Round the World Chelle: Volcanoes, Mountains, and Glaciers

11/26/11 (Quite behind here!)

Volcanoes, Mountains, and Glaciers

As mentioned in the last post, I’m finding it’s a lot more difficult to update a blog when traveling by Gus than it is when staying in conventional hotels or hostels. It’s not that we’re camping every night, because we are spending some time in hostels. But we are spending a lot of time on the road (Patagonia is a pretty big place to cover!), and when we’re stopped, we’re climbing a mountain or visiting a glacier or gazing at a waterfall. So, instead of trying to explain everything that’s happened in the last little while, this entry is going to share the highlights, a lot of it through pictures. (My original plan was to include Pucón in this two-week highlight entry. The problem is, once I start reflecting on a place, there’s so much I want to remember I just keep writing.)

The landscape in Patagonia is breathtakingly beautiful. Really, we’re driving along and could stop every three minutes to take a new picture of a striking site. Fortunately we don’t, as the days have been long enough with the lunch, toilet, and the occasional can’t-miss-this-photo-opportunity stops we’re already making.

Sites along the drive: (I don't know where all of them were--need to be better about staying current with this blog!)

We left Pucón under cloud covered skies and went to Puerto Montt where we were to take an overnight ferry to Chaiten. I’ll admit there wasn’t much going for Puerto Montt, especially as most places were closed because it was Sunday. As we weren’t sure what food shopping opportunities were ahead, the group had to make a big shopping run.

Can you tell where I forgot to reapply on the volcano?

Shopping like this is an interesting exercise in group dynamics. Our trip leader Clare has divided the 21 of us into cooking groups (ours has five people, most have four—don’t know how she knew about my lack of skills in the kitchen) and made each group responsible for various meals. When a group’s meal time approaches, the group is responsible for shopping and preparing the food. Dinner is the most involved meal as it requires cooking. Somehow, though, my group was scheduled only for breakfasts and lunches (again, good premonition by Clare?). These typically entail cereal and sandwich makings, but even still, it’s hard shopping for 23 with four other people on a tight budget: some in the group think cheese for sandwiches is more important than meat, some want chips while others want eggs, some think we’ll have too much food while others think we’ll have too little. Some get overwhelmed by the process and just shut down while others become too bossy. And today, all the groups were shopping for one or two meals.

After a very long hour or so, our group managed to buy our supplies (and were slightly under budget!) and headed to the truck to load the goods. Getting everything into Gus and ready for the ferry was another process, but fortunately, this was a little easier to accomplish. The rest of the day was spent at a restaurant waiting for 10:00 to come so we could board the ferry.

The ferry crossing was pretty uneventful, though our friend Erin earned the nickname Judas when she decided to fill the fourth spot in a room of boys instead of rooming with Helen, Jane, and me. (This meant that our fourth spot was filled by Heiko, a nice, fizzy drink-loving, photo-taking German man. While it wasn’t a big deal to share with him, it did mean we all had to be a little more discreet with changing and sleep attire, and we now had a noisy sleeper in the room.) It was also amusing to watch the semis, diggers, JCBs, and other heavy industrial machinery exit the belly of the ferry while we waited for Gus to be released and to disembark ourselves.

It's amazing what they fit into the ferry!

Helen, Heiko, me, Jane

Gus being released from the ferry's belly

Chaiten was just a stop on our way south. A nearby volcano erupted several years ago, and the ash from it basically dammed up the river and caused major flooding which destroyed much of the town. There are remnants of houses strewn along the beach that look like they came from Dorothy’s Kansas.

That night we camped in a beautiful spot below the Colgante Glacier. While we were at a campsite that should have had facilities, there weren’t any. After searching in vain for the bathroom, Helen and I realized that the building we were looking for was in fact the charred structure we had passed a couple hundred yards from our campsite. How a bathroom catches on fire, I’m not sure. There was a shelter at the site, and Heiko (fizzy-pop drinker) had had the foresight to purchase marshmallows at our grocery store extravaganza. We roasted them on forks before heading to bed.

The next morning consisted of a short hike to the glacier viewing point before another long day of driving.

It turns out that our big shop for five days in Puerto Montt was a bit premature as there was in fact a very large grocery store where we stopped for the night. So large that I got carried away looking at groceries and was almost left there. (Okay, the group probably wouldn’t have left me, but they did send in a search party. Oops.) There seems to be a mentality on the truck that when there is a chance to buy food, we should embrace it, and there is definitely a lot of eating going on most all the time. We were scheduled to camp again this night, but the camping spot was quite small and in the middle of town, so we decided to stay in a quaint hostel a little out of town instead.

Showers are always a big unknown while traveling. You’ll get cold showers, scalding hot showers, drizzles, deluges, water that stops once you’ve lathered the shampoo in your hair. Normally I’m just happy when there is a shower, but at times, I end up disappointed as a shower will tease you by pretending like it’s going to be a good one (hot with decent water pressure) only to leave you go out on you when you want it most. The shower at this hostel was this type. Having an instant water heating system seemed like a shoo-in for great shower (no need to race for the hot water!), but for whatever reason, the pilot light for the women’s heater wouldn’t stay lit. We ended up needing to have someone stand watch in the hall while we showered. Every couple minutes, “Please check the pilot light!” could be heard following a loud gasp from the shower. But we did get clean.

The next day was another early start to a long drive ending at a campsite at Puerto Guadal. The site couldn’t have been in a more idyllic spot—a clear lake surrounded by snow-capped mountains. Though it was close to 8:00 by the time we arrived and got our tents pitched, the sun was still up and several of us braved the icy lake water and had a refreshing swim before sunset. The southern sky was brilliant that night and I saw several shooting stars before finally going to sleep.

Sophie, Erin, Damian, me, Paul/Johnny, Heiko enjoying(?) a swim at dusk.

Can't complain about waking up early when getting up to this!

We had another 7:00 breakfast and were packed and on the road by 8:00. It was going to be a long day including crossing into Chile Chico, Argentina. Border-crossing, it turns out, is quite a nerve-wracking process for our guides. Fortunately, ours was without incident and we were back on the road within an hour and a half.

Although we didn’t make our planned 5:00 arrival to the Cueva de Manos (Cave of Hands), a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Rio Pinturas, we did manage to make it there in time for the final tour of the day at 7:00. The site has stenciled paintings of hands as old as 9,000 years old. The native people made the paintings by blowing paint with their mouth over their hands. (It’s like well-preserved very large kindergarten Mother’s Day project.) As it’s a UNESCO world heritage site, I believe the history behind it, but there were definitely some in the group who were skeptical of the authenticity of the whole place. I’ll admit it’s a little strange that these paintings have been so well preserved for thousands of years, but in the past 30 since their discovery they’ve noticeably faded. At any rate, the visit broke up the drive.

Preparing for the cave. Not sure of the need for the hardhats...
but they look good.

9,000 years old? Or maybe just 1000. Still, they're pretty old.

Our bush camp that night really was in the middle of nowhere. By the time we found a reasonably flat place to stay, we had little time to set up camp before dark. Helen and I quickly pitched our tent. It was a cold night and the sky was threatening rain. (You need to be more careful about using your flysheet when it’s raining, and evidently, Helen and I had much to learn about this. Fortunately, Clare came around and made sure our stakes were driven in tight enough to keep us dry in case of a deluge.)

Real bush camping

Good Old Gus

From there, we drove 580 kilometers to Glaciers National Park in El Chalten. There we had two days of hiking among beautiful landscapes, though the hail and snow would not have been my first choice of weather in which to experience them. It cleared up as we were leaving, however, and we had some fantastic views of Fitz Roy as we were leaving the third morning.(Even though it might look by my clothes that all the hiking was on the same day, it really was over two--you just get careful about using up clean clothes when traveling with two pairs of pants. :))