Patagonia

Sunday 13th,  Valentine’s day in Oz, and we’ve have just got in from the wilds of Patagonia and found out Kate and Josh are engaged... It’s been the hardest secret I’ve ever had to keep, and the pair of us couldn’t stop crying when we finally spoke on Skype!

I’ve been talking about going to Patagonia for 20 odd years and I finally made it.... it’s as wild and windswept and as remote as I always imagined.... the plains are stony and treeless, great big gibbers strewn everywhere, a low prickly bush similar to saltbush as far as the horizon stretches; the road is dead straight and seemingly endless. We could be in the Oz outback except for the colou rand the language, but the humour was there....

Gus the 1985 model truck is gutsy if somewhat contrary; she lets her windows rattle down,   gaffer tape is the last resort on occasion to plug the freezing air leaks, and she thinks twice about starting when the mood strikes her....but she’s mostly reliable

6th Feb:

We drove most of the day across endless plains via Rio Grande to San Sebastian on the border, Argentinian first, simple enough.....then 10 kms of no mans land in semi desert, a few cattle, a few sheep, a “few” flamingoes, pale pink in an unexpected vista...then 1 1/2 hrs in the Chilean border. So much security in such an inhospitable place.

A ferry across the Magellan Straits led us along a similar road looking for a “wild “camp for the night. It was late, freezing cold, and blowing a gale, when we drove past a small ghost to en of an old estancia, a sheep station.... not unlike Newcastle Waters township, but a little grander.... the tour leaders looked for some undercover shelter for the night...

The Estancia it its heydey would have been very impressive - a Cucina  or kitchen, a carpenters area, a store, quarters, huge boatshed,  and the grandest 21 stand shearing shed with “broken” glass windows, pens everywhere.... the only thing still used, and where we set up camp for the night. The naysayers were many; the brashness of youth and charm of the tour leaders  won the day...(the Frenchman and American speak Spanish). ...

Shearing was recent (there were a hundred odd bales in the huge storage), and the smell of lanoline on the boards and the odd carcass in the races overwhelmed a few to start with ... needless to say I loved it.  We had to find a sheltered spot in the huge yards to pee and brush our teeth, all the while surrounded by howling winds and a sky painted with soft pink hues.....all overlooking a once grand establishment in a lifestyle that collapsed when the bottom fell out of the wool market. We went to bed in thermals and were still cold; thank God for the shed...

7th - 11th Feb:

Patagonia national park and the Torres del Paine - in the local language/Spanish it means Towers of blue - and they are stunning. The mountains are beautiful, seductive, but moody..... we’re blessed with beautiful weather, a heat wave in fact for the locals. The view from our tent is amazing; blue, white; then grey and threatening .... but always magestic.

The first leg of 3 days of walk takes up to Grey glacier - 22 km warm up. the 2nd is 2 walks around the mountains with different vistas, the 3rd a very testing 700m ascent over 11km to view the towers above the volcanic crater... the knees  are telling the tale now.

12th was a drive across more treeless Patagonia to los Calafates and the stunning Moreno glacier - equivalent of a 20 story building in a blue living breathing groaning wall of ice, the only one that is not receding in the current climate apparently..... every few minutes a loud boom signals a crash of ice into the lake.... the glacier itself is the size of buenos Aires....

Tomorrow we’re off to El Chalten