Thursday 9 March 2006

We get a basic type of breakfast in the youth hostel. We are surrounded by people full of great trekking plans. The weather is very promising. It is sunny and clear. The mountain tops are very visible. After breakfast we do some shopping in the village. El Chaltén too is totally geared to tourists. More so than El Calafate. It founded only in 1984. Because of it isolated position and its focus on mountain related activities (trekking, climbing, horse riding) tourism is on a smaller scale and more adventurous. You can notice it in the kind of people coming here: lots of backpackers with trekking gear. Chaltén has no banks, no post office and no ATMs. Credit Cards are not widely accepted. There is, however an internet café. We drive along the unsealed and bumpy road in the direction of Hosteria del Pilar, about 15km North of El Chaltén on the banks of the Rio Blanco. We park here and take the track along the Rio Blanco. The path starts flat through the valley and the gradually ascends into a Lenga forest. The views are stunning from the word go. We see the Piedras Blancas glacier and the mountain tops of Cerro Fitzroy and Poincenot. FitzRoy is one of the highest peaks around here (Cerro Torre is higher). It is indescribably beautiful. We walk until we reach a lookout with a view to a icy lake in with a glacier running into it. We a huge chunk of ice falling of causing an avalanche. By then we are about an hour and a half away. The wind becomes stronger and the clouds start shrouding the mountain tops in mist. This happens here every day. Beautiful views until about 11.30am. We eat our provisions and make our way back to the car. There we meet two guys who have been walking too. An American and a Finnish guy. We offer them a ride to El Chalten. We eat a pizza in the micro-brewery El Bodegon. We do not do an awful lot during the afternoon. At the end of the day we have another home brew at the micro brewery. At night we eat at Bistro Fuegi. Delicious food and a full house. That is more than most restaurants around here can say. We are clearly at the end of the tourist season. Some of the places do not even open up for dinner. 

Weather: sunny. After 11am wind and more clouds. Temp. 8 to 12 degrees.

Friday 10 March 2006

  El Chaltén - El Calafate: 215km; El Calafate - Trelew: 931 km (1:38 hrs flight)

After the basic breakfast we get on our way back to El Calafate. The journey goes well. First along Lago Viedma with the beautiful vistas of on the mountains Cerro Torre, Poincenot and Fitzroy in the rear view mirror. Then the Ruta 40 through the barren country side with the odd farm house here and there. We have drink at the small road house with the bull and the Guanaco, half way down. Then it is another 90 minutes to El Calafate. In El Calafate we have lunch at Casimiro Bigual café outside in the sun. Lovely weather. We send an e-mail back home and have another drink some place. The we are off to the airport. We have some business to take care off because of the car damage we had 3 days ago. We get there about 3 hours before scheduled time of departure. We want to check in first, but that is not possible. The airport is in chaos. Flights have been cancelled, because of - what we are told later by another Dutch male couple - a 24 hour strike by the pilots of Aerolíneas Argentinas. The strike ended at noon today and the airline is trying to work away the backlog of flights. The ground staff is completely in the dark  about the new times of departure and passengers of a cancelled flight are outraged, because there are no seats available on the flights that are still to be carried out -  like ours. We return the car. The damage is estimate at around 584 dollars and we really have to pay that on top of the rental. We had a deductible franchise of 3200 pesos (± US$1100) which was impossible to reduce beforehand (and obviously not afterwards either). We have to grin and bear it. We do another attempt at checking in, but the ground staff is none too keen to do that. A chat with the supervisor helps, but does not come with guarantees about if and when we will fly.   Around 7pm an American fellow passenger tells us that the expected time of arrival of our plane is at 2.30am and departure 30 minutes later. A bit later that is confirmed by the ground staff. That means another 8 hours of hanging around the airport. When a flight to Ushaia and a different flight to Buenos Aires (with the six loud Dutchmen who we run into for the third time -  in Ushaia, Perito Moreno and again today ) it gets very quiet at the airport. We spend the time chatting with two Americans and a German. We try to entertain ourselves, but after a couple of hours we run out of conversation. We do admire the ground and bar staff who keep on working and not being relieved. Aerolíneas keeps its promise: at 2am we are called to the security check and at 2.30am a real plane lands on the runway. Within half an hour we are all seated and on our way to Trelew, where we land at 4.30. We take a taxi, that takes us in record time to the hotel and at 5am we finally get to go to bed.

Weather: 21 degrees, sunny

Saturday 11 March 2006

We wake up at 10am in Hotel Galicia, just in time for the basic breakfast served downstairs. Half asleep we call Hertz – which was already closed last night when we arrived at the airport. Within five minutes the man from Hertz is waiting for at the reception. He takes us to the airport, where our car is waiting for us. The process of drawing up the contract is very fast – too fast to my liking – and we drive back to town. We are a lot further north than yesterday and we notice the dramatic change of climate. It much sunnier and warmer here than down south. We can leave our jackets behind and dig out our shorts from our suitcases. We have a coffee and have a look at the central square. There is not much more to see here in Trelew. Trelew is Welsh for “village of Lewis”. The area was settled in the late 19th century by immigrants from Wales and you cannot fail to notice even today.  The cultural heritage is kept alive by the "Galeses". We have lunch at La Eloisa and drive to Gaiman, a village about  16 km east. It is most Welsh settlement around. In Gaiman the Celtic heritage is nourished and the historic buildings and customs well preserved. Cymric is still spoken here and there (Wales Celtic language) and there are many Welsh Tea Rooms. We start with sights first: an unused rail tunnel we can drive through, the first secondary school in Patagonia, the old Post Office and the first house of Gaiman from 1874. After that we walk to the chapel from 1913, a austere protestant church. Then Gaiman’s most outrageous attraction point: El Desafio (The Challenge). It is an open air exhibition made by the artist Joaquin Alonso. A bizarre experience to walk through this substantial park on the banks of Rio Chubut were Alonso has used countless bottles and soft drink cans. The artist welcomes us and shows us the way. After that it is time fors afternoon tea in one of the Tea Rooms. We Ty Nain. A tastefully decorated museum like establishment. A bit surreal. You seem to have landed in 20^th century Wales, only with South American temperatures. Tea, cakes and scones (especially the blackberry cake) taste great and are served without ordering by to friendly old ladies. They remind us – the first do so on this journey – that we have a princess in our Royal family from Argentine extraction, our dear Princess Maxima, the wife of the Dutch Crown Prince and future Queen..

We drive back to  Trelew. At night we have dinner at  La Vieja Molina. A place with lots of potential, located in an old water mill, but the furniture is way off. The Argentine grill, the Asador, has been placed in a glass annex, so that it can be seen from outside. The sheep or pigs are strung on a iron cross are being grilled slowly for hours. The food is fine, just like the service. Afterwards we have a refreshing cocktail at a side walk café. 

Sunday 12 March 2006

  Trelew - Punto Tumbo - Puerto Madryn: 308km

After breakfast we drive south to Punta Tombo. It is much further away than we thought and the fact that we have to drive more than 80 km on unsealed roads does not speed things up either. Arrived there we are in for a good look at a penguin colony. We have to pay our entry fee and then proceed slowly to the car park. The penguins are not shy at all: one is awaiting us on the parking lot. Hundreds are sitting on the beach and in the dunes.  It is fun to watch them stumble into the water. Like in Ushaia and Chiloé it is Magellan penguins we see. The beach and a large section of the dunes are closed off for humans. The birds can reach the beach by walking underneath a footbridge. Walking tracks lead through the dunes and rocks and offer views of the beach. We stroll around a little more, spot a guanaco and eat a burger in the cantina next to the visitors centre. Clearly we are not the only ones here. Big tour busses have the colony as a stop on their programme.   Then we continue north again towards Puerto Madryn, via Trelew. That too, is quite a trip. First another 80 km on unsealed roads and on via the RN 3 to Puerto Madryn. The road signs in Argentina are a bit inaccurate to say the least. Distances are often wrong and destinations disappear from the signs only to reappear after a while.  We arrive in Puerto Madryn around 3.30pm and find a room in  hotel Aguas Mansas, close to the beach. The hotel has its own swimming pool. On the beach a windsurfing tournament is taking place and there is a stage where young pop musicians play loud music.  We walk the length of the boulevard towards the centre. The boulevard is a bit run down. The town centre has some nice shops, bars and restaurants.  

At night we have a cocktail in very nice and friendly bar called Margherita on the corner of Roque Sáenz Peña en Av. Roca, after which we have a nice dinner in a Bask restaurant, where let ourselves be talked into a 30 pesos wine.  That is pricey to Argentine standards, but is a very good one. Just like the tapas and the langoustines. We take a taxi back to the hotel.