard of our cabana,  Maddy went out again for butter and wine and ran into Rachel one of our hitchhikers from earlier in Patagonia!  So we had her over a glass of wine and had a proper party, it is Mardi gras and all.  On that subject it is funny that we saw no organized celebrations for Mardi Gras in this predominantly Catholic country, guess we needed to be over in Rio.  We had a great night and chatted into the evening after putting the kids to bed.

Between Puyuhuapi and Coyhaique we drove through some amazing country we have ever seen.  It seems very sparsely populated and altogether very difficult to get to, maybe that is why it hasn’t been thoroughly exploited.

The roads were pretty good on this stretch of road, lots of pavement.  Coyhaique is a relatively large town of 50,000 people, it is in the intersection of several valleys and there are three river confluences within the area.  We explored the downtown area and had dinner near the town square, every town has one in Chile, they are open spaces with benches, trees and radiating paths out from the center.

Our plan was to get out of Coyhaique early the next day and get traveling done with early but a puncture in one of our tires caused a delay, our second of the trip.  I changed the flat and got the tire repaired in just over an hour.   I was also amazed to get the repair on the tire completed for the equivalent of $5, not too shabby.  Altogether a pretty easy repair.  Onward to Puerto Rio Tranquilo.

On Sunday we left Futa in the morning, we picked up two hitch hikers and we practiced our Spanish.  It is so hard when people talk so fast, Maddy and I are getting better but are nowhere near being conversational, we use google translate a lot, which is indispensable.   The drive was about half unpaved gravel road and half some of the smoothest asphalt roads you have ever seen.  At one point during the drive, we notice that things got really dark, what we didn’t realize that we drove through the partial solar eclipse, we wouldn’t have seen anything if we had realized it because it was cloudy but in hindsight it was a bit strange.

We arrived in Puyuhuapi around 1:30, and settled into our room at Casa Ludwig.  After relaxing for a bit we set out for a hike on the beautiful sunny day at the nearby Ventisquero hanging glacier, what a mistake that was…  We were told that there were several rock falls that had cut the road south of the town along the fjord but that they don’t shut down the road on Sundays from 1-5pm like they do during the week.  So not true, after discovering the road was totally closed we went back to town and let the kids play at a local playground, then once the road opened we sat through a two hour ordeal to go 20 kilometers to the park.  Of course once we got there the park had closed…. Arrrrgggghhh.  We back tracked and had dinner in town and the girls didn’t eat anything so we made mac-n-cheese at home. The only redeeming thing about the night was that we stayed at an interesting hostel that was run by a german/czech woman whose father was an original founder of the town in 1938.  The hostel smelled exactly like my paternal grandmother house in Phillips Wisconsin.  We made dinner and had a fantastic conversation with an Iranian man who lived in Australia and was traveling the Pan American highway.

The next day we got up and headed to the glacier and took a boat ride up the lake to get a view of the water fall and glacier, glad we went through the trouble because it was gorgeous.  We spent several hours in the park and then headed off to Coyhaique.  After several days of pretty amazing weather we started getting clouds but unlike early on in Patagonia we could still see the mountains and the amazing scenery.

We left Chaiten still shrouded in clouds, although the weather was supposed to be better.  We picked up three hitch hikers who were on their way to Rio Tranquilo and the Marble caves but only took them to Villa Santa Maria before heading west toward the mountains and Futaleufu.  The clouds finally burned off after a couple hours in the car and we got a beautiful sunny day and we finally saw those mountains, oh what mountains, each valley more beautiful than the next.

We stopped for lunch at Lago Yelcho, which was incredibly beautiful, but alas we were swarmed by bees, and nobody ate their lunch.

We loaded the car up and kept trucking up the gravel road.  We started driving parallel to Rio Futaleufu which was a beautiful greenish blue and had some amazing rapids, which we were told were class 5 and higher.

The road up to Futaleufu, about 70 kilometers or so, was dirt road with many potholes but the scenery was so worth it we didn’t mind at all.  Once we arrived in town we found our cabana for two days and checked in with our rafting guide for the next day.  We had dinner and headed back to our cabana but not before the kids got some free cotton candy, so we let them run around our courtyard to burn off their sugar intake.  We also had lots of apple trees for the kids to pick and throw and play with.  They finally crashed out probably around 11pm.

The next day we went rafting down the upper part of the Futaleufu River, which is the flat part, with one level 2 rapid.  We didn’t feel comfortable taking the kids on more than this, though we lamented that we were not able to go on rougher waters as this is a mecca for rafters and kayakers, some of the best in South America.  We went on a one hour trip and had a wonderful tour guide who spoke English. We had beautiful scenery, and I was the only who was brave enough to jump in…it was chilly!  It was a great adventure for the kids; although Julie got splashed on one of the rapids and had a pretty big fit.  The tour guide found a baby chick for the kids to play with once we disembarked and all the bad memories were forgotten.

We took a hike later in the day down the same river getting to re-live our raft tour from the shore.  We ran into apple, pear and plumb trees along the river and had a pre-dinner snack.  We got back to town had dinner and packed up our stuff for the drive to Puyuhuapi the next day.

We were up at 6:30am to catch our ferry, it was barely light out and we got to watch some fisherman head out among the fog and the clouds.

We headed up to our ferry and sat around for 30 min and then boarded, we were a fully stocked boat lots of backpackers too.  The crossing took a good 4 hours between Hornopiren and Leptepu; which allowed us to get some school completed and even a few zzzz. We did enjoy some scenery but were left wondering what it all looked like if there were no clouds.  Through the clouds we did finally get a glimpse of some spectacular waterfalls.

After disembarking the boat there was a 30 minute drive to the last ferry.   We picked up one hitchhiker, Rachel a Dutch woman who was grateful to get out of the rain even though we subjected her to our screaming children and the Disney movie Frozen.  After the last ferry (a 30 minute boat ride in high winds and rough seas) we had an hour and a half drive on mostly dirt roads which ended in Chalten.  We dropped Rachel in town and went to our rented cabana for the night.

Our rented cabana for three days was a cute 2 story house with a kitchen, lots of beds, and no internet or phone service.  It was ok for the kids but it was trouble for Maddy and working and I couldn’t update the blog.  The rain was still oppressive the first day and Julie and I were recovering from the cold Caroline gave us so it worked out.  We still managed to take a hike to one of the rivers that emptied into the delta that was formed near the town.  We hiked for at least 2 miles, I think it’s a new record, there were lots of rocks and drift wood to look at which was interesting for the kids.  There were also three volcanos in close proximity to the area which made for amazing valleys and picturesque mountain scenes; just wish we could have seen it.   I am sure there is amazing geology too; it seems like it is quite unusual to have subduction type volcanos on the edge of the ocean, the normal valley (ie.. central valley) between the coastal range and the volcanoes is flooded in this area; the coastal range is an island.  The glaciers are likely to be blamed for carving the valleys so deep.

Near our house we discovered a beautiful stream and a large rushing creek with beautiful clear water running in it, it reminded me of my youth and playing in the savage river at Denali National park.  The kids and I hopped around on the rocks for a good few hours until a few scraps caused us to retreat back home.  We tried to go out for dinner and found only a few places open at 5:30 when we wanted to eat dinner, pretty typical for the kids eating schedule.

The next day we did some writing for school and ventured out early to do a hike on the slopes of Volcan Michinmahuida, along the Fundo Rio Amarillo.  We hiked for about 2.5 miles, might have bested our new record!  We had lunch in this amazing forest covered in moss, reminded me of the temperate rain forest in Olympic national park.  As a reward for our hike we went to the Termas Rio Amarillo just up the road, there were only two pools but we could plunge into the river to cool off, the twins loved getting very cold and jumping back in the hot springs.  Caroline refused to eat her lunch and was a cranky mess the rest of the day.  We ate dinner at home and packed up our stuff for our trip to Futaleufu.

We packed up the house and got out of town, more rain was following us, but that didn’t dampen our spirits as we were starting the Carretera Astral which traverses the majority of the accessible Chilean Patagonia.  We first stopped in Puerto Montt the official beginning of the Carretera Astral, Maddy and the kids walked around town while I got an oil change and tire check.

Puerto Montt is probably the largest town we will see until we cross over into Argentina, it is a port town and you can catch a ferry to lots of different spots along Patagonia including all the way to lands end (not the retail store).

Once we had all our tasks finished we headed out of town toward Hornopiren where we would stay the night before our 4 hour ferry ride to Chaiten.  We did have one ferry crossing on the day, it was one which required no reservation between La Arena and Puelche; crossing our first Fjord of the trip!

The ferry was short 40 minutes and we were on our way south.  We did get some sunny weather in the middle of the day but it was short lived.  We arrived in Hornopiren and stayed at the Austral Lodge, which was an amazing rustic cabin that was recently remodeling.  We wished we had stayed there longer or at least until the clouds had broken it was beautiful in the clouds and fog anyway.