El cielo gigante

Patagonia's famed Route 40 lives up to its legendary status: 500 km of tailbone-abusing dirt roads, wild guanacos (fuzzy-butted llamas) and choique (kind of like a feral emu) grazing, and one monumentally large, sheltering sky. How anyone could motorcycle, let alone ride a bike, is completely beyond us. It´s hard enough staying upright while bipedal in this wind!


A curious guanaco


Sashaying away


Choiques, or 'lesser' Rheas (or see a closer view) -- the males incubate the eggs, and from the number of teenage-sized birds here, it looks like a successful strategy)


The new definition of a godforsaken town



We caught a miraculous window of clear weather when we arrived in El Chalten, and set out for the backcountry.



We headed first to a freezing lake at the base of Cerro Torre, whose eerie ice-cone summit was obscured by clouds, and then yesterday to a freezing lake at the base of Fitz Roy (see below. brr.).


Summertime, and the living is easy...

Grandaddy of all mountain hardmen, Reinhold Messner, called the mountains of Patagonia a ´shriek turned to stone´, and he wasn´t far off. Everything about these peaks screams cold and dangerous. But they´re also beautiful, and it´s not hard to see why people are drawn to them, year after year.


The iconic Fitz Roy skyline

Z observed that you could tell the Argentine hikers by one of two characteristics: facial piercing, which is very popular with the local youth, or packing methods that resemble mobile garage sales, with extra bags, pots, and shoes hanging precariously in every direction. We were impressed with these kids' cheery approach to long, arduous hikes, given their skinny jeans, canvas shoes, and swinging plastic bags. So much for the importance of the right gear.

Our favorite trail-mates, though, were a posse of giggly Japanese women who kept themselves animated and entertained at the lake below Fitz Roy for ages, taking new versions of two-fingered photos, as all onlookers shivered in puffy layers of clothing, indignantly chewing their trail mix and pulling their hats down over their ears.

Another perk of the remarkable weather has been the preponderance of charismatic mega- and mini-fauna. Besides the critters we saw from the bus, we saw an incredible diversity of birds yesterday on our hike toward Fitz Roy.

(Elizabeth will take over for the bird-nerding here)

The highlight for both of us was the Austral pygmy owl. Another bird was making a tremendous fuss about something, and we looked over and saw this little potato sitting on a branch. Then its head swiveled, and we realized it was an owl. It paid no attention to the small bird bouncing around it and hollering.

We also a male Magellanic woodpecker hopping up a tree trunk, bright red crest quivering. It's the biggest woodpecker in the Americas, apparently, and it is large -- bigger than the owl by quite a bit -- though not on the scale of the dogs or anything.

The funniest bird sighting was a pair of scuttling little critters who both seemed to be playing Secret Agent and yet also seemed to have missed the day at bird-school when they learned how to manage their extremely long bills. They saw us, swung their beaks around (barely avoiding planting them in the ground), dropped to a crouch, and together scooted across the path for a few inches before stopping, looking up at us, whispering to one another, and then scooting a little further. It took them so long to get across the path this way that we were actually able to take a picture. And they were extremely furtive about the whole thing. They were just a few feet in front of us, so we had to be quiet, but it was all we could do to keep from bursting out laughing.


Bird, James Bird. It does blend in well with the background, I'll give it that.

Satellite internet is pricey, so we'd better wrap this up, pile on the layers, squint, and head out into the wind. Ciao, chicos!

Perro o caballo?

OK, as soon as we get this virus thing sorted out we will post some pictures of mountains, ridgelines, etc., but in the meantime, I thought I'd share one of the other imposing sights of El Chalten.

Clearly, they grow dogs, like watermelons, bigger here.



Need some scale on that?



Yes, Marty's hand, which is not particularly small, is about the same size as the dog's nose. It's about four feet tall, with a noggin the size of a basketball.

I just love it.

Down South

I´m writing from an internet cafe in the windswept, charming, and comically un-urban-planned town of El Chalten. We are definitely in Patagonia now. Marty and I keep looking at each other and saying ¨summer!¨ as we peer out from layers of down and wool. We have been lucky to have no rain, though, and have been on two hikes with scenery that might surpass any other we´ve seen.

Bet you´d like to see that scenery. Unfortunately the computers here are telling us our camera has a virus and not allowing us to open any files, instead offering to erase the entire archive. Uh, no thanks.

So we´ll go searching for another, less hypersensitive, internet spot. Just wanted to let you know we´ve arrived safely.

Dream catchers in Bolson

Here´s a quick update from El Bolson, the Californian Santa Cruz of Argentina, where you can find a craft fair every other day featuring flowers, baggy pants, handmade soaps and jewelry, shawls made with extremely chunky yarn, homebrewed beer, hand-carved cutting boards, and so much more. One thing that makes it Argentinian: some of those cutting boards are big enough to sling an entire cow across.

Today we went on another long hike and jumped off high rocks into the snowmelt-cold water of Rio Azul. It was irresistible. A whole new blue to rhapsodize about, this time turquoise.

I´ll spare you the inadequate adjectives though, as it´s after midnight, I´m typing madly in the hostel basement, and we´re about to take off on a two-day bus ride down Route 40 to get deep into Patagonia. (How deep? Day two is entirely on dirt roads, I´m told.)

And so, to bed.

Long views and dangling feet

Here you don´t have to walk far to find extraordinary views. Actually, our balcony´s not bad. And with beaches like these, it´s a wonder we walk anywhere.



Then again, those beaches are windy and pretty cold. So we went for another hike. A shorter one this time.


On the teleferique up to Cerro Cathedral, with Marc, a well-traveled new friend from France


A short hike up to the ridge and we were on top of the world


With some extremely diminutive plants


This tiny oxalis can apparently live for 3,000 years


Dreamy views of the Lake District


An imposing Chilean peak whose name, sadly, has escaped us


Marty likes being in the mountains


Coming down from a short hike and a long lunch
(I have to admit that teleferiques/ski lifts might be my favorite mode of transportation)


Dinner at the hostel
(We´re on a near-constant diet of salad just because we can be, with the drinkable tap water and all. Well, and ice cream. And empanadas. )


From the balcony
(Don´t worry, mom, we didn´t dangle our feet here, just on the ski lift)

Welcome to Patagonia

A ten-kilometer hike? Sure, no problem.

Oh, there's a 2-km dirt road we have to walk along to reach the trail? OK.

Oh, we've been hiking uphill for two hours and it's another three hours to go? Hm. Ohhhh, it's 10 km each way. Hm. OK.

Oh, we have to walk back the same way, not the shorter way, because there's only one more bus leaving the other way and we'd have to run the 10 km back? OK.... No, we didn't bring flashlights. No, I think we'll be fine.

As it turned out, we were fine (except for my blistered feet) -- the way down was much faster and with the long summer days here, we made it back with plenty of daylight to spare. It was a bit of a bigger first day in town than we'd intended. But the scenery was worth it.


Refugio Frey or bust!


Towering cypresses


That heap of logs in the foreground is part of the bridge; fortunately it´s sturdier than it looks


The hobbit refugio (not Frey)


No, we weren´t starting to hallucinate, these were just strange little flowers


We made it! Hang on to your hat... it´s windy here


Clouded over right away, but still gorgeous

It seems we didn´t take many photos as we pounded our way down the mountain, but on the bus back to town we had a nice chat in passable Spanish with some women from Buenos Aires. Encouraging. And few things in Argentina have tasted as good as our dinner at ¨El Vegetariano¨ restaurant late that night.

Bus trip: now with visuals

There are no doubt some dignified guanacos out there picking their way through the scrub


Quite a blue, no?

Azul

I promise to go to an internet cafe and upload photos, but until then, I have to mention something about the Lake District that cannot go unacknowledged.

On our bus trip here, the (guanano-containing) landscape was dry and somewhat unremarkable, at least to Californians: rolling hills of low scrubby vegetation, all subtle browns and greens.

When the lakes flashed out at us from between the hills, it was shocking. The blue looked unreal. Nothing like the pale milky green of the Indus in the Himalayas, or the murky brown of the Mekong. Not even the dark blue of alpine lakes. This color made the safety paint along the road look dull. It´s the bright clear blue that drives bees crazy when they see it on flowers.

Now we´re off to hike to a lake. We can´t resist it either.

Guanacos and chocolate

We´ve arrived in Bariloche and it´s a very pretty little Swiss-seeming town in the Andes. Lots of shops and quite expensive, but very pleasant. It´s on a lake ringed by white-topped mountains and the air is cool and crisp, with some of the wind Patagonia is famous for.

Quite a difference from steamy Buenos Aires.

The trip here took about 18 hours, but fortunately they really know how to travel well by bus here. We had big seats, much like business class on an airplane (though it turns out that any incline in a seat is very different from a seat that reclines fully... ah well). They served us meals on little trays we balanced on our laps. We didn´t realize we needed to tell them ahead of time that we were vegetarian, so we ended up more or less eating bread and dulce de leche for three meals. I missed protein and vegetables, but it could certainly be worse. They even came around with champagne late at night.

Best part of the trip here: we saw guanacos! Many of them! Standing around holding their heads high, as they like to do. Might have seen some condors too, which looked like overly large vultures.

Upon arrival, we more or less collapsed into bed for ten hours. Lovely.

Yesterday, we hiked up to a small, beautiful lake at the base of jagged peaks. (We will post some photos but this is a highly in-demand computer and I need to be quick.) Suffice it to say that we hiked for about 8 hours and did, we figured, almost 15 miles. (This was not intentional; turns out they just tell you the one-way distance of hikes here, not round trip. Ah.) I have new shoes and now also have new blisters. Not so smart. Marty, on the other hand, ran into someone he knew at the top, as he tends to do in remote alpine locations.

Here´s one thing that´s really nice about Argentina: when you get back from your hike at 9, you can then go out to dinner at 10 and it´s no problem. How civilized.

Today we´re taking it easy, so perhaps we´ll wander off to try some of the chocolate this town is famous for. (It´s also famous for tourists taking pictures with St. Bernards carrying kegs of whisky. I think I can resist this, but who knows. I´m a sucker for big dopey dogs.)

Some views of Buenos Aires

You could say this says it all

Our week in Buenos Aires sped up, somehow. We signed up for four-hour a day Spanish classes, made friends, went out with them until hours that were early for BA but wildly adventurous for us, and then Elizabeth would actually get up in the morning and take the subway off to a temporary consulting gig.

Now it's our last night here -- tomorrow we leave for Patagonia for about six weeks -- and we're considering finding some more tango.

In the meantime, here are a few images from this week:


Church doorway in San Telmo


Beautiful buildings in Retiro


Can't remember what neighborhood this is in, but architecture like this seems to pop up everywhere


Botanical graffiti: who knew? This would be Orchidaceae, of course, says Elizabeth

Retiro train station

Salida aqui


Wowed by watermelons: everything is larger south of the equator


Dulce de leche helado, one of humankind's better inventions


Later, you can work off that helado with city-sponsored booty dance classes


Si, vegetarianos


The white head scarf, symbol of the mothers of the disappeared

Is graffiti Quaker?

And the quintessentially South American David -- why's that, you ask?


Because he's got a teapot and a mate gourd

Honestly...

Let's not kid ourselves, it really is all about dessert.

Tango nos encanta

Slowly but surely, we're acclimatizing to the pace and contours of porteño life. Un doble con tres medialunas (a double espresso and three mini-croissants) can be had for 7 pesos (roughly two bucks) and are fast becoming part of our morning ritual.

And finally, we got out to the right spot on the right night and caught some authentic tango with a complete live band or orquesta tipica. For a city famed for its sultry dance, tango is harder to come by than you'd think. Our third try was a charm, though, and we got to see El Afronte (see video below) play two sets last night and witness a variety of tango styles on the dance floor.


The next step will be to take a lesson ourselves!

If you're interested in other young and feisty takes on the orquesta tipica scene in Buenos Aires, check out this trailer:
"Tango or Death"

India trip map

When we began this blog, we meant for it to have maps. Unfortunately the free travel blog sites out there are just too ugly, so we decided to go it alone and embed our maps. Technical problems and the exigencies of internet cafes made us forgo that plan. Until now. Here's a map of the first part of our trip, in India. It may take a minute to load.


View India - Other Climes, phase 1 in a larger map

More, hopefully, to come.

Buenos dias, Buenos Aires

There be dragons?

We arrived in Buenos Aires yesterday and though we'd taken separate flights, we managed to find each other at the rather odd hostel Elizabeth booked online. I had some trouble opening the massive doors with the skeleton key at first, but we've since improved our 19th-century locksmith skills. After sleeping for much of the day -- partly jet lag, partly the fact that when our room doors are closed, we're in a 25-foot tall crypt, complete with brick ceiling -- we ventured out to explore.


Cobble-stoned street in San Telmo, where restaurants started opening at 8 pm but people probably didn't arrive until 10...


Vulture gargoyles overhead


Some caryatids with impressive musculature but understandably bad posture


The massive Avenida de 9 Julio -- 7 lanes each way, making us feel like yokels


I originally wanted to order an "eye and cheese" sandwich but Elizabeth informed me that egg is huevo, not ojo. Ahem.


Contemplating the Argentinian beach cam on local TV

One benefit of being south of the equator: we're back in summer, and it stays light here until well after 8 pm! We haven't seen the Southern Cross yet but will keep an eye out.

And of course, the all-important one: the flush. In the name of science, Elizabeth just went to investigate which direction it goes, but another of the quaint attributes of this hostel is a pull-chain toilet, so apparently it was more like a small unidirectional tsunami than a swirl. Will have to investigate elsewhere.

Off to drink coffee in an effort to make it to what is reportedly the normal dinner time here: 11 pm.

Tales of tango and mate to follow.