DAYS 117 - 131 : ARGENTINA
FITZ ROY MASSIF MOUNTAIN RANGE - EL CHALTEN, ARGENTINA
Oh Argentina! The land of mouthwatering empanadas, six dollar bottles of Malbec and sky piercing, story book worthy mountains.
I mean, really…could it get any better??
We began our trip to South America by flying into Buenos Aires. And to preface this - we’re not city people. We don’t really dig crowds, traffic, loud unsettling noises – large groups of humans in general really. And after the onslaught of the former in places like Bangkok and Kathmandu – we had pretty much decided for the rest of our trip to avoid big cities like the plague. Thus, when booking our airfare our plan was to fly into BA and get the heck out as fast as we possibly could.
Buuuut thanks to a surprisingly serendipitous airline strike (apparently not all that uncommon around these parts) we were stranded in the city for a couple of days. And thank god. It ended up being an awesome little detour that I’m really glad we didn’t miss.
One of the things that I loved – is that people in South America get started late. Like way late. Like don’t even eat dinner until mayyybe 10pm. So during the day – everything is pretty quiet. It made strolling the streets in the afternoon a casual affair. It gave you a chance to peacefully soak in the old-world architecture and admire the colorful café’s and bodegas that nestled themselves along the sidewalks. We wandered into the coolest little markets and stuffed ourselves with empanadas and spent an afternoon reading in the sunshine in one of the corner parks. It was lovely.
But once we were finally able to iron out our airline debacle, we waved goodbye to Buenos Aires. It was time to get south. Next stop, Patagonia.
For all y’all who don’t know. And based on a majority of the questions I’ve gotten, I’d assume it’s more than a few – Patagonia isn’t a country. It’s a region making up the southern most parts of Argentina and Chile. And like you might imagine – it’s a place that is beyond your wildest dreams.
There are beautiful glacial rivers that snake through the countryside and dump themselves into gigantic crystal lakes. Desolate, arid fields of nothingness that allow wild horses and ostriches and guanacos (llama looking things) to make themselves at home. Blue lagoons filled with hot pink flamingos. Gigantic birds that circle through puffy white clouds. And the thinnest, pointy-est, craziest looking mountain ranges you have ever seen. That look like maybe once-upon-a-time some colossal giant reached down and pinched their peaks and pulled and pulled and pulled and pulled until they stretched into the air above – and got stuck there.
The weather here is a bi-polar tasmanian devil on crack. The wind roars and the rain appears whenever it damn well pleases and the forecasts are mere suppositions that I’m sure some poor weatherman is constantly being scorned for. There’s a lot of take your coat off, put your coat on again nonsense and your balance is constantly going up against hurricane style gusts, but when the sun peaks it’s head from behind the clouds it’s so beautiful that you pretty much forget all that.
We started in a gorgeous little place called El Calafate and made our way north to El Chalten – a small backpackers town known for its proximity to the insane looking Fitz Roy Massif Mountain Range.
We spent about ten days in El Chalten – admiring the scenery and doing quite a bit of backpacking – an activity that I’m still getting used to and constantly joke to Brad, must have been invented by people that love to suffer…
But as per usual, I must say, that while I have my limits, walking into the depths of a Patagonian national park for days at a time has its perks. Big ones. Like gazing upon the most beautiful things you have ever seen in your life. Like drinking water straight from the source of a melting glacier. Like being able to say you strapped yourself into a harness and dangled from a suspended cable in order to cross a raging river and lived to tell the tale.
So thank god for selective memory. And that feelings like hunger and annoyance and muscle cramps are fleeting. Because I know that in a few days we’ll be out on the trails again, lugging those damn packs – in search of some new place that will no doubt make my eyeballs pop out of my head in awe.
As for right now, we’re waiting to catch a 10-hour bus up to Los Antiguos where we’ll cross the border into Chile. And I suppose if you have to spend 10 hours in any moving vehicle, you’d want it to be some place where the view from the windows is entertainment alone.
Until next time.
-Kenze
