PatagoniaBalonia

I landed in Reykjavik yesterday but, continuing my habit of backlogged posts, I will launch the Patagonia update before providing anything about my realtime wherabouts. We began October with a flight to El Calafate—a backpackers paradise in the southwest corner of the Santa Cruz province of Patagonia. El Calafate serves as a kind hub for the glacier trekkers, situated about one hour from Perito Moreno (glacier) and a smattering of other things that one would like to do with a backpack. We bussed to Perito Moreno, took a long hike around the landscape stopping often for gorgeous glacier vistas. Poorly clad in less-than-hardy winter gear purchased from a sketchy camping store in BA, we put on crampon’s and hiked the ice itself for a good hour and a half ending with a toast of Famous Grouse in the “only place where the ice is older than the scotch."
The most awe inspiring thing, if I might use grandiose nature tropes, were the sounds of the ice cracking, which was something like a muffled sonic boom at the end of a towel-lined tunnel. Alright, that was less than colorful analogy but picture a woolly mammoth falling off a trampoline onto a giant's bass drum.

View from the ferry

Perito Moreno

ice.

Our getaway boat

Famous Grouse

Crashing glacier bits

El Chalten
A few days after El Calafate we bussed to El Chalten, a small town thrown together in 1985 by Argentina to stake the land claim from Chile with one ATM that usually runs out of money before noon. The town is a ramshackle model village nestled between goliath cliffs and Cerro Torre, a glacier, and the salmon-pewter tinted mountain ranges surrounding the iconic peak, Fitz Roy. Because of the hasty job (land politics) throwing the town together, there is quite literally no infrastructure or tourist resources besides two offices which aren’t really open before October 15. In fact, very little is open before October 15th which is when the backpacker season started. Luckily, we got there when prices were still low and the hiking was uncrowded. El Chalten is the most spectacular hiking I have ever done in my long, weathered and worldly life.

Lil' model village, waiting for a giant man with glasses and a sweatervest to peak over the back holding a house in a pair of tweezers

Lil' Chalten

Café chess, post Roquefort pizza (and pre-three-day-oatmeal-hiking-diet)

Fitz Roy (the tallest peak) from the town. Peak to the left is named after Antoine de Saint-Exupery, who was a
pilot over this region while in exile. Apparently a good deal of his creatures come from the geographic shapes (from an aerial view)
here and near Puerto Madryn.

Outdoors with a makeshift flimsy pack.

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First signs of spring in Patagonia

Refilling the water boteille—all the stream water was drinkable

At the furthest and highest point of our trek, steep snowy ascent to the base of Fitz Roy. And a view of the valley.

Fitz Roy, again

Zen spot

Man vs. nature reaches a symbiotic conclusion

This is what was under the ground, beneath a thin later of dirt, in the morning.

Largest lagoon in Patagonia

Puerto Madryn
The week ended 1338 km north at whale-watching Nirvana in Puerto Madryn. So many whales. Puerto Madryn is a small city in the Chubut province.

Whales from the beach

Penguins in Peninsula Valdes

Patagonian 'dillo

Topaz waters of Peninsula Valdes, the tip of that little sediment peninsula shifts shapes and length constantly

Elephant seal harbor

Penguin colony—Peninsula Valdes

These are pregnant female Right Whales, suspending themselves upside down in the water and
stretching their bellies, hence theabundance of tail fin pictures.