Not so fresh from our overnight (22 hour) trip to Bariloche from BA, we headed to our hostel, which was just out of town but very good. The Greenhouse hostel in Bariloche is one of our favourites, it’s the way hostels should be… the manager, Tomas, really wanted everyone to have a brilliant time and it showed. We also got a great room with a great view, so we stayed for a week.

Bariloche is the gateway to Argentinian Patagonia, and the capital of the lakes district. It’s quite touristy in town, so it was good to be further out, the surrounding scenery and activities are spectacular. It’s a ski resort in winter time, but in Summer it’s all about trekking in the mountains and viewing the stunning lakes from different miradors.

We had intended to do a third week of Spanish classes but it was particularly expensive, so we satisfied our conscience with a few semi-private lessons with Spanish Lessons Bariloche and did lots of walking and cycling instead. This seemed sensible as we were particularly lucky with the weather, with solid blue skies and mid-20’s heat the whole time. On Rich’s birthday we went to the Llao Llao golf course and Rich chipped, putted and hacked his way around 18 holes… very impressive views, Michelle was an excellent caddy too! Satisfied with our work we relaxed over a few cervezas and enjoyed an asado at the hostel with some new friends.

We also cycled the Circuito Chico in Bariloche, a route around some of the most attractive lakes, walked towards Refugio Frey up the Cerro Catedral (ski region), kayaked on Lago Gutierrez, went white water rafting again on the Rio Manso which runs to the border with Chile, walked up hills and took cable cars up mountains all to get the best views.

After our week in Bariloche we headed south to Esquel, a small and straightforward town where we went to one of the worst hostels we stayed in on our trip (Andino Albergue), stark contrast to the Greenhouse. The only reason to be in Esquel is because it is located near to the Parque Nacional de los alerces (alerces are a type of tree). We went to the hassle of preparing some sandwiches (which Mich then forgot), got the early bus to the park and hiked three trails, including one to a beautiful laguna way above the rest of the park. We saw condors, gorgeous views of the mountains and a tree that was about 800 years old. There were some believed to be up to 3000 years old elsewhere in the park.

The next day to get out of Esquel we battled our way across the border, not so easy without a car or a bus, and got to Futaleufu in Chile. This is a beautiful and remote town in the Andes. We cycled again and climbed a hilltop with a dutch couple, Anique and Thijs. Rich tried to go rafting (supposed to be grade 5 rapids) but it wasn’t possible. From here we then headed further south (a long way from the recent earthquake, which had happened whilst we were in BA) to Coyhaique. The road in the south of Chile is called the Carretera Austral, and it is amongst the most beautiful in the world we are told, certainly as the peaks and lush green valleys rose and fell all the way down it was hard for us to disagree – really stunning.

In Coyhaique we stayed in a lovely hostel right in the middle of a forest, but had to spend the day in town sorting out the last of our box related drudgery including a trip to the notary (which is happily now finally ok). Next day was an early morning hike in the dark to catch a bus (the problem of staying in the forest not the town), and a trip to the small town of Chile Chico further down the Carretera Austral and via a 2 hour boat ride across a huge lake.

More driving from Chile Chico the next day, this time to Los Antigos back in Argentina (we got our fourth argentina entry stamp) and all the way down (another 14 or so hours to el Chalten. The Parque Nacional los Glaciers has two entrance points, el Chalten in the north and el Calafate in the south. At el Chalten you can hike to the Fitz Roy massif and other peaks. In a relatively hard core moment we arrived at el Chalten about 6 in the morning on the bus - having not really slept as the road down was unpaved ripio and very bumpy – walked for about 8 hours and then caught the bus straight to el Calafate from there, another 4 hours. Sadly for us though, the massif was partly covered in cloud so we didn’t see much of the view… it was a good hike though with a nice American couple celebrating their honeymoon, Ben and Zoe, and we got some moody, misty, if cloudy views of the Tres Lagos area that we hiked to.

In el Calafate we did three things: hired a truck; visited the Perito Moreno glacier in the park; and ate an incredible meal of Patagonian lamb (see the photo on the blog). The truck was a stroke of luck, the buses were horribly timed and pricey, so we had all but agreed to rent a knackered old Renault Megane when we found a company that needed a Toyota Hilux moved from el Calafate back to Ushuaia (where we were headed), so we got it cheap, result.

The glacier was stunning, it is rare in this time of global warming as it is advancing. This is due to its location between high mountains and it’s presence almost in a wind tunnel which carries rain through as snow to form the glacier. We went on a boat to get up close, and played the game of watching and waiting for chunks to drop off in the water due to the heat of the afternoon sun.

We burned some cd’s for the road, courtesy of Mich’s brother Dave who had sent us some new tunes (we love Band of Skulls), and set off for Chile in the Toyota at dawn. Our target that day was the Torres del Paine, a national park in Chile with a great reputation. We arrived there about 2pm, and started a long walk to the middle of the park. We had intended to camp, but failed as they had no equipment to rent us, so we stayed in a massively overpriced refugio before heading off at almost dawn to try and reach the summit by sunrise. It was about 3 hours walk and we got there just as the last of the morning sun was coming up, the sight of the three peaks of Torres del Paine with the green lake underneath will stay with us forever – not least as it was a hard hike, with winds around 90kph and some serious hills.

We left the park and drove through Puerto Natales to Punto Arenas which is Chile’s biggest town in the south, and it has a generally pleasant feel with some colonial buildings and a large dock area. No time to dawdle though, some brief sightseeing in the morning and back on the road, this time not through the mountainous views of the Andes, but across large expanses of not much, flat, arid, windy farmland with lots of sheep and cattle and little else. We took a boat to the island of Tierra del Fuego off the bottom of Argentina and Chile. Strangely you have to go through Chilean Tierra del Fuego to get to Argentinian, although there is very little on the Chilean side. We got our fifth and final Argentinian entry stamp and drove (quickly) through Rio Grande, a drudge of a town on the Argentinian side with a naval base and loads of references to the Islas Malvinas/ Falkland Islands everywhere. This was from where they had launched the offensive to the Falklands in 1982. It was equally patriotic in Ushuaia, with graffiti references to English being pirates, streets called Heroes of Malvinas and Malvinas Argentinos, a Malvinas airport, and active protests in the steets. We didn’t talk about nationalilty with the locals too much, but when we did they were nice enough.

The road approaching Ushuaia was gorgeous and mountainous again, which limited the effect of the wind and moderated the climate. We arrived in Ushuaia at night fall and were greeted by fireworks, really the least they could do… it might also have had something to do with the presence of 10 or so tall sailing ships that were in the bay to celebrate the bicentenary of some Argentine general’s death.

In Ushuaia we visited another national park whilst we still had the car and saw some active beaver colonies and lots of birds in the forest. We also did a sailing tour on the Beagle channel, to follow the footsteps of Darwin in 1832, and walked on an island in the channel where indigenous people used to shelter from strong winds. These people wore no clothes (covering themselves in animal fat and huddling together to keep warm – they also say they had evolved differently to adapt and had average body temperatures of 38.5 degrees). They survived well enough and ate fish and sealions for thousands of years until settlers made them ill and they mostly died off. Darwin’s boat actually took 4 of these “savages” to the civilized world (and named them ridiculous things like Jemmy Button, York Minster, Boat Memory and Fueguia Basket) and educated them in English and Christianity before taking them back. But they preferred their nomad lifestyle.

Straight after the sailing we did another tour, this time to see a Penguin colony of the Magellanic and Gentoo species. There were around 4000 penguins on their protected island (down from around 14000 at the peak, they had started migrating back to Antarctica). They waddled and scratched and howled their way around, and were very cute and fun to watch. We took lots of photographs of them and the gorgeous scenery.

We nearly didn’t go to Patagonia because we thought we wouldn’t have time. As you can tell from this blog we did have to cover an awful lot of ground (the road that we spent a lot of time on in Argentina – route 40 – is the distance between Amsterdam and Afghanistan in its entirety) but most of the roads are so beautiful that this really wasn’t a chore, and the whole area is stunning and relaxing and we got to do so many things that these few weeks go down as one of the highlights of our trip so far.