One Way United

Imagine you´ve just gotten finished hiking for three days in the Parque Nacional Los Glaciers. You´re tired, you´re sweaty, you´re famished and parched. You´ve just spent several days of non-stop walking through one of the most breathtaking sites in Argentina including the monumental Cerro de Fitz Roy mountain range with it´s granite towers reaching up to the heavens themselves, splitting the clouds as they roll by. After spending your time basking in this natural glory you tromp down a steep hill sore and stiff. And there is El Chalten, a town so small it can´t have more than 500 people living in it. Nestled between two gigantic mountain ranges this little village appears out of nowhere after the bus ride from El Calafate. It´s quiet and peaceful and right at the fringe of the park. In fact you´re required to stop at the ranger station on your way in and can walk straight from your house to one of several trail heads, all of which interconnect at some point in the park. This made for lots of walking and after making it back to town we only had to walk two blocks to get to our hostel. The three of us (me, Jordan, and our French friend Fabrice) took our turns in the shower and then made our way to the traditional post backpacking trip meal: one large pizza per person and whatever we desired to drink which this time was a strawberry smoothie for Jordan and I followed by a glass of the local beer (wasn´t that great by the way). On a side note neither of us really liked beer before starting this trip but now seem to be developing a taste for it. Weird. Granted we have maybe one a week it seems like.

After this feast we lounge around for a while and then prepare for bed, for in the morning we have to be up for an 8:15 bus to Los Antigous, a small town on the Chile/Argentina border. We load up and prepare for the long 14+ hour drive. I settled in and put on my iPod and get set to watch the world go by. And oh what a world. I have never seen a road like this in my life. Going up the famous route 40, this way is a pure gravel and dirt road that at one stretch is literally six hours inbetween towns. In between is a vast expanse of desolate Patagonian desert that is just mesmerizing. The rolling dusty hills lead to flat lands with nary a tree in sight for hundreds of miles. This barren desolate land is almost too real to believe. At one point our bus came to a screeching halt and one of the attendants jumped out to grab hold of a live armadillo for us to look at! We got some good pictures (haven´t posted them yet) and I had no idea how furry these things were underneath. The poor creature squirmed and shook trying to get away, but the attendent had him held tight, sometimes by the tail. Then he let it go and the bus continued on its way.

The bus is cramped and hot as there is no air conditioning and no bathroom either. So you just sit and watch the desert roll by. As the sun began to set in the late afternoon we took a pit-stop in this middle of nowhere town that was comprised of just a few small blocks. Then we got back on the bus and continued on our way down the long winding dirt road. The air cools as the sun goes down, and as it disappears it lights up the clouds in the sky in way I´ve never seen before. The brilliant colors rain down as if the gates of Heaven were opening up. Luckily we got to stop and take some pictures. I felt like I could have stayed there just staring at the sky forever.

The bus rolls away and we look out on the vast desert expanse, and random herds of horses are grazing and running alongside. People scramble to take pictures of the horses who just look at us without a care in the world. Not hard to see why. They are so far away from anything human out here with just the occassional farm, they must run as free as they please across the land. As night falls and the last of the sun´s light fades we look the other way to say a very full and very orange moon rise over the horizon. It soon provides the only light visible from the bus as the rest of the sky becomes black and cold. Sitting there listening to Nickel Creek I felt very much far away from everything that I know and consider normal. This was a wild untamed land, and it´s hard not to appreciate it´s beauty as we pass through.

We will most likely pass into Chile again now. Jordan and I need to take a couple days to rest and let our bodies recover as we´ve spent more days than not backpacking in the outdoors these last two weeks. It´s totally worth it, but it can wear you out. Jordan´s knee has been bugging him and my hip has been a little sore, so we´ll likely just chill with our friend Fabrice while we figure out where we´re going next. Also we´ve added a new page to the website. Click on the “moments” link at the top and you can read some more in depth perspectives on things we´ve seen and done down here instead of the usual “Hiked this trail, posted this picture” posts. Also check out the Argentina and Chile pages under countries. Hope everything is good stateside!

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There´s something about travel that makes getting up at un-godly hours of the morning a lot easier. Normally being roused out of bed at 4:30 a.m. would have made me hell to deal with for a good while after that, but even with getting on a bus knowing I had a long day of sitting ahead I was glad to be moving again. Ushuaia had been great but I was ready to move on to see what else this land has in store for us. So I´m sitting on a crowded bus staring out the window listening to my iPod. This thing has been a lifesaver by the way. Without this little machine I might have gone stir crazy with these long bus rides (I usually don´t sleep too well in moving vehicles). So I have some quiet peaceful music playing and am watching the world pass by. Jordan is in the seat next to me asleep, blissfully unaware of anything going on around him (plus the fact that he is beginning to drool all over himself). You can barely see out the windows as the condensation is completely covering them. I wipe some if it off and use the water to clean my glasses. It´s a real challenge to keep these suckers clean I tell you. These long rides give you pleanty of time to think, if you think of anything at all. I often find myself remembering friends and family or fatasizing about what will come in the next place we visit. Mostly I just stare and watch the rolling Patagonian hills fly by as the long grass blows in the wind. The occassional, and very frequent, flock of sheep will pass as well.

This continues on as the bus crosses the Argentina/Chile border and we board a ferry to cross the channel. We´re a little pressed for time as this bus will stop in Punta Arenas and we will have to get on another one heading to Puerto Natales almost right away. We were a little worried we wouldn´t make it as the first bus arrived about ten minutes after the other one was supposed to have left. Fortunately we found that our bus was set to leave in about fifty minutes, so we spent some time on the internet. When we finally got on the bus we settled in for a three-hour ride to our final destination for the day…Or so we thought.

This bus had an odd little conducter who might have been mute as I never heard him speak a single word. He would use sign language (or really exaggerated hand gestures) to communicate and was really funny to watch. The girls on the bus really liked him as he spent quite a bit of time teasing them. I thought he looked kind of like a hobbit almost, although by comparison the majority of the locals we meet are shorter than I am.

About an hour into the bus ride the vehicle began to shake violently back and forth. Several times the driver stopped to get out to see if he could fix it. To no avail we kept going, with the bus beginning to slow down and stall repeatedly. The driver tried to find a phone, but none of them worked and we ended up turning around and heading back to Punta Arenas. And finally, just ten mintues outside of town the bus broke down and refused to go any further. One of the men in charge took a cab into town to get help and left a bus full of cold people on the side of the road, in the dark, for about an hour. Jordan and I were starving as we´d never had a chance to stop for food so all day all we´d been eating were cookies, crackers, and cereal bars. Finally the a new bus came and everyone loaded on it and we set off for Puerto Natales only to get in at 2:00 in the morning. What should have been an easy three hour ride ended up being a seven hour ordeal. And the bus dropped us off on this dark empty street corner and left us there in the freezing cold. We´d had a reservation at a hostel here so I grabbed the guide book and started to make our way there. We rang the bell at the door but the woman running the place said she was full and we couldn´t get in. Fortunately a little old couple around the corner was running a hostel as well and they had pleanty of room for us. So we buried our tired freezing bodies under the heavy blankets and went to sleep without ever having had an actual meal that day.

Today we´re feeling much better and have met up with our friend Mounya we met in Ushuaia. We our now planning for a three to four day backpacking trip in the Torres del Paines national park. I´m excitied as it should be an easy relaxing hike with beautiful scenery. We should be able to see glaciars as well! Hope everyone is doing great. Miss you all.

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So I have good news and bad news. The good news is that Jordan and I now have combined 234 mb worth of photos. The bad news is that due to a defective computer we can´t upload any so you can actually see them. Take heart and hopefully we will find a machine that´s more cooperative in the near future. On the bright side when we finally do get some pictures up I think you will really like them. Between the two of us we have 79 pictures of the Magellenes Penguins we went to see yesterday. That´s right: 79 pictures of nothing but penguins. And Jordan has also decided to take a picture of any unusual food he eats while down here. Due to the fact that pizza has been one of our meals just about every single day we´ve been here he only has two. One is of a giant sandwhich that has nothing but chicken and cheeze in it. The other is of some ¨chiken soup¨ which has soup water with a whole wing of chicken, bones and all, sitting in it. It was actually pretty good though.

In other news we will be moving on from Punta Arenas tomorrow bright and early. We´ll be heading back to Argentina and down to Ushuaia, hopefully to do a little backpacking in the Tierra del Fuego National Park. I can hardly wait to spend a little time outdoors. I can forsee myself getting real tired of eating in restaurants all the time. If I were to name the one thing I miss the most about the states aside from people it would probably be mom´s home cooking…that and being able to drink out of the faucet. Later all!

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