Journal... Part 4

Punta Arenas, March 6

Ostriches!  ...and more flamingos, along with a lot of sheep.            

I'm in Punta Arenas on the straights of Magellan and it's cold and wet; in the 50s with light rain.  I got here yesterday after a great bus ride from Puerto Natales across the Patagonian pampa.  Looks like Montana or Wyoming; mountains on the horizon, low wind-carved juniper-like trees, short steppe grass lands, shallow lakes, trout streams and rivers, occasional estancias (ranches)  with cowboys on horses, cattle and lots of sheep.  And, mixed in with the sheep, ostriches (actually rheas) about 5 or 6 feet tall.  I knew they were here, but didn't expect to see them by the dozens, in small flocks of 8 to 10, individually, groups with chicks, etc.  Surprisingly plentiful.  

Looking across the Straights of Magellan to tierra del Fuego

I also passed three hotels on trout rivers, and plan to go back to one of them tomorrow or the next day to fish and bird watch for a few days or maybe a week, and so will be out of email contact.  I know one charges $90 US per day, but there is one that the guidebook recommends at $15 a day with breakfast. Unfortunately, they don't have a phone so I'll just have to take the bus back and get off, hoping they have a room.  If not, well... they'll have to figure out something to do with me since they are 30 miles from anything else and bus service is pretty limited.  It should be OK, though... the tourist season is on the wane here and I doubt that they will be full.

So.... all continues to be well and I'm really looking forward to a few days of fishing and being outside... if only the weather improves a bit.

Puerto Natales, 3/12

Wow! Trout fishing in Patagonia!  Aside from freezing my ass off and almost getting blown into Argentina, it was a great experience... and I even caught fish!  Six on the first day, including one good one of about 16 inches.  Day two was less successful. I couldn’t hit the water standing on the bank for the wind.... the kind that you have to lean into to walk.  I did find a few sheltered spots up stream, but still didn’t do much... a couple of small ones.  But all that aside, it was really cool to not only fly fish in Patagonia, but to catch fish on my own flies, without a guide.. and while staying in a very pleasant $8.00 a night hotel... with breakfast!  (That should about use up my quota of exclamation points for the week.... but it was pretty great.) 

Hotel Rio Rubén

 While in Punta Arenas, I finally discovered a phone number for the Hotel Rubén (it was on the internet) and took the bus back to it.  The hotel, a large 2 story affair some 40 miles south of Puerto Natales, has 10 rooms above and a dining room/restaurant below, and was built in the 1930s.  My room, complete with 10 foot ceilings (I know because I could stand my fly rod upright) had the iginal wallpaper and furnishings, two single beds and a locker for clothes.  It was heated by a cheerful gas heater with a pilot light that lit up the room. Once I got used to the idea that if it hadn’t burned the place down in the previous 80 years, it probably wouldn’t burn down with me in it, I got to like the stove... a little like having my own fireplace.  Unfortunately, with the windows closed the curtains still blew around bit when the gusts were especially strong, but I was cozy with the stove and 3  blankets.  The bathrooms, down the hall as usual, were large and had good showers.  Below, the restaurant had a counter with stools, and above a menu, a shelf of liquor bottles, and assorted flyers and posters from the last 80 years. In front of the bar were about 8 tables, nicely set with unmatching table cloths, napkin holders, and catsup, mustard and aji bottles.  To the left of the bar was the kitchen door, and to the left of that, a little sitting area with old leather couches along the walls and a huge round wood stove in the middle.  Cozy, comfortable, homey, and looking like a roadhouse you might find somewhere west of Casper, WY.  The food was good and plentiful, mostly hot sandwiches and the like, which could be prepared quickly when the busses came in depositing 20 or more hungry tourists all at once, but there was also a daily almuerzo. I asked about lamb, and thought it was not evidently in the 

original plans, they changed them and served me a huge platter of assorted cuts of braised lamb the second evening.  Really a nice place, with friendly folks.  The manager drove me upstream the first morning to show me where to access some quieter parts of the river, and when I turned up with a cold on day two, they fed me lemon tea.

Hotel Rio Rubén’s dining room

I’ll spare you additional details of the fishing, but although he weather was raw (high 40’s with wind and occasional sprinkles) I really enjoyed it.  Hope to come back to stay a week sometime when the weather is a bit better.

Rio Rubéns

Anyway, with a chest cold coming on, a third day of fishing seemed like a mistake, so I caught a bus back into Puerto Natales, and the next day (yesterday) took a day-long tour of the Torres del Piane park.  Describing it seems a bit pointless, if not impossible, but it is truly incredible.  On a par (or more impressive than) Yosemite or Yellowstone, but with guanacos and rheas instead of bears and bison.  Great trip, covering around 250 miles in a 12 hour day with lots of stops to walk and lunch at the glacier Grey.

  

Torres del Piane

Later today I’m heading into Argentina for more glacier watching.

Bariloche, March 18

Ugg.   La gripa!  The cold that I started at Rio Rubéns last week has matured into a regular spring cold, complete with my usual 99º temperature. I feel like shit on a stick, but have spent a couple of pleasant days resting and recuperating (or at least waiting it out) in a nice hotel here in the Aspen of Argentina.  Bariloche, about a hundred miles or so SE of Villarrica in Chile, is a ski center and now, a trekking, climbing, rafting, fishing center for international tourism; not so much the backpacker sort, although they are here too, but for the middle and leisure class and retirees.  It is on a hillside overlooking a large lake with jagged Andes peaks behind it.  Much more up-scale than anywhere I’ve been previously on this trip, with lots of ski shops, designer clothing boutiques, gift shops, huge candy stores, parriadas (grilled meat restaurants), and so on.  All very up scale and …… cheap!  Argentina’s peso has fallen from one the US dollar in 2002 to 3 to the dollar today, while inflation has not kept up with the change.  Thus my hotel, with a smallish, very clean, modern room with bath, breakfast and cable TV is 50 pesos Argentinas ($A), or $17.50 US.  Dinner the other night in a black-tie-waiter parriada--grilled lamb, salad and a half bottle of wine--was under $10 US with a generous tip.  Jug wine is $.60 a liter, and good quality varietals are $2.50 and up.  The “up” ranges to around $10 and $12 US a bottle, and though there are certainly more expensive wines available, that’s about the range in grocery stores.  I stocked up on essentials at the local gourmet grocery before ensconcing myself in the hotel for the last two days, and spent $6.00 for good French bread, cheese, olives, Spanish style chorizo and a bottle of wine. (Drugs, however, are close to US prices, since generics seem unavailable and even aspirin come individually wrapped in plastic at $3 US for 50.)

Unfortunately, there’s not too much more I can tell you about Bariloche, since I’ve spent the last two days in my room watching the Argentine food network and BBC World.  Argentine foodies cook (and entertain their audience) more or less like the US foodies, but include recipes with innards--tripe, tongue--which would never show up on the American channel.  But, at least those are interesting, and since the weather has been cold (50’s) and grey, a few days rest hasn’t been all that bad.

I left Puerto Natales, from where I last emailed you, the next day via bus to El Califate, Argentina. The border crossing, in the middle of nowhere, was painless, involving only a 10 minute stop to have our passports stamped out of Chile, and another a few miles on, to have them stamped into Argentina.

El Califate is a smallish town on Lago Argentina, the largest Argentine lake. It seems to have only one reason for existence:  tourism to the nearby glacier, Perito Moreno, and of course, feeding, provisioning and souvenir-ing the tourists.  Although the town was small and the paved streets were limited, the tourist shops were very upscale. In Chilean resort towns, about one shop in 5 was “world-class,” like you’d expect to find in the US or Europe, and while the others were not exactly scruffy, they were slightly rough around the edges. In El Califate, 90% were world-class (as is the case here in the tourist center of Bariloche).  So, after a day of hanging around in El Califate, and eating at a pretty good tenedor libre buffet with the usual parrillada of beef and sausage ($5.30 + 1.60 for a half bottle of wine), I arranged a tour to the glacier. 

Glacier Perito Moreno

Pretty impressive!  But you’ll have to see the photos, glacial description is not my forte.  I did enjoy the people however.  My seat mate was a Spanish girl from Barcelona the same age as Celina…. a geriatric nurse (perhaps that was why she was so friendly to me) who had never traveled outside of Spain before.  She had Argentine friends in Spain, and they suggested that she come, so she did.  In spite of relatively little travel experience, she had no difficulty traveling alone for a couple on months. There were also three Japanese guys in their early 20’s whose English was better than their Spanish, for whom I did a little translating, and the usual assortment of Germans and Swiss.  Interesting people and a nice day, thought my cold made the trek along the lake to the glacier a bit wheezy. At that point, with no cold cure in sight and the prospect of  more cold weather and two 12 hour bus trips (at around $60 US each) to get me to Bariloche via the unpaved Argentine Andean highway, I decided to fly.  The Tuesday afternoon flight was uneventful, and though it was too overcast to see much, it got me to Bariloche in about 2 hours, which brings us about up to date.

I feel some better today… getting out of bed probably helps… and tomorrow I’ll be taking a van to San Junín de los Andes, via the seven lakes loop. Should be lots to see and should not be too demanding for my present puny state.  San Junín is renowned for its trout fishing, and depending on how I am feeling …and the weather, I may  fish for a few days.

Anyway,  Argentina is definitely going to be on the travel agenda again in the next few years, at least while the peso stays down (or unless the dollar continues to sink and we can’t afford to go anywhere).  I’m enjoying the country (if not the cold) and all is well.

On the bus to Mendoza

Mendoza, Argentina
3/23/05

Sunshine at last!  And Mendoza is a great place.  The urban area has about 900,000 people with Mendoza in the center.  The down town area includes a main square with four smaller squares at the corners a block or so away, and with a 4 block pedestrian mall filled with sidewalk cafes entering the square from the east.  The downtown is full of upscale shops and restaurants, not particularly tourist oriented, tough tourism is important, but directed at what is obviously a prosperous middle class.  Jewelry stores, electronics, shoes, sporting goods, clothing, cafes, internet, etc.  The only incongruous thing about it is that the prices are low.... if you are converting from dollars at A$ 3 to US$1.  Really sort of odd.  Whenever I’ve been somewhere with low prices in the past, they have been associated with low standard of living and lots of poverty.  While there is surely poverty here (not that I’ve seen any) the overall standard of living is high and people seem prosperous.  In the PM, the cafes are filled with well dressed folks of all ages having ice cream, espresso or drinking beer.  Waiters are polite and well dressed.... and thank you when you leave a .50 A$ (US $.17) tip when paying your A$ 4.50 bill for a liter of beer. Today I ate almuerzo in another tenedor libre parrillada, a huge place with a large crowd, black tie waiters (but not really fancy).  At a regular restaurant,  the main course is only the meat or pasta, and you order side dishes (which tend to be large enough for two) separately, so I’ve been eating mostly steaks or pasta and salad.  The buffet gave me a chance to have a little more variety, (bean salads, lentil salads, Serrano style ham, Brussels sprouts (!), etc. and grilled chicken - no beef for me today!)  at $3.60 for the meal and another $1.50 for a half bottle of wine.

Mendoza street cafes 

Anyway, it is a very pleasant place.  The streets are all lined with what look like sycamore trees, thought bushier and not as tall, and there’s a sidewalk cafe in most every block.  The streets and plazas are full of people, mostly middle class looking (almost no beggars, thought street acrobats and jugglers are common at intersections).  Everything is quite clean, with not only street leaners but merchants sweeping the sidewalks free of leaves several times a day.  The climate is editerranean, and days have been  bright and sunny, with clear smog-free skies and temps in the 70s.  Today I walked to the main park, of several sq miles, and between down town and there the streets were lined with nice, well kept upper-middle class homes.  The lake in the park is the home of the regatta club.... a very large club building with Olympic sized pool and several dining areas, and there were rowing sculls practicing in the lake.  All pretty remarkable.  I’d come back here.

Tomorrow I go on a winery tour.... recall that Mendoza is the center of the Argentine wine industry... to visit two wineries and to have a winy 5 course meal at one of them.  The most renowned Argentine wine is Malbec, a fairly heavy red, but they produce pretty good wines from all the standard varieties, including pretty good sauvignon blanc.  As noted before, I’m pretty well red-wine-and-beefed out for the moment, but I’ll still probably have a glass of malbec and some cheese and olives before bed.... but no real dinner.  Although I’ve probably stopped loosing weight, I’ve grown accustomed to eating less and one main meal a day is plenty.

Almueszo on the wine tour

Friday I go back to Santiago and will try to see the Concha y Torro winery there on Monday before leaving the city.  Then, Tuesday, it’s off to the airport and home.  Overall, a very good trip and I’ve learned a lot about what makes for good travel.  So..... this should be the last travelogue.  I’ll see you soon.

Last day in Santiago outside the Concha y Torro winery