PATAGONIA

USHUAIA



Patagonia is cold, very cold; in fact, even though I arrived at the beginning of the austral summer it was a chilly 5C with snow on anything above a hundred meters. Down there, where the Andes take a final plunge into the ocean, it hardly ever gets much above 15C.



I left Buenos Aires on a balmy afternoon and must have looked pretty much out of place in Aeroparque wearing my winter gear, but I quickly congratulated myself for my good judgment upon arrival in Tierra Del Fuego where I spent a great deal of time laughing at the tourists in their shorts and Hawaiian shirts waiting for their luggage in Ushuaia’s chilly chalet-style airport.




Ushuaia is a city that doesn’t live up to its extremely stylish name. In fact it closely resembles the rather bland and unattractive towns dotting every valley in Switzerland through which visitors pass on their way to more romantic venues. But unlike its Helvetic counterparts, Ushuaia tries to gloss up its image and attract tourists with the claim of being the “end of the world”. This tag is only fitting, for Ushuaia’s visitors don’t really have a ‘somewhere else’ to escape to in the vicinity.



Just to dispel a myth, the honor of being the most southerly city on the planet actually belongs to the anonymous town of Puerto Williams in Chile, which is located a fraction more southerly than its famed neighbor along the Beagle channel. Still, Puerto Williams’ officials have yet to be clever enough to expose Ushuaia as only the second most southerly city in the world in order to cash in on tourist dollars.



Having said all that, I should add that spending six days in Ushuaia has to be somewhat of a tourist record. The reason why I accomplished this feat is because Ushuaia is the main departure port for cruises to Antarctica, and for a few weeks I had been very seriously pondering the idea of boarding a boat to make it to the big white continent. Unfortunately, I discovered after five long days of waiting that there were no boat passages available for the coming three weeks and so I had no choice but to miss out on the South Pole this time around.



Still, it gave me the opportunity to do just about everything one can do around the Tierra del Fuego: I sailed on the Beagle Channel, I flew over it, I rode a horse next to it, and hiked in the rather overrated national park.



However agreeable these activities may be when the weather is forgiving, once you have exhausted all these attractions things tend to get a bit boring. It is therefore hardly surprising that Argentina’s government first chose this remote location to deport its convicts in the early days of the last century, and then later had to provide outrageous tax breaks to attract investors and immigrants in order to populate this strategic area.





Jordi and Dubya

With not much better left to do, I kicked around town and became a good customer at one of the best local “parilla” places. Then I started to blend in with the furniture at the most southerly Irish pub in the world where I first came in contact with some Spanish bloke whom I would keep bumping into for the next weeks.

He introduced himself as Jordi to the little group of locals I was hanging out with one evening and then quickly started an energetic discussion in Catalan with the barman. As I overheard bits of the conversation about “double U” (W) and “las Torres”, I suspected Jordi was holding a travelertastic anti-American rant about 911 and the ensuing war on suspicious bearded types; I quickly lost interest in socializing with him.

Nevertheless, as I said earlier, I kept bumping into him all over Ushuaia. He showed up on my Beagle Channel boat trip, and then popped up from behind a tree in the remoteness of the national park on the next day; he also shopped in the same stores, ate in the same restaurants and drank in the same bars as I did. But I grew really wary when I realized he was also boarding my plane to Chile.

The town I was flying into, Punta Arenas, may be described by “guide” books as an atmospheric old gold rush town, but in another, more accurate way, is simply a rather average place with not much to do. This lack of obvious attractions is why I was only passing through it on my way to Puerto Natales, three hours up North by local bus. Take a wild guess as to who got on that bloody bus too… Yep, there was no escaping the spy.

LA PAMPA

The three hour drive to Puerto Natales made me realize for the first time just how derelict much of this part of the world really is. On the one hand, Patagonia has loads of really beautiful natural wonders: impressive glaciers, fabulous mountains and wonderful wildlife. However, Patagonia’s wondrous attractions are dotted across a desert of unremitting flatness and complete nothingness. What’s more, almost all of Patagonia has less than one person per square kilometer, meaning for the most part, there is absolutely nobody there.



It’s pretty difficult to maintain your interest on such a Turkmenistanesque environment for more than ten minutes, mainly because it’s just insanely dull. So when you are driving across this landscape you really have to readjust your interest threshold. And although at first I was bored, I soon adjusted and decided to overcome my prejudice and started chatting with Jordi.

It turned out that my initial judgment about him had not only been totally wrong, but also quite unfair. He actually just happened to be in the exact same situation I was in. He had also opted for an attractive deal from LAN Chile and thus also had to spend three additional days in Ushuaia waiting for the flight. So in all fairness, Ushuaia being what it is we were bound to bump into each other all the time over the course of a week.

Anyway, with the ice broken, our discussion shifted to our destination. Jordi turned out to be a very keen trekker who, after having completed the Annapurna circuit in the Himalayas, had decided to come to Patagonia with the sole intent of doing the “Torres Del Paine” circuit in Chile. This trek is often referred to as “the W” because the track is vaguely shaped like the letter on a map (although in reality it resembles the “W” I would draw if I tried with to do so with my left foot).



Nevertheless, Jordi was in no way the Bush Bashing Anti-American I had made him out to be; on the contrary, he was just an outdoorsy type who was very excited at the prospect of seeing one of the Southern Cone’s most beautiful natural wonders. His enthusiasm was so contagious that our discussion was locked on the topic of trekking for the best part of two hours. And when my guide book confirmed his statement that the Torres Del Paine trek was one of the most rewarding experiences in South America, I committed to accompanying him on this five day endeavor.

PUERTO NATALES

Puerto Natales is a much more interesting place than the Pampa surrounding it. For starters, it has quite a few great steak houses and nice cafes to chill out in. It also houses a casino where I ended up making a substantial amount of cash one evening. On the downside, Natales is also a total tourist town. It is the kind of place serving as a base for high achievers who go on holiday there to perform. The most visible manifestation of this performance-oriented culture is the amount of outdoor adventure stores you find around town.



Unlike everyone else there, I wasn’t keen on buying new performance gear, for I knew that I would toss it out as soon as I’d get in Rio a few weeks later, and so I didn’t quite see a point in it. Besides, as we proceeded through town to rent a tent, a stove and bought all the required food for our adventure, a local assured me that the harshness of the “W” is overrated and that I would manage to make do with a pair of jeans and a sweater, which is exactly what I did.

A walk in the (national) park

A couple of days later we arrived at the Torres Del Paine national park, a place that undoubtedly ‘enjoys’ the crappiest weather on the planet. It rarely ever gets above ten degrees down there and the odds are high are that you will experience snow, rain, mist and sunburn every single day during your trek. Nevertheless, it is certainly not overrated in terms of sheer beauty though. Here you not only get a massive glacier with some stylish icebergs floating nearby, but also really massive and cool looking razor sharp spikes of granite towering like a cathedral above an emerald lake.






Glaciar Grey


Glaciar Grey

We started off the first day with the Grey Glacier and, unlike what we had been told beforehand, the place was far from being as remote as people had made it out to be. It is important to point out at this stage that our decision to camp had not been based on keenness, but more on the misleading information we got in Puerto Natales about the lack of infrastructure in the park. I was utterly gutted to pitch up a tent next to a fully equipped lodge on the first night, but still, I thought that if I was going to carry this crap around for five days, I might as well use it, right? What a huge mistake for I haven’t slept a minute in this freezing and uncomfortable piece of sh*t.





Due to my exhaustion, I approached the second day in an extremely grumpy mood and almost quit the entire trek when after five hours of climbing we made it to a fogged up Val Frances. At the first lodge on the way back, I made up my mind, ditched the tent and checked in. Jordi wasn’t hard to convince either for after a night in a grotty tent, the lodge looked like a Four Seasons.





As they say, what a difference a night of sleep makes! I woke up on the third morning energized and ready to pounce. The timing of this mental turnaround couldn’t have been better planned for it is the toughest uphill climb of the circuit and we managed it in a breeze. The scenery was absolutely beautiful and the view over the Torres the next day was purely fantastic.



Altogether this whole experience was extremely rewarding and put me in a great mood to go to nearby El Calafate in order to admire the jewel of the crown in the world of glaciers.



El Calafate is perfectly nice in a sort of full-service tourist place kind of way. Hardly surprising since the town was built with the sole purpose of accommodating the stampede of visitors who come to see the nearby Perito Moreno glacier, which is widely held to be the most stylish glacier in all of South America. Like a good tourist, it was where I was headed too.



PERITO MORENO



The Perito Moreno is certainly top-notch: it is roughly the size of Buenos Aires, it is about sixty meters high and it is the fastest glacier in the world. It expands about 2 meters a day and massive shards of ice tumble off of it, thereby giving birth to a new iceberg every ten minute or so in an intense crackling sound of artillery fire. No superlative is really suitable for such a fabulous ice field. Nevertheless, after a few hours of gawking at this natural wonder, the magic eventually started to wear off and I went back to town to buy a flight to the Lake District in Northern Patagonia.





I bade farewell to Jordi, who had turned out to be a great travel companion. This great encounter was the first of many more to come in the ensuing weeks. Indeed, with only a single exception, my last five weeks on this round-the-world trip were full of great encounters. The first one of these strokes of luck came at the check-in counter of the tiny airport of El Calafate where I had the incredible surprise of seeing Mary and Darragh, the great Irish couple I met on the Uyuni tour in Bolivia, materialize in front of me. Unbelieeeevable! I mean, with all our respective changes in plans, what were the odds of us being on the exact same plane to Bariloche?



BARILOCHE

Bariloche, Argentina’s answer to Chamonix nestles at about 800 meters altitude in a fantastic setting next to a stylish lake. It is an unashamedly tourist town, whose only manufacturing industries are chocolate and woolen sweaters. On the downside, Bariloche has the darker reputation of having harbored Nazi fugitives after WWII. And even though it shows in the Bavarian architecture and Germanic names of buildings, the chances of bumping into a former Zonnerkind are actually quite slim.

I did have the displeasure of meeting a narrow-minded moron at the hostel though. There wasn’t a single redeeming factor to this guy. He impersonated and amplified every single despicable trait one can have. Not only was an idiot, but also an institutional racist and a pretty bad liar as well. His name was Olivier and he was trying to make friends with me as soon as he discovered that I lived in his home country, Belgium while he grilled a steak in the hostel kitchen – I mean, can you believe that? Cooking your own steak in Argentina… But I quickly got bored with him and his monologue and effectively killed the conversation when I declined his invitation for a piece of his steak and told him I’d get a real steak in a ‘Parilla’.

The next morning, I was woken up by the loud crashing sound of someone jumping off the top bunk. I looked up and realized it was him. Exasperated and exhausted I closed my eyes… then looked again; horrified… it couldn’t be true… I rubbed my eyes… yes it was… good God, he was wearing one of those tight leopard Chippendalish G-Strings under his beer belly! Un-fucking-believable! If anything else than making utterly sick to my stomach, this vision left me with no remaining doubt whatsoever about exactly what kind of a prick he was… It pains me that such an idiot serves as ambassador to such a nice country as Belgium. Assholes like him shouldn’t be granted a passport. But enough out of him, we have lost enough of your boss’s money talking about this dip shit.

Nazi criminals and Oliver aside, Bariloche is actually a pretty nice place. But I didn’t linger there for I wanted to get to Pucon where I had to meet with Mary and Darragh again a few days later. Nevertheless, on my last evening I managed to crack my ankle on a cobblestone curb. This would prove to be particularly annoying in Pucon, but was also quite humiliating at the time, for it happened on the way to the bar, not on the way back from it.


Bariloche

PUCON

The next day I headed up to Pucon, on a drive that by my reckoning is one of the prettiest of South America. Indeed, as the road weasels through a stylish pine forests a pristine scenery consisting of neat lakes rolls by. Beautiful.

Pucon is a town that is constantly referred to as the extreme sports Mecca of South America. I don’t quite get it for it is merely a place that happens to have nice lake, a volcano, hot springs and all that sort of stuff.

In fact, Pucon's crowning glory is Mt Villarrica which is reckoned to be one of the world's most handsome volcanoes. Villarrica is also one of the most active volcanoes in South America and is due to erupt anytime soon. When it does it will almost certainly obliterate the whole place. And the clock is ticking. Indeed, today, even from a distance, you can observe the smoke coming out of its top. Here, my cracked ankle proved to be quite annoying since it prevented me from climbing the volcano, and thus I had to make do with the crappy dark lava beach for a few days.

I met up with Nial and Brian who would become my partners in crime for the coming weeks. Together, we drove back to Argentina to check out the hangout of the filthy rich Argies: San Martin De Los Andes. It is a very nice place but a bit to quiet for our liking and so we left to Buenos Aires on the bumpiest flight I have ever experienced. But however turbulent the flight may have been, it didn’t come anywhere near the bumpy ride ahead in the Argentinean capital.

BUENOS AIRES AND MONTEVIDEO



Buenos Aires





We checked into the most popular guesthouse of the capital: the famous Milhouse, which would be the stage for the two most intense weeks of all-out partying I have ever done in my life. It is very hard to resist the temptation of going out in a city that lives for the night. I mean, when you look at the quality of the clubs and the women populating them, it’d be rude not to.






At some point, Nial couldn’t handle it anymore and decided to bail out to Ushuaia, presumably for some peace. Brian and I decided to tone it down a bit too and popped over the river towards Montevideo. The capital of Uruguay is a mini version of Buenos Aires; it is also considerably less polluted and substantially less hectic. It is actually a very nice place where we took in some quality beach time before heading back to our Argentinean den of vice to meet up with a group of my friends from home. To the great relief of my liver, which would have quickly required a transplant, I bade farewell to my great buddy Brian and booked a flight to my final destination: Rio de Janeiro.







RIO DE JANEIRO




Brazil’s most famous city is by all means an extraordinary venue to close such a magnificent year of traveling. It is difficult to define what makes this place so special. It is probably the combination of the bustling energy of its people, the sheer beauty of the city’s layout, the general laid back attitude and the delightful “bird watching” on Ipanema Beach where women wear the smallest bikinis on earth.

It is also the only city in the world where one can observe local men stroll leisurely around a shopping area in their Speedos while sipping a Caipirinha and going about their business.

So yes, Rio is chilled. And I seriously couldn’t have chosen a more suitable backdrop to lay down my bag one last time while taking some time to look back for the first time at what is most certainly the most interesting year of my life… so far.

Indeed, as you probably know by now, I have extended my sabbatical and will be exploring Africa and India in the coming months. So while the adventure goes on I’ll see you back here soon.

Suerte a todos,
Ciao
Remco.

Ipanema Beach



Favela kid