Bariloche
I got to San Carlos de Bariloche today. It's an area of many lakes among mountains and forests. Looking out the window of the bus some places looked a little like the region of Mazury in Poland. I signed up for a tour and track tomorrow with a group of people from the hostal. I think one day of walking is all I can do. I am just really tired. Life after Puerto Madryn was so intensive that I am barely alive. I did a lot of walking in the past two weeks and also the cold got to me. What finished me off was the 2-hour wait for a connecting bus at Rio Gallegos because the bus terminal is under construction and it was freezing cold there. It is a little warmer in Bariloche but it rains all the time. I will stay here a day or two and then I am heading north to get some warmth.
A little more still about Patagonia. It is really a beautiful land. The whole trip between Puerto Madryn and Bariloche was amazing. I wrote a little about Ushuaia earlier. I would like to add that I went to a museum called Museo de Fin del Mundo and I really liked it. It is a small museum but has very interesting artefacts and pictures of the indigenous peoples who lived there before the settlers came. All four tribes are now extinct. What killed them mostly was the diseases the settlers brought with them and taking away of their land - the usual story. I met Naomi from England who worked as a volunteer at Puerto Williams on an island south of Ushuaia and she saw the remaining few families of Yamana (I don't have my notebook so I don't remember if that's the right spelling) who live there. When they die this will be the end of Yamana. Only artefacts and photographs taken a century before will survive...
One of the most beautiful parks I have seen so far is the Torres del Paine Park in Chile. I took a one-day tour because it's just too cold to walk the trails at this time of the year. The trails are long, usually 6-7 hours, so it must be nice to walk them in the summer when the days are long (summer sets at 11:00 pm in the summer). The one-day tour was just a glimpse of this natural wonder. The park is comprised of a mountain range and it's possible to climb the mountains, see the waterfalls, caves and glaciers. We saw hordes of Guanaco (the low-altitude undomesticated llama), flocks of Nandu (a type of ostrich which is called here "strus" which is the same name in Polish terminology - interesting) and a few gray foxes. Because of the glaciers the water in the lakes is milky, milky green or milky gray, and it's called "the glacier's milk". It's because of the sediments of various minerals, mostly copper and calcium, brought to the lakes by the glaciers. We went to see one of the glaciers and it was amazing to see it in the distance and closer by the chips of ice which separated themselves from the face of the glacier and were floating in the lake. Because of the minerals the blocks of ice were blue and from the distance, when we were approaching the lake from the forest, it looked as if someone scaterred around some plastic toys. It was an amazing sight. I took many pictures of this phenomena. Anyone who loves walking trails in the mountains will love this park. It's possible to do a four-day "small w" trail or a nine-day "big w" trail. There are two hotels and a few camping grounds. I will return there one day in the summer to fully enjoy it.
From Puerto Natales I went to El Calafate to see the Perito Moreno Glacier. The Glacier is located 80 km away from El Calafate, which is a pleasant small tourist town, in The Park of the Glaciers. Perito Moreno is one of the glaciers in the park but it is the one most often visited. It is truly an enormous beast. To explain it's magnitude I will use the comparison the guide gave us: it's as high as a 20-story building and as big, in square meters, as Buenos Aires. The 20-story hight pertains to what is above the water. The glacier touches the bottom of the lake which is on avarage 150 meters deep. We went to see the south face of the glacier and went to balconies built around it for the people to admire it. We saw it from the top of the hill and could see how it descends from the mountains. And then we saw it up close - a mountain of pure ice, sometimes blue, sometime white, sometimes transparent. Every few minutes or so we could hear a loud roar of the cracking ice and a few times we saw blocks of ice falling into the water. It was like the sound of the thunderstorm. Every day the glaciar progresses two meters but the blocks of ice chip from its face so it has been in the same place for the past 50 years.
A little more still about Patagonia. It is really a beautiful land. The whole trip between Puerto Madryn and Bariloche was amazing. I wrote a little about Ushuaia earlier. I would like to add that I went to a museum called Museo de Fin del Mundo and I really liked it. It is a small museum but has very interesting artefacts and pictures of the indigenous peoples who lived there before the settlers came. All four tribes are now extinct. What killed them mostly was the diseases the settlers brought with them and taking away of their land - the usual story. I met Naomi from England who worked as a volunteer at Puerto Williams on an island south of Ushuaia and she saw the remaining few families of Yamana (I don't have my notebook so I don't remember if that's the right spelling) who live there. When they die this will be the end of Yamana. Only artefacts and photographs taken a century before will survive...
One of the most beautiful parks I have seen so far is the Torres del Paine Park in Chile. I took a one-day tour because it's just too cold to walk the trails at this time of the year. The trails are long, usually 6-7 hours, so it must be nice to walk them in the summer when the days are long (summer sets at 11:00 pm in the summer). The one-day tour was just a glimpse of this natural wonder. The park is comprised of a mountain range and it's possible to climb the mountains, see the waterfalls, caves and glaciers. We saw hordes of Guanaco (the low-altitude undomesticated llama), flocks of Nandu (a type of ostrich which is called here "strus" which is the same name in Polish terminology - interesting) and a few gray foxes. Because of the glaciers the water in the lakes is milky, milky green or milky gray, and it's called "the glacier's milk". It's because of the sediments of various minerals, mostly copper and calcium, brought to the lakes by the glaciers. We went to see one of the glaciers and it was amazing to see it in the distance and closer by the chips of ice which separated themselves from the face of the glacier and were floating in the lake. Because of the minerals the blocks of ice were blue and from the distance, when we were approaching the lake from the forest, it looked as if someone scaterred around some plastic toys. It was an amazing sight. I took many pictures of this phenomena. Anyone who loves walking trails in the mountains will love this park. It's possible to do a four-day "small w" trail or a nine-day "big w" trail. There are two hotels and a few camping grounds. I will return there one day in the summer to fully enjoy it.
From Puerto Natales I went to El Calafate to see the Perito Moreno Glacier. The Glacier is located 80 km away from El Calafate, which is a pleasant small tourist town, in The Park of the Glaciers. Perito Moreno is one of the glaciers in the park but it is the one most often visited. It is truly an enormous beast. To explain it's magnitude I will use the comparison the guide gave us: it's as high as a 20-story building and as big, in square meters, as Buenos Aires. The 20-story hight pertains to what is above the water. The glacier touches the bottom of the lake which is on avarage 150 meters deep. We went to see the south face of the glacier and went to balconies built around it for the people to admire it. We saw it from the top of the hill and could see how it descends from the mountains. And then we saw it up close - a mountain of pure ice, sometimes blue, sometime white, sometimes transparent. Every few minutes or so we could hear a loud roar of the cracking ice and a few times we saw blocks of ice falling into the water. It was like the sound of the thunderstorm. Every day the glaciar progresses two meters but the blocks of ice chip from its face so it has been in the same place for the past 50 years.
posted by Asia Kabat at 5:20 PM
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