Patagonia

Surprisingly to me Patagonia was a bit of a disappointment. Maybe I have been traveling too long or just went about it the wrong way. The Argentinean airline went on strike, so I bused it down and then you realize just how big Argentina is and how scenery is so incredibly dull. Passing the same undulating scrub land for days on end, sleep on the bus, wake up in the morning, nothing has changed, the same view. It seems a long way to go just for a few hours site seeing. I saw whales on the east coast which was nice, but for that afternoon it took 17 hours on a bus to get there. I spent three hours staring out the bus window one morning and counted 3 horses, 2 sheep and 2 birds. That after 3 hours! no cars, houses, people, bored, bored, bored.

Long overnight buses transport me further south to unremarkable towns.This kind of pattern repeated itself, very long bus journeys separated by a day or two of site seeing. The good bits are really good. The roar of ice falling from a glacier, clouds sweeping the vertical faces of mountains, watching wood peckers in the forest, but it is always tinged with the fact that I have another long bus journey to follow.
I cross back into Chile. At this point there are only roads on the map. I face the same kind of issues as before in Chile with expensive accommodation and dire food, my standards are pretty flexible, but some of these places are the pits. I also get the only disappointment of my trip. The weather in Torres del Paine was awful. Constant driving wind, bitterly cold, damp, low cloud. I pay for the permits, do the four hour bus journey to the start of the treck, but I force myself to accept the reality of the situation and made the tough decision to turn around without really experiencing the mountains.

If you travel this far and spend this much you have to say how good they are, but...

I get a bit stuck trying trying to get out of town. There just are not many options this far south. So I take the easy way and fly over the mountains to Puerto Williams, Cape Horn. It makes me feel good just typing that. The last town in the world. Which amuses me as is quite an unassuming town, where as typically the Argentines across the water in Ushuia brag about being the most southerly town, T shirts, mugs. key fobs etc.

But here there is just nature. No gift shops, no restaurants, nor tourists, I was of only three visitors in town. Everyone just gets on with their regular jobs. Its very quite, calm, pretty, empty pebble beaches fringed with forests and zig-zag mountain tops. Its very much like Scotland, which is a bit ironic having traveled over 10,000 miles from Scotland.

In actual fact I get into a bit of a fud down here. Partly because I'm tired, the cold damp weather, the poor food and the constant traveling, buses and to be honest some of the other back packers. Anyway, leaving proves to be quite difficult. As nobody expects any tourists there aren't any regular means to leave the island. The thought of being stuck here over Christmas spurs me to find a boat going back north, as it happens a very uncomfortable and expensive journey to Argentina.

And what do I do next, jump on a boat on Christmas Eve going the opposite way heading south to Antarctica.

Northern Argentina

So I have arrived across the border with no money, no map and its dark, and promptly get offered a free lift to a really cool hostel, where they are quite happy to run a tab until I find a working ATM, nice. Its like coming back to civilisation, the streets are clean, well stocked supermarkets, no clouds of diesel fumes, and amazingly for the very first time hot water comes out of the hot tap and cold comes out of the cold tap. I am grinning with joy.

Move on to Buenos Aires, my Bolivian diarrhea finally calls it a day, which is nice. Try and adapt myself to the social scene, which is not so easy if you have been on the road for a long time. For what looks perfectly passable in Bolivia, gives the impression of being like a down and out in BA. First a shave, then some shopping for new clothes and finally get my shoes polished by a shoe shiner. Image is very much everything here.

Observing local life this seems like a typical day:
8:00 Breakfast; coffee, bread and jam.
13:00 Huge steak and chips with a glass of wine on the side.
18:00 Light tea of bread, soup, or empenadas (baby pasties)
23:00 Full evening meal, often a BBQ of sausages, followed by steak, by ribs, by more steak, etc. It is perfectly normal to sit down and eat at a restaurant after midnight, before going out for the night.
02:00 Any night of the week go to a club, any earlier and they are bit empty.
06:00 Wander in the early morning mist back to pick up some breakfast and go to bed.

But in all this where do they manage to work, sleep and study? On top of this everyone smokes. Sat in a travel agency opposite a computer operator and she promptly lights up. Seems smoking at your desk is perfectly normal.

If you can get with the BA life, its a cheap place to live. A two bed apartment in a top neighbourhood for $50,000 US, cant be bad.

In this city have I changed accommodation more than any other. They are either full of very quite people on organised tours or full on partying types. I find an ideal compromise with the bonus of being between two 24hr fast food joints. 14 inch pizza for 60 pence! Some long parties, and cool times.

Checked out the flea markets, wow is BA tough on the show leather, its a big place.

Watched a man casually dressed strolling down the street, stop at the restaurant door, stoop forward twisting his arms and then entered the restaurant and started begging.
Watched street kids taking turns with a baby, holding it up, giving the big eyes holding out a grubby hand. The suited and beautifull coming out at lunch time walking past big shop windows stopping to check their reflections. It all seems a bit false and superficial at times.

Got my self in a bit of a routine, so its time to get out and head south. Parcel up and leave my warm clothes behind as is going to get cold.

Chile (Part I)

I decide not to return but to take a short cut to Chile. The 4x4 leaves me at the edge of a desert lake, no road, just mountains and sand. When over the horizon on an indeterminable track comes a bus. I am hurried on and we visit the lonely customs office, placed like a sugar cube on a empty shelf . Turn right after the mountain and burst onto a tarmac road, yellow lines and sign posts. Its like turning out of a farm gate on to the M1, very odd. My first experience of Chile was disappointing, horrendously expensive for really crappy accomodation almost as bad as Bolivia but six times the price. The walls shake with every step, I can hear every toilet flush,and i am stuck here, not another bus out of the place for three days, great. The rough guide says the mueseum is unmissable so I dont miss it and waste the price of a good meal. I have worked out I can only eat once a day before my cash runs out. hmmmm.

No breakfast and I have a twelve hour journey ahead of me and the remains of one small packet of biscuits. To my utter surprise they serve cooked food on the bus. Its bad, but I was so happy and to round it off they provide a free game of bingo. This kind of makes up for the three hour delay getting into Argentina. Bus full of people, one computer and a single fingered typist records each and every passport detail. Listening to tap, tap, tap, its the modern equivalent of water torture.

Salt flats

Dusty road, winding through another dusty set of mountains, zigzagging around gaps where the road used to be. The colours play with the mind, the hillsides washed in pastel oranges, the verges a gentle blue washing into freshly turned fields of green earth. I want to get out and grab a handful, is it real. Ghost towns, mud brick houses open to the sky, mountains turn to dunes. End of the road an edge of a flat white expanse.

Crap hotel, cold shower, no electric, write by candel lite, but I do a deal and get it for free and leave tomorrow by 4x4

We set sail in an ocean of blinding white space. Its unhinging just white, no shadows like staring at porcelin, There is just a single horizontal line where the sky starts. No echos, violent bright sun but no warmth. Even with Raybanned eyes the sunsears by frazzled retinas.

I forgot to mention after the last climb I suffered snow blindness, its like having a handfull of grit permanently revolving around your eye balls. Using my eyes for more than two hours required lying the dark for another four for the paim to subside. My eyes took a week to come back to something likr normal, PS dont use Bolivian sunglasses.

Continuing the journey we stop for lunch at an island in the dry salt lake. Cacti stand shoulder to shoulder and spectate on the tourists scurrying across the bleak wasteland.

We drive for hours, but nothing is moving only the engine noise gives any indication that something is happening. Visit a house made of salt, tables and chairs of salt, play with the local kids, forget its 4000m above sea level and it leaves me gasping for air. The lake gives way to desert, sand, scree, dirt, wind swept shapes rise from out of the ground. The wind whips stinging sand into any exposed skin. We stop in grey mud brick town.I amble through the deserted street and watch the lamas herd themselves for the night in their corals.I got surprise when I looked over a high wall into the church yard, shaking in the wind were hundreds of pink and purple paper flowers. There brightness was shocking in this brown and dusty town.

i sit by a lake and count the colours, blue sky, red mountains, lilac hills, terracota sands reflecting in a smooth lake of blue grey, edged in sulpher yellow, while vivid pink flamingos stroll on white banks of salt. No one really talks, we spend our time sitting and watching.

Looking across the desert and see black sgwiggly shadows rushing across the horizon, expanding and contracting as if held behind a lens. The lighting plays tricks, its three 4x4s in a mirage. As they get closer a wedged shaped wall of dust rises up to obscure the distant mountains.

At dawn with the temprature hovering at -10 C we bath at the edge of a thermal spring, the lake frozen, ice crystals catching the low angled light. Take a stroll around the adjacent geysers. Its a vietnam war movie, great bomb holes let forth engulfing plumes of steam ,rims of the interlocking crators form a maze from hades. the jet engine roar of escaping gas, splash and plop of boliing mud leaping and landing. The sun is hidden, shadows of other tourists appear and disapper in the twisting sulpher clouds , Feet gently sinking in the soft earth, closing and opening jets of ankle high steam.