Now for a little jump forward in time. After leaving Ushuaia we spent the rest of last week in Buenos Aires, but I thought I would save all of my Buenos Aires material for one post and write first about our side-quest to Puerto Iguazú and the Iguazú Falls. This was a wonderful diversion but not a place gifted with excellent WiFi – or at least we ran out of things to order in different cafés to keep testing the connection speeds – so now there is some blogging catch-up to do.
Ethical note: this post was made possible courtesy of my mother who generously provided our flights to Iguazú. All opinions about my mother are my own.
OK, so we hadn’t originally planned to visit Iguazú since it wasn’t really on our path – in fact, it’s possible we explicitly told our vaccination nurse that we weren’t coming here to get out of something or other – but we kept picking up the recommendation that it would be worth the detour. The area around the falls is shared by Brazil (Iguaçu National Park) and Argentina (Iguazú National Park) although the general consensus online is that the Argentinian side has the edge. Either way, we weren’t about to pay $160 to get Randi into Brazil (equivalent cost for a British citizen: £0) so we spent two days in Argentina’s National Park.
The park is extremely well sign-posted and organised with almost a theme-park vibe (in a good way… such as having a brightly colour-coded map) although it does get rather crowded at the most popular points. On our first day we had planned to walk the Garganta del Diablo Trail – the famous ‘Devil’s Throat’ – and the Upper Circuit, because this is what various blogs told us we could comfortably manage in a day. The blogs are wrong. All of the trails are very easy to walk and despite not arriving particularly early we still had plenty of time and energy left to walk the Lower Circuit before the park closed. Don’t believe anything you read on the internet.
The Upper Circuit was probably our favourite, but the Devil’s Throat is certainly spectacular and (whisper it) maybe more impressive than Niagara Falls. I mean, I haven’t seen Niagara in the summer and I don’t want to hurt its feelings, so let’s just agree that they are both great and you should definitely visit. We also had a magical burst of fake-rain water spray while we stood at the top which was cool and refreshing.
On the second day (for which you get a 50% discount to re-enter the park) we used gift money from Randi’s aunt to take the Great Adventure tour through a jungle path and then up to the falls in a boat. The highlight of the jungle was seeing a mother and baby bird cunningly disguised as the top of a tree stump – so cunning, in fact, that I almost missed it. We were less smitten with all of the giant spiders who hung above the jeep as we stopped to talk about how impressive their webs were. And Randi was not thrilled to learn that the area is home to 50 species of snake, of which only a mere 10 are venomous. I thought those were good odds.
But no one pays for this tour to marvel at the Earth’s precious and endangered species, obviously. They do it to be taken under the waterfalls at high speed and get completely drenched, which was a lot of fun.
To dry off we walked the markedly less popular Macuco Trail where we saw our first monkeys of the trip. From what I remember of Asia they will become much less of a novelty, but we enjoyed seeing them in the trees. I have more mixed feelings about the coati which run amok in some areas of the park and particularly where innocent humans are trying to eat lunch. These raccoon-like animals are cute…ish, but they do have sharp teeth and claws and when they think a sandwich might be worth a-stealing they go crazy. I even had one poking around my legs as we set off on one of the little internal trains which take you between various points in the park.
Other than the Falls the other big tourist attraction in Iguazú is the Triple Frontera between Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay. Each country is represented by an obelisk which looks out at the others across the Iguazú and Paraná rivers and it’s an interesting test of how much effort each country is willing to put into its respective side, like neighbours who share a hedge. The Argentinian area is pretty nice – busy but relaxed, with great-smelling sausages being cooked. Brazil have built a big Ferris wheel in their area but have also gone and grown a big tree which obscures half of their obelisk so I’m deducting points for that. Paraguay… didn’t seem to have anyone at their station. (Maybe they were there and I just couldn’t see them!)
One problem with this whole arrangement: my phone kept thinking it was in Brazil and jumping one hour ahead to their timezone. This feels like a whole new category of first-world problems but it wasn’t something I ever thought about, and I bet the product managers who built the ‘Set Automatically’ toggle didn’t think about it either.
One final note about Puerto Iguazú itself: the area around our Airbnb has gone completely overboard in naming streets after significant dates. It is genuinely possible to walk up 17th October, turn right onto 25th May, make a left onto the main street of 9th July before turning again onto 1st May. This is silly. Then again, the town is home to numerous buffet-type restaurants where you can load up a plate for very little money, so I won’t hold it against them too much.
Welcome to another episode of “blogging from cafés in remote places with decent WiFi”. Today’s edition is from Ushuaia on the southern tip of Argentina, where the city’s motto is “end of the world, beginning of everything” and the claim is to be the southernmost city in the world. This is apparently somewhat contested by a Chilean town further south, but the marketing ploy has clearly worked because we’re here and not there.
We have mostly laid low during our couple of days here, relaxing and reading at our comfy AirBnb and petting its resident dog Kobe (at least, I think that’s his name) whose lack of barking and jumping puts him in the highest echelon of dogs on this trip so far. The most popular thing for tourists to do here is to see the penguins on Martillo Island, but we decided to leave the penguin-watching to David Attenborough and opted for a cheaper (i.e. free, excluding the lift there and back from our AirBnb host) hike to Laguna Esmeralda instead.
Fun fact: on the drive out of Ushuaia we went through a police checkpoint where – in an excellent use of public resources – they asked our host where we were going and then sped us on our way. The hike itself was a very gentle stroll through the countryside compared to anything on Torres del Paine, although we did encounter more mud before we arrived at our picnic destination:
In town we also made ourselves at home at a local pizza/empanada/ ‘all-round good food served cheaply and cheerfully over a counter’ kinda place. I think we went there three times in total, to the extent that they had to warn us that they close on Tuesdays. I also thought it was interesting that our host had Argentina’s civil code as a book on her shelf (is that a common thing to have lying around, like a dictionary?) but unfortunately my Spanish wasn’t really good enough to go into the difference between civil and common law systems and so I just flicked through.
Oh, and one of Ushuaia’s public parks is also home to the worst wooden slats in the entire world. It made the sort of haunted house creaking noises you usually only find in a horror film and we are quite convinced that it is supposed to be closed but someone has run off with the sign.
The last thing I really do have to mention is the Falklands, not out of any particular desire to bring it up but in Ushuaia the dispute is everywhere. Along with memorials and murals (fair enough) the slogan “Las Malvinas son argentinas” is also printed on random road-signs and even on the side of public buses. I know people on the left in Britain have a bit of a hangup about the Falklands War as the jingoism it riled up was undoubtedly a major factor in Thatcher’s re-election. That said, it’s pretty hard to argue that an independent community which has been living there for over a century and near-unanimously voted to continue living that way should be taken over by Argentina (which at the time of invasion, incidentally, was run by a military junta) on the basis of geographical neatness. The slogans in Ushuaia remind me a little of all the English monarchs who claimed to be King of France even though France was quite obviously doing its own thing. 🤷♂️
We made it! Yesterday afternoon we arrived back in Puerto Natales after a successful 5 day / 4 night expedition along the famous W Trek in Torres del Paine National Park, although for us it was very much a lowercase rather than an uppercase W for reasons I will explain later. In any case there are many different ways to hike the W so, for reference, here is the version we did:
Day 1: Paine Grande – Grey (11km)
After renting our gear (tent, sleeping bags, mats, walking poles and cooking equipment) and stocking up on food in Puerto Natales the night before we got the 7am bus into the park and then waited for the catamaran to take us across Lake Pehoé to our starting point at Paine Grande. There is only one vessel and we didn’t make it onto the first ride, so after queuing for an extra hour (during which time I reached the pivotal plot twist in Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch) it was already lunchtime before we could start our first hike.
As you can see from the map, in terms of making a nice W shape the first day’s hike is actually completely redundant since we just walked back the next day. Still, based on the distance and altitude we both expected that the first two days would be our easiest. We were totally wrong. The first day especially was the hardest. Partly this was environmental – some parts of this route are seriously windy, and there’s a fair amount of uphill and downhill sections – but mostly it was on us. Starting later in the day is definitely worse but I also wore too many layers, didn’t strap my bag up properly and had not yet settled into the walking. We were also way slower than the guide time of three and a half hours, which wasn’t a problem in itself but was worrying given the subsequent trips we had to make.
The worst part was when Randi tripped and fell forwards onto a rocky downhill path, which left a cut on her forehead but thankfully no serious damage. We’re grateful to the helpful group of French hikers behind us who stopped to offer aid and checked for concussion before moving on! Serious public service announcement though: when we rented the walking poles, the woman at Erratic Rock warned us not to use the wrist straps. We followed her advice, and Randi was able to throw off the poles when falling. If she hadn’t been able to she could easily have broken her wrist and wouldn’t have been able to shield her head. So please follow the advice and ignore the wrist straps on walking poles!
Suffice to say, we were both extremely glad to reach Refugio Grey, put up our tent, take a hot shower and cook our first dinner using the little foldout burner which looked eerily like a robotic spider from a Doctor Who episode.
We also dutifully followed the camp’s rules and left all our food tied up in a bag and dangling from a tree overnight, even though I was pretty convinced that we would wake up the next morning to find five days worth of food spread all over the campsite. Spoiler alert: we didn’t! And so after a long day we had a recuperating and relatively comfortable night’s sleep in our tent, which joyfully didn’t blow away either.
Day 2: Grey – Paine Grande (11km)
I’ve deliberately focused on the worst parts about the first day’s hike so I would have something to write about here 😉 and I do, because the journey between Grey and Paine Grande offers amazing views of Glacier Grey! As we set out in the morning I wasn’t sure if knowing the route in advance would make things easier or harder but we did much better the second time around (only half an hour slower than the guide time) with no falling over and happier spirits overall.
Some of this might have to do with the delicious breakfast of porridge and calafate jam, topped off by tea and even some milk which was donated to us by a kind (but very unhappy) Australian woman. “The Australian woman” became a bit of a talisman for us, actually, as she kept popping up at various points along the route and complaining bitterly to Randi about what a miserable time she was having. Any of our problems seemed very mild in comparison.
We arrived at Paine Grande, struggled to put up our tent (not because it was hard but because it looked wrong, which we eventually decided was the wind’s fault) and then copied everyone else by placing large rocks over the stakes just in case. After dinner we also bought more eggs to hard boil, having very much appreciated this snacking suggestion from a Canadian back in our hostel in El Calafate. Thanks for the great idea!
Day 3: Paine Grande – Mirador Francés – Francés (13.5km)
By the third day we were really hitting our stride and by this point onwards we either met or exceeded the guide times for the routes. After walking to Campamento Italiano (this is the basic campsite run by the park itself, which is free but does not come with any fancy frivolities like flushing toilets or showers) we left our bags and walking poles and headed uphill on the way to the Británico lookout.
This is where the ‘lowercase W’ comes in, because we didn’t get anywhere close to Británico… in fact, we almost turned back before reaching any great sights at all – which would have been a real shame – but luckily someone who was coming back down saw our tired faces and volunteered the information that Mirador Francés was only five minutes away. (In fact, he even called it ‘the main viewpoint’ which makes me feel a lot better.) And so we reached this checkpoint and declared victory, leaving Británico as a reason to come back to Torres del Paine at some point in the future.
As well as feeling that we had rescued success from the jaws of failure I also enjoyed Mirador Francés because it turned out that the couple we stopped and asked to take our photo were from Nottingham but the woman was originally from Willesden! Normally this would be the very lowest rung on this type of conversion (“Where are you from?” “London” “Where in London?” “North West London” “Where in North West London?” “Willesden”) but I was delighted to be able to go one deeper with the never-before-uttered “Where in Willesden?!”, although then she responded with “not the Green!” so we didn’t quite get to street level. Even so – standing at the top (OK, the middle) of a mountain in Chile – I felt an instant bond with this woman from Willesden and hope very much that she and her partner made it down in time for their boat.
After making it down again we only had a short 2km walk on to the Francés campsite (yes, this one does have showers – rather nice ones) and set up our tent on a wooden platform. I acknowledge that the hills might make platforms necessary in this area but our tent didn’t really have enough ropes to tie down so we ended up with a rather sad-looking tent. We shrugged this off by purchasing two cans of Austral lager (it’s really good) and then cooking our pasta on the edge of the platform. This was the only place where we were allowed to actually cook outside (which was nice) although it was also the only place where we accidentally dumped our entire dinner onto the ground while trying to strain the water. Wah-wah. The very good news was that we had a backup rice packet ready to go which ended up tasting even better with our sauce and tuna. It was still a true moment of failure but I was just glad we hadn’t burnt the tent down.
At Francés we were sheltered from the wind, and the thunder-like noises which rumbled on intermittently in the background were actually just the avalanches which go on all the time. But that night, as I was lying in my sleeping bag reading the very last chapter of The Goldfinch, I heard the pitter-patter sound against fabric of our first rainfall.
Day 4: Francés – Chileno (18km)
Happily, we awoke in the morning to find that although it was still raining our tent had kept everything relatively dry and after breakfast we set off early for our longest walk of the trip. Back at our prep talk at Erratic Rock we had been advised not to faff around too much with coats and waterproof trousers and bag covers and the like and just embrace getting wet, so in this spirit I decided (for the first time) to start hiking in only my t-shirt and kept it that way despite the rain. I can’t be sure whether this would have been a good decision if we had been seriously drenched but as it happened the rain stayed relatively light before disappearing completely by the afternoon, never to be seen again. And wearing only one layer definitely felt better and added a good psychological incentive not to stop too much in case I felt cold.
For whatever reason we completed this journey faster than expected and what was supposed to be the hardest day ended up feeling the easiest. The terrain was also flatter, the path more secluded and with less wind we could hear each other well enough to start playing word games to pass the time. We reached Chileno, checked-in to our dormitory – despite booking well in advance, this refugio had already run out of camping spaces by the time we planned the trip – and I celebrated with the priciest but nicest Fanta I’ve ever had. I don’t care if that sounds anti-climactic: you weren’t there, you didn’t drink this Fanta. It was amazing. Things got even more luxurious at dinner as you’re not allowed fire at Chileno, so instead of eating sad and cold food we paid for a hot dinner and I had a very tasty beef sandwich/burger thing. I’m not completely sure if the reason it tasted so good was because we didn’t have to cook it ourselves but I don’t think that’s (completely) true.
Day 5: Chileno – Mirador base de las Torres – Hotel las Torres (13.8km)
Apart from not reaching the Británico viewpoint the only other canonical part of the W trek which “you have to do” (but we absolutely did not do) was wake up at some ungodly hour and scramble up a rocky cliff edge for several hours in pitch black in order to see las Torres at sunrise.
Instead we left at 7am and saw the park’s eponymous towers by daylight and they were quite beautiful enough, thank you very much. Don’t believe everything you read on travel blogs, kids.
We did feel a bit pushed for time on the last day because we wanted to catch the 2pm shuttle bus out of the park rather than waiting for the later one at 7pm. So we set off back down from las Torres at a determined pace, stopping quickly for lunch and final repacking at Chileno before continuing all the way down to the hotel and welcome centre at the eastern entrance to the park. Thankfully it became clear that we were decently ahead of schedule and although my knee was hurting from the steep descent I was mostly just feeling very, very glad that we had never had to walk this path in the other direction. Sure, we must have covered the same altitude on the previous day, but our route had never felt like a nasty uphill slog.
Since we had been going downhill we weren’t even particularly wiped out by the time we reached the welcome centre, paid for the shuttle bus and rode back into Puerto Natales. But we did feel a sense of accomplishment – we’d completed the W trek, and enjoyed it! We got back into town with enough time to return all of our rented equipment, check back into the Airbnb where we had left the rest of our stuff and then celebrate with drinks, pizza and dessert pizza. Also, we could throw out stuff into bins again! When you have to carry everything on your back it is really annoying not to be able to throw away rubbish. Yes yes, I understand why. I’m just saying that bins are an under-appreciated part of civilisation.
Final Thoughts
Although the W Trek was my first multi-day unguided trek I had felt pretty ready for it given that I’d already done most of the constituent parts over the years (hiking, camping, getting used to sleeping bags) and had even accumulated most of the equipment to do it comfortably. In fact, special shout-outs are due to Tash for a microfibre towel, Jesús for the waterproof bag and Randi’s mum Beth for my hiking shoes – all of these gifts over the years really came together on this trek!
There’s very little that I would change if I were doing it again. The biggest thing I’ve learnt is probably to buckle and tighten all of the straps on my backpack, even the fiddly little side ones which seem superfluous. And also that earlier start times really do make a big difference. I was a little bit worried about my back because it had started hurting in the week leading up to the trek, but was pleasantly surprised to discover that so many different body parts started to hurt over the course of the W – one day my shoulders, the next an ankle – that by the end I had completely forgotten about my back and could enjoy a real anthology collection of aches.
For anyone still reading (and I expect even Randi’s parents – who apparently take turns reading our blogs out loud – have given up by now) I have two more important notes about the W. The first is that some of the signage is just flat-out wrong. It’s really odd, because the whole thing is generally very well-organised, the trails are very popular and busy and you’re given a decent map to use on the way in. But then some of the engraved wooden signs state utterly wrong distances or have landmarks in the wrong place, to the extent that someone has made corrections with a ballpoint pen. Dear CONAF: maybe you should fix this?
The second thing is that when walking for this many hours you are bound to get a jingle stuck in your head, so choose wisely. Mine was la vida es más fácil from Chile’s Unimarc supermarket, which can be heard here in a cheesy 80s ad but is still played at regular intervals in-store and is really quite delightful. If Jewel in Chicago played a theme tune which was even half as good as this I would never have complained about them.
Tomorrow we get back on a bus to Argentina and thinking about this made me realise that Chile – even accounting for the interruption to visit El Calafate in Argentina last week – is probably now third after the UK and the US in my list of countries by longest consecutive stay. (Non-consecutively I think France is probably third, but I’d have to check some things with my mum on that one.) So farewell, Chile! It’s been a lot of fun.
This is my first post from Argentina! We’ve hopped over the border from Chile and are in El Calafate, which I think people only visit if they plan to see the Perito Moreno Glacier. Oh, sure, there are options for seeing the glacier. You can go with a guide, see it up close from a boat or pay a lot more and hike on top of the glacier itself. We are counting our pesos and so did none of these things, but the simple bus and walking trip alone was well worth it, and so – fair warning – there are an awful lot of glacier photos in this post.
But first we have to start with our bus from Punta Arenas to Puerto Natales, where we stayed for one night and attended the ‘3 o’clock talk’ at Erratic Rock to prepare for our upcoming Torres del Paine trek. Ezra (from Chicago) was incredibly helpful and, I thought, very patient with some of the questions at the end, including “so, do I need to book the campsites in advance?”. Yes, yes you do. Months in advance. We had also reached a remote enough part of the country where prices become truly ridiculous (10,000 CLP for a small calzone in a bakery, which is currently $14.75 or £11.57) but thankfully Erratic Rock was adjacent to a pub with cheap and tasty pizza.
The next day we boarded another bus and crossed into Argentina. Naturally, this involved filing out of the bus and queuing up for our Chilean exit stamp in one building before driving down the road and doing the exact same thing to get new entry stamps. Eventually we arrived at our hostel in El Calafate. You can tell I’m not a real traveller because this is actually the first time I’ve ever stayed in a shared dormitory, but everything was pretty uneventful on that front (no murder, no theft, and best of all no waking up at 3am) and in fact it was us who ended up being the most antisocial idiots, locking my keys in my locker and requiring the lock to be cut through with a saw.
Anyway, the glacier!
It really was beautiful and photos are not going to do it justice. First of all, it’s huge, so it’s very calming to just stare at it from across the water. The cracks in the ice glow with a pale blue light and the air is frequently punctuated by loud thunderclap sounds as chunks of the glacier break off and fall away. Each time this happened we whipped our heads around to try and see it, normally failing but occasionally spotting the ice and snow tumbling down. Never fear, though, because the best thing about this glacier is that – for once – it’s actually not melting at a frightening, climate-change induced rate. Everything has been in “a quasi steady state with no major changes in its size during the last and present centuries”, at least according to the reassuring sign on the path. Though emphasis on quasi steady – don’t get too close or you might be sliced open by debris.
We haven’t really done much else in El Calafate and are riding the bus back to Puerto Natales tonight to rent all of our hiking equipment and stock up on supplies. As you can see below, El Calafate does have some nice marshland by the lake where you can see flamingos and other birds, and the main street has a bunch of shops and restaurants to justify a couple of days’ stay. It’s really all about the glacier, though.
For the last couple of days we’ve been pretty quiet and chilled in the city of Punta Arenas, which is on the Strait of Magellan and is a frequent jumping-off point for other far-flung destinations – including Antarctica. “We’re at the end of the world!” cried the owner of a lovely little café here where I had my first pastel de choclo*, and I’ve certainly started to make use of the jumpers which have otherwise just been taking up space in my backpack. It was also very strange when we walked home after midnight one night with light still visible at the edge of the sky.
This is the city where Carolina grew up, and the most important thing I did here was reunite with her and Francisco to share some truly excellent pizza, drink a rhubarb-flavoured Pisco at their friend’s bar and argue with Francisco about the logic of ice-cream cones. (In Chile, it is common to serve ice-cream in a cup with an upside-down cone on top. This is manifestly ridiculous, like putting an egg-cup on a plate of scrambled eggs.)
We also checked out the city’s cemetery, which (Wikipedia informs me) made it into CNN’s list of the top 10 most beautiful cemeteries in the world. It is very nice. It’s also filled with the most phallic trees you can imagine. I’m not offering that as a pro or con, just stating it for the record so you can make an informed decision about your cemetery visits.
Other than this, we didn’t do an awful lot of touristy stuff as we are saving our energy and money for the Torres del Paine trek which we start in a week’s time. Our economising last night with a stay-at-home dinner was almost ruined when we were unable to work the AGA-style cooker, but luckily one of the AirBnb owners turned up before we had burnt off our eyebrows. (Apparently this is exactly what happened to their very first AirBnb guest.) Tonight, however, we ate out and shared this rather incredible cake.
*The owner of the café later asked to take a photo of us so she could share that she had foreign diners on her Facebook page. “Suddenly your Russian relatives will arrive!” commented one person.
Jeff DuBowe on Haarlem globetrotters: “One of our favorite spots. Super walking city. I think we were the ones who told your In-Laws about it…” Oct 14, 15:15
