Argentinian Patagonia: Calafate and Perito Moreno Glacier

From the plane we looked out at Tierra del Fuego and then Patagonia—miles and miles of uninhabited hills and the occasional body of water. Before the trip, a friend of mine told me that Patagonia was good for getting a sense of your place in the world. I thought, don't worry, I can manage to be self-absorbed anywhere.

We boarded our flight cranky and hungry; the only food for sale at the airport was a small, $5 bag of chips, so we dug into our supply of granola bars, already sick of them. We were weary and wary. One of the many things that we anticipated could go wrong was not having a car in Calafate. The buses were not an option for our very compressed itinerary; if the car (or cars) had fallen through, we’d be in for some expensive private drivers. Latish on a Sunday is not an ideal time to rent a car in the tiny Calafate airport, and we weren’t sure we could do it, but Localiza apparently keeps its stall there open if there’s a late reservation. Localiza also has terrible, terrible reviews. As a backup, we’d booked another car for Monday morning (but we’d have lost time waiting for the place to open).

Upon landing, I waited for our luggage while Jason went to see if we had a car. As everyone else’s luggage emerged, I tried to gauge whether Jason was successfully filling out car paperwork or if he just couldn’t get back into the baggage claim area. I started to fret about my backpack (I had been very prepared to conquer Buenos Aires in the event of lost luggage, with enough clothes for a few days in my carry-on pack, but I’d become complacent because how do you lose bags between two tiny airports). Finally, mine came out... but Jason’s didn’t. An airport official came to tell me that all the bags were out, and pointed me to a dude to talk to in case one was missing. But I didn’t have Jason’s luggage tag, and he couldn’t get back in. I started to make my way over there when his bag finally emerged, to my enormous relief. I was even more relieved when I saw him signing papers at the Localiza counter. Localiza “upgraded” us to a ridiculous, banged up pickup truck, but we were in no position to complain. We headed into town, checked in to our B&B and headed straight to dinner. At 10pm, it was still light and entire families were just being seated for dinner.

This was after 10pm

We wined and dined, and turned in later than we'd have liked ahead of our early-morning outing to Perito Moreno Glacier.

We said goodbye to the glacier and left for Chalten for views of Cerro Fitz Roy.

Tierra del Fuego

Tierra del Fuego was a detour that we made the right choice to make. Ushuaia can be dismissed as unworthy or reduced to a starting point for cruises to Antarctica. Kiera (who later dropped out of the trip) voted to include it, and Jay, who likes his extremes (eg., southernmost city in the world), was in. I myself was not blasée to the idea of the end of the earth.

I popped into the tourist info place upon arrival in Ushuaia and got a list of the various Beagle Channel cruises. I was also pointed to the private bus companies (a few people in a stall). I hoped to make it out to Laguna Esmerelda, but it was not to be. There was some kind of futbol game on account of which certain buses weren't running. I was negotiating with the bus “company” when someone else with the same destination in mind showed up. They wouldn’t take us to the Laguna, but now that there were two of us they were willing to catch us up to the another bus that had just left for Tierra del Fuego National Park. We were in. They gave us trail maps and suggested one for the four hours we’d have in the park before the last bus back. They also suggested we hike together, even though you can’t really get lost. The guy, it turned out, was Russian (living in Germany) and was thrilled to have someone to talk to in Russian. I was happy to have a companion for the afternoon.

We set off along the lake

Bordered on the other side by woods

in which we met a woodpecker.

and some other birds

until we hit the Chilean border

At which point we turned around and headed back to the lodge. 

This guy was pretty jaded about the scenery, having already done Torres del Paine, and noted that I was doing things in the right order. We walked along the lake, with snowcapped mountains on the other side, he shrugged and said “you can see that in Norway.” On the way back, I translated back and forth as he negotiated with the bus company to take him to the Laguna the next day and get him to the airport on time. I got back into town not long after Jason got in. We got a late-for-us, normal-for-Argentina dinner.

The next morning, we set off on a Beagle Channel cruise. The boat pulled away from the city and its snow-capped mountains.

 Toward some seals

 and other birds.

Magellanic penguin

Gentoo penguins

On the way back, the wind splashed water over the entire height of the boat. I took some pictures of the water flowing down along the glass.

 Because of the fierce winds, the cruise took longer than expected. We got off, picked up our bags, and hoofed it to the airport for our hop to Calafate.

First stop, Buenos Aires

I’d wanted to go to Buenos Aires forever. I had a lot of Argentinian professors in college, who fed us plenty of Argentinian literature and cinema. I swooned over Borges, Cortázar, etc. When the captain announced that we’d arrived in Buenos Aires, I broke into a massive grin, hardly believing it, and into another when the Argentina stamp landed on my passport.

I regret to confess that I didn’t make the most of the great city (I guess that’s fine, since it was my throwaway day in case of an airline fuck-up, and I'll be back once I figure out a way to get to Iguazu). I explored around my hotel before I could check in.

Later in the morning I showed up to a meet a walking tour that wasn’t there, and I didn't have a working phone. I tried to get a SIM card, but the Argentinian government doesn’t make it easy (I did get a SIM but was unable to use it).

I ended up going to explore Recoleta on my own. The walk there was through a neat part of town.

Recoleta was fascinating; the pictures don’t do it justice.

From Recoleta, I popped into the Museo de Bellas Artes.

Then, back through town

to the Plaza de Mayo and San Telmo.

By the time I turned in—after all, I had an earlyish flight to Ushuaia the next morning—I’d logged 16 miles from all that walking across town.

Onward to Tierra del Fuego.

Patagonia: Prologue

Now I'm running to the end of the earth.

Everywhere I turn all the beauty just keeps shaking me.

 --The Indigo Girls


Almost as soon as I got off the Inca Trail more than two years ago, I wanted more: more Andes, more trekking, more all-encompassing, breathtaking beauty. I'm not the only one for whom the Inca Trail was the gateway drug to the W trek in Torres del Paine National Park. I'm also not the only one who thought it the W would be "easier"--as we were coming down the east end of the trail, we overheard a woman going up saying to her partner, "you told me this would be easier than Macchu Pichu!"

So once the urge was in place, we we had to make it happen? Who's we? As with the Peru trip, I wanted this badly enough that I was willing to do it on my own, even though that wasn't my preference. As I started drawing up the trip, I asked everyone who might be up for a lot of trekking. Kiera (see: Balkans) was the first to come close to committing, but ended up dropping out. She nevertheless influenced the trajectory of the trip for the better by insisting on Tierra del Fuego (I was considering dropping it for more time in Patagonia itself) and pushing us into November rather than more crowded December. Jay was noncommittal for a while but ultimately dove in, so we ended up being Jason and I, later joined by Alex for a post-Patagonia week in and around Santiago.

It was a complicated trip, a heavy logistical lift—you can see that it didn’t happen immediately—and the reservations had to be made many months in advance. In fact, when we were reserving refugios in June, a couple had already sold out and we ended up in a pre-set tent our second night of the trek. I initially preferred tents, but Jay wanted the much pricier refugios (bunk beds), and he was right. The tent was uncomfortable and exposed us to the sounds of the late-night revelers.

As I plotted out potential itineraries, it seemed so complicated that I wanted to give up and sign onto a tour. There looked like a lot of inevitable backtracking and epic bus rides. It also looked like it would have to be very expensive, with or without a tour. The least unreasonable tours did not include any trekking, and being driven around national parks rather than trekking them would have made me lose my mind. I tried to get a sense of what the tours were giving you for so much of your money, and it turned out to be not much. They were essentially overpaying themselves for making the bookings, which we could more than handle ourselves. We debated which way to go and opted for Argentina-to-Chile because it was exorbitant to fly into Santiago on our dates.

I booked my flights for a reasonable amount of miles, and booked some internal ones that I later comped with points. Argentina had just recently walked away from a two-tiered flight-pricing system, and one no longer had to fly between countries to avoid getting ripped off. Lodging was pretty reasonable, and food wasn’t cheap, but it also wasn’t unaffordable. The ferry from Puerto Natales to Puerto Montt as well as the newish airport in Calafate--which enabled us to fly rather than bus there--eliminated a lot of the backtracking we were worried about. The ferry was our single biggest expense, but it was a bargain compared to the cruises. Because we made most of the arrangements in May and early June, the trip was largely paid for by the time I had to redo the kitchen in July; it would’ve been irresponsible not to go.

It was a tight itinerary, without much give for delays or other snags. I originally planned to leave on Black Friday but, in light of my experience two years ago, opted to skip out on Thanksgiving to give American a full day to get me to Buenos Aires before I’d have to catch a plane to Ushuaia on Saturday morning (I even opted for a three-hour layover because the just-over-an-hour one scared me). Jason couldn’t leave earlier and would meet me in Ushuaia Saturday night. I’d have loved more than a day in Ushuaia, but we didn’t have a day to spare: the ferry leaves Puerto Natales once a week on Mondays (well, technically Tuesdays but you have to board on Monday), so we’d have to get off the W the same Monday, meaning we’d have to get on on Friday and get everything else in before that. We were entirely mentally prepared for glitches and delays, and were pleasantly relieved when only insignificant ones--those that didn't upend the itinerary--came to pass.

Between the summer, when the trip got real—i.e., booked and paid for—and the run-up, I was largely distracted by work, by the kitchen, and even by the logistics themselves, I’d dreamt of this for so long that I couldn’t believe it was real even when it was time to pack. I prepped the backpack (my REI disaster of a year ago ultimately yielded the best, most ergonomic backpack for petite women) and stuffed my ultralight sleeping bag into its sack. I consulted my extensive packing lists—nothing could be left to chance—and indeed I forgot nothing. The immediate run-up to the trip was my usual frantic: haircut the weekend before, followed by lots of cleaning and packing. A half-day before the trip, with the second half at the dentist and chiropractor and then more cleaning and packing, with only the last-minute stuff left to the day of the trip.

  

It was worth all the planning and preparation and scrambling, all the dreaming. 

It started in Buenos Aires.

It's not Vienna, but it brings back memories

My parents took me to Disney world once or twice. We drove down both times, stopping at cheap motels along the way, and stayed at cheap apartments a ways from the park. I had fun, especially when I went as a small child. I got my picture--a polaroid--taken with Minnie. The second time, I was a teenager (it was my mom, a friend, and his visiting teenage niece and nephew), but I don't remember being much more aware of the difference between our Disney adventure and that of the people who clearly weren't skimping. As a child (and teenager), a friend and I would hang out at the Disney Store, and elsewhere at Faneuil Hall, and at Copley Place. We enjoyed playing amid the ritz, window shopping and occasionally splurging on a loss-leaderesque, quasi-affordable souvenir. It was more wonder than aspiration. Then we outgrew it, at least the window shopping and longing for overpriced trinkets. I remained in awe of the business travelers at the hotels in and around Copley; I hoped to be like them when I grew up.

Last Sunday I flew down to Orlando for business and made my way to a chi-chi hotel. I could've gotten a cab reimbursed, but I opted for a SuperShuttle to save my employer some money. The first few rows of the shuttle were filled with tourists (and those staying a ways out). I looked at the guy in the back row with me--specifically, at the logo on his messenger bag--and knew he was going to the same conference. You know I don't generally start conversations with strangers, but the truth about introverts is that we buckle under small talk; we can handle real conversation. For the hour, hour-and-a-half long ride, we talked about a range of work-related issues. It was--especially to an introvert--a welcome sense of community. If anyone else in that van listened to us, they'd have hardly understood a word (that is not, if it needs to be said, a knock on them; merely a point of contrast: I was exactly where I needed to be). I don't know how I got to be someone who fit at the conference, who can hold my own with the technical people. I showed up feeling a bit of an impostor, but managed to connect with most of the people I talked to. By the end of the week, I was going to Disney Springs for dinner with my SuperShuttle buddy and his friends.

How I became that person is more of a wonder to me than how I became the person who gets dropped off at the chi-chi hotel close to Disney after the front rows of the shuttle empty out, at first at cheap motels and then mid-price hotels. All of them higher-end than what my family stayed at when I was a kid. I was always aware of it--every time I walked by a family staying at the hotel on their own dime, the kids dressed for Disney world--but not intrigued. I noticed the ornate granite counters and mother-of-pearl drawers but would have traded them for a better shower. I don't even prefer big, corporate hotels; I rarely choose them when I travel personally, and not just because of cost.

Some of the things we aspire to when we're younger are as satisfying as we think they'll be, every time; some become routine to the point we don't notice them anymore; some disappoint us. Some make us want even more.