Day 17 & 18 - Oh hai Buenos Aires!

Day 17 saw the completion of our Patagonian side-quest. We levelled up our walking skills pretty solidly through triumph, and our beer-ordering skills through failure. So back to the airport it was for us, to catch our flight back to Buenos Aires. We keep getting to the airport and also arriving from the airport at our accommodation too early, mostly because of all the posts I’d read online about lines at Argentine airports being horrendous due to inefficiency and frequent strikes. As this has so far turned out to be a falsehood, I now present a list of other stuff about Buenos Aires I’ve read in guidebooks and online which have turned out to not be correct:

• “Buenos Aires is dangerous, and you will get mugged” - undoubtedly it does happen, but then I’ve also had friends who have been mugged back in Auckland. I’m writing this on our last day in Buenos Aires, and we did not once feel unsafe due to lurking strangers, despite having walked through some supposedly slightly sketchy areas. Obviously, normal common sense still applies with regards to watching your belongings, as it does at home
• “Don’t pull out your phone in public, as you’ll look like a tourist and therefore get mugged” - seriously, it’s 2017. Everyone has a smartphone. Half the people I see in the street in Buenos Aires are walking around chatting or taking selfies on their phones, and sometimes even both at the same time. Tourists do not stand out because of phone usage
• “People dress really elegantly and conservatively, so if you wear shorts and a t-shirt you’ll look like a tourist and get mugged” - like in any large city, there are huge numbers of nicely dressed people, especially on work days. However, like in any city, there are plenty of locals that don’t give a crap about fashion and wander around in slobby shorts and singlets in the 30+ degree weather. Older people do tend to dress a bit more conservatively (so many sharply dressed elderly gentlemen around, it’s adorable!), younger people tend to dress pretty similarly to young people in any “westernised” country - mini skirts and crop tops aplenty
• “It’s a big city, most people will speak English” - no they really don’t. We’re getting pretty good at miming. Plenty of English speakers are around, but in a city of 15 million people, they get diluted out. Nevertheless, every time someone has told me they speak only “un poco” English, their English has been multitudes better than my crappy Spanish.

However, one thing all the guidebook say is that Argentine steak is great, and this is most definitely the truth. The lovely woman that owns the Airbnb apartment we’re currently staying in left us a list of restaurants she recommended, and we tried out one nearby for dinner. This long-time favourite of locals and tourists alike serves up some seriously delicious steaks at an awesome price. I got a juicy bife de chorizo (the best cut, according to most) the size of my face for about $18AUD and managed to somehow fit most of it in my belly, to the horror of the ladies at the table next to us. One day, I’ll go vegetarian, but that day is not happening in Argentina, due equally to deliciousness and logistics - vege options I’ve seen in most restaurants consist of mozzarella pizza, a side of potatoes, or the dessert. Jeremy got some other meat thing and although that was flavoursome, he was secretly full of steakless sadness.

Om nom nom. Please excuse the face, it's the only one I have. Not shown: the side salad which took up an entire salad bowl

Day 18 saw us take full advantage of the washing machine in our apartment. So much washing of dust-laden clothes happened. We also thoroughly cleansed nature from our persons in this cute as bathroom.

Yay cute wall tiling!


Look at that good Jeremy doing the cleaning


Excuse the messiness of the bed, it's too comfortable not to sprawl all over


Too many sitting surfaces for 2 people means we end up putting our crap all over everything

As our new apartment was super close to Puerto Madero, we decided to go for a wander around this upmarket port area in search of lunch. All the restaurants in the “waterfront” kind of area cost a bit much than we were willing to pay, but thankfully we came across the choripan motherload a few streets away from the glam. A long stretch of street just outside the huge Constanera Sur ecological reserve just east of Puerto Madero is lined with a huge number of food trucks grilling up sausages, burgers, and steaks. You can get a choripan for 25-50 pesos ($2-4AUD), and the best thing about these truck is that they usually have a big selection of accompaniments that you can sandwich into your bun - pickles, chillies, chimmichuri, even salads. Cheap lunch, sorted!

Some famous bridge thing in Puerto Madero


Jeremy's OTT choripan onto which he put every condiment available


Look at that Jeremy melting in the sun. That green stuff stretching into the distance behind him is pond vegetation, not grass

Energised by power-sausage, we spent a horrible couple of hours dying of heat stroke while eyeing up various birds and other wildlife in the Constanera Sur reserve. For a place with so much nature, there is surprisingly little shade. We did get to see some cute fluffies (some sort of guinea pig?), a cool slithery (big lizard thing!), and neat floppies (so many birds! Some might say too many…) though.

The huuuuuge Rio de la Plata on the other side of the reserve. Uruguay is somewhere in the distance, too far away to see


Fluffies!


Slithery!


Weird pink duck with rogue coke bottle

Then we went “home” to our apartment to die a blissful air conditioned death. The end.

Day 16 - glacial Valentine's

The day we planned to visit the Perito Moreno glacier happened to be Valentine’s Day. We’re not big Valentine’s people, usually only using the day as an excuse to eat and drink too much (just like we use any other holiday, weekend, Monday because Mondays are hard, Wednesday hump days, etc… ok we’re just terrible gluttonous people). However, I guess this was a pretty epic way to spend the day. The guy that runs our hostel was nice enough to organise us some bus tickets to the glacier over the phone instead of us trying to mime bus-taking actions at the guy at the bus station, and we opted to do the afternoon trip as it was slightly cheaper and also the slightly less crowded time of day. I spent the morning squealing over flamingoes again while Jeremy waited exasperatedly, and then stuffing my face with delicious calafate berry helado (ice cream) while Jeremy again waited exasperatedly. After cracking way too many lame jokes about the frostiness of our relationship, we were off on the road to the giant famous chunk of ice. The journey was spectacularly uneventful, as there truly is just huge plains of nothingness in Patagonia, until you get closer to mountains and then you realise there is SO MUCH MOUNTAIN. Excitement rippled through the bus as we rounded a corner and caught our first glimpse of the glacier in the distance. 

Look at the glacier so far away!

The bus driver dropped us off at the entrance to the glacier park complex thingy, promising to leave the park for El Calafate again in 3 hours time. We were slightly concerned that we’d get very bored staring at what is essentially just a huge block of ice for 3 whole hours. Fortunately, it turned out that watching ice melt is one of the most enthralling activities ever, if the chunk of ice is big enough. 

The park was very well-maintained (rightly so, after charging extortionist prices for entry), with a series of boardwalks all around the shore opposite the glacier itself. At times, we were so close to the glacier that there were signs stating that if we climbed over the barriers, there was a chance of death by icy shrapnel from glacial calving (chunks of ice falling off the glacier). We actually did end up spending 3 hours staring at this gargantuan piece of ice, listening to the eerie moaning/cracking noises as the ice shifted imperceptibly slowly and trying to catch pictures of calving (harder than one would think, as the sound reaches you long after the event). Such romance.

Yeah, that's us, not that you can really tell...


Lighting ok for us but not for the glacier. You just can't have both, I guess.

Back in town later that evening, there happened to be a free festival on, so we went to check it out with the French girl with a sweet haircut we were sharing a dorm with. The music was kind of terrible, and the heavy police presence somewhat unsettling, so we opted to go to a nearby pub for beer and pizza instead. We thought this would be simple, considering our new buddy was pretty decent at Spanish. Turns out minor mistakes can have terrible consequences:

• Firstly, turns out “cerveza de El Calafate” and “cerveza de calafate” may not be mutually exclusive, but are by no means the same thing. While we thought we were ordering the local specialty beer described by the former, turned out the sign was actually for the latter, meaning a beer made from calafate berries. This was a weird sickly sweet concoction that tasted like someone had managed to brew a cider with no acidity. 
• Second mistake - somehow forgetting that “rubia” means “blonde” instead of “ruby” in Spanish and being resigned to drinking a jug of blonde ale. Oh well, beer is beer, and at least it was a nice somewhat flavoursome craft beer instead of the regular pisswater Quilmes lager served in most places (sorry most popular beer in the nation, you taste like yeasty water, much like the most popular beer in most nations)

Days 14 & 15 - Animals!

After the big hike of day 13, we decided that we deserved another lazy day, because we are lazy bums. However, the one thing I was determined to do while still in El Chalten was to see an armadillo. After reports from a couple of other people staying at the hostel that there were some near the ranger station, we headed off on a short stroll in the early evening. We managed to spot an armadillo with surprising ease. It was just casually chilling out on the side of the trail about 5 minutes out of town.

Wee (big hairy) armadillo chilling out by the trail


Look at it's cute little (half-hidden) face

This is a “big hairy armadillo”. I kid you not, this is the actual common name for the C. villosus. Armadillo names are great, and I hope I get to meet the relatives of the big hairy during this trip, including the screaming hairy, pink fairy, and hairy long-nosed (seriously, these are real armadillo types)

Day 15 saw us off on a 3 hour long drive to the town of El Calafate, where we were to spend our last 2 nights in Patagonia. Our hostel was situated right at the edge of Lago Argentino, the biggest freshwater lake in the country. Although this meant we were a little bit out of town (although a 15 minute walk isn’t bad at all), it also meant FLAMINGOES! Being an utter cheapskate, I didn’t want to pay the entrance fee to the nature reserve that supposedly housed an abundance of bird life, electing to stand outside with a pair of binoculars instead. After a minute of sneaky viewing, we noticed that outside the reserve, in the lake itself, flamingoes were actually dotted near the shore everywhere, along with many other types of birds and horses grazing in the shallows. Why the heck people pay for the reserve is beyond me when it’s not like birds respect park boundaries and choose to only hang out in the reserve rather than the rest of the wetlands area separated only by a low fence...

So pink!


So fabulous!


So horsey!

Bonus Jesus for extra XP: Ok so this isn’t actually Jesus, but I'm including it because it has more than a whiff of the religious about it. I kept spotting these little red shrines throughout our drive between El Chalten and El Calafate. Here is one from the entrance into the town of El Chalten. Almighty google tells me that these are shrines for “Gauchito Gil”, a legendary character in Argentina akin to Robin Hood who although not canonised by the Catholic Church, is regarded as a saint by locals. He seems also to have a penchant for cheap alcohol, judging by the bottles in the shrines. 

Hooray for alcoholic semi-saints!


Not a bad place to chill with a bunch of alcohol

Day 13 - why is "Fitzy Roy" two words?

We woke up feeling grumpy and ill-rested on day 13 (thanks to a loudly snoring but otherwise uncommunicative guy sharing our dorm and the sound of super strong winds gusting outside). However, it would be lazy in the extreme to take 2 bum days in a row, so we psyched ourselves up in order to tackle the most epic (and as a result, most overcrowded) day walk of them all - the Laguna de los Tres (three of what? We have no idea...) This is the hike to the base of the iconic Cerro Fitz Roy. The other name for this mountain is "Chaltén" (which the town is named after), meaning "smoking mountain" in a local indigenous language. This is due to the clouds usually shrouding the peak. Clouds that were out in full force as we set off on our 20km walk.

Heading off, hoping the wind is blowing the clouds away from us, not towards us


At the first viewpoint, the clouds were still against us


Woodpeckers rock out the hardest out of all birds because are such haradcore headbangers. Check out the sweet mohawk on this one!

It's a wild Jeremy! *use pokeball*


Where's this glacier going? I don't know, it's just hanging out *ba dum tchsss* (sorry, sorry)

To our delight, we got super lucky and by the time we made it to the lake at the base of the mountain, the weather had cleared up enough for us to see some of the mountain. The lake was the most amazing blue colour (obviously magic, once again), and the water was absolutely delicious (yay for lack of chlorine taste!). I had vaguely understood the advice of one of the Italian guys from the night before, who had said to not stop when we got to Los Tres but continue beyond for a couple of minutes. There was another lake, just as blue, lurking just around the rock pile! This place was seriously magical, a fact keenly felt by a cranky old man sitting on a rock who yelled at chattering people nearby to "shut up! This place is a church!". Preach, dude.

SO BLUE!


The next lake over - bluer than Jeremy's eyes


We huddled behind a rock and ate this chocolate bar. It tasted like despair and familial betrayal.

Clearly the mountain gods were displeased with Being disturbed by so many tourists, and by the time we were 1/3 of the way back the clouds had returned in full force and a relentless drizzle had set in. Speed-walking to keep ourselves from being swallowed by the steadily descending clouds, we completed the 9 hour walk in 7 hours and 58 minutes.

Day 12 - observations on El Chaltén

A rest day was needed after tackling the hard climb of day 11. We checked out a couple of craft beer places in town and hung around the hostel not doing very much. For dinner, 1/3 of the late-middle-aged Italian guys who are long-term residents at our hostel decided to make carbonara for everyone for dinner (apparently "all Italians are chefs") and we all sat around drinking wine while I awkwardly tried to comprehend some of their fast Spanish and even faster Italian (not that I could even tell the difference between the two most of the time!). 

I'll take the opportunity of this off day to say a few things about El Chaltén. This is a tiny town (it takes a maximum of 20 minutes to walk from one side of town to the other), mostly filled with tourists here for the summer season of hiking. Most of the buildings here are hostels, restaurants, or shops, and even the buildings housing the locals seem to frequently double as camp sites or small kiosks. This is unsurprising, as we are in a national park hundreds of kilometres from the next town. The view from town itself is amazing, with the peaks of several mountains visible from town on a clear day.

View from one of the main streets of the town. The peak of Cerro Fitz Roy rises in the distance

Food here is crazy expensive. The restaurants here (all of which are expensive) all completely fill up around dinner time, when most of the hikers come down from the mountains famished after a hard day of walking. The supermarkets are not cheap either, and a good vegetable is hard to find. The supply trucks seem to arrive late on a Wednesday afternoon, and for the next couple of days, an acceptable range of fruits and vegetables can be found in the supermarkets. After that, all the good stuff has been picked over and you'd be lucky to find even an apple without rot or bruising. The bakeries are reasonably priced, and we lived off spinach empanadas and wine for 3 days until the shops restocked enough vegetables for us to cook our own food. Wine is far more expensive than in Buenos Aires, but we managed to find drinkable Malbec for under $5AUD per bottle regardless.

The best thing about the town (apart from the incredible views) are all the cute doggos that wander the streets! So. Many. Cute. Dogs. I'm literally squealing every time I walk down the street. They all seem to be reasonably fluffy in order to withstand the harsh winds here, from the tiniest sausage dog to the hostel owner's big German shepherd (who has been receiving many many pats from me). The dogs don't seem to be strays, they're just allowed to wander as they wish. They're all pretty calm and friendly, and even the ones who are obviously just after you for your food will happily let you pat them for ages. The overabundance of dogs has been great, as it has made Jeremy really want to get a dog once we finish our travels!

This cutie just hangs out right outside the door of the hostel when the owner comes to clean or show new people around. Such a good doggo!

Day 11 - winning at Loma del pliegue tumbado and therefore life

Well rested from our easy day the day before, we spent day 11 tackling a longer walk - this time, the lesser-trod Loma del pliegue tumbado. This 24km return walk was far more difficult than the walk to the Laguna Torre, as it involved a 1000m ascent, but we managed it in 7 hours and 40 minutes (20 minutes short of the suggested 8 hours). The first 2/3 of the walk was relatively calm, mostly passing through nice alpine forest with the random odd wild cow lurking. However, the last 1/3 was a mad scramble up an almost vertical incline of rocks, with an ill-defined trail and the powerful Patagonian winds screaming in our ears. I'm still not sure how I managed to make it up to the top, but I do remember the feeling of overwhelming victory. And what goes up must come down. Really really slowly and carefully. While trying to not fall and break my neck (Hi mum, don't worry, it wasn't that dangerous. There were other people doing it and they didn't fall either).

View from one side


View from the other side


None of these photos really express how steep and high our climb was - this was probably the flattest surface we could rest on, and we were pretty much clinging to the side of rocky cliffs while trying to sit whenever we needed a rest for the rest of the climb

We didn't take a huge amount of photos of ourselves or the view on this walk, but I did manage to get some pictures of cool flora and fauna instead of just "ooooooh"-ing at them like I did for the past couple of days. Also, Jeremy keeps getting attacked by huge fluffy caterpillars, who seem to really like him.

Wild forest cows!


So many tiny cute plants around


Black-faced ibis (South American bin chicken)


Tiny cute flowers


Southern crested caracara (I think)


More plant matter


The little bird that lives here wasn't home when we visited


Jeremy reckons these are fossils of some sort. Anyone who knows about these things want to chime in?