Have You Heard From Laura?

Puerto Natales, Chile

I had a terribly long bus ride from argentina - 6+ hours on gravel roads with 2 x 1 hour emmigration stops.

Bad news: whew, chile is muy caro (very expensive). Good news: I'm staying in the hip hostal in town - Concepto Indigo. it's right on the water. my room has a fantastic view. I'll take a picture to make everyone jealous (but will she ever post it?).

Today's delema: how to fit in kayaking, trekking and a ferry up north. the trek i want to do takes 5 days. the ferry i want leaves every thursday. the 3 day kayaking trip is $180 and leaves on the 2nd or the 9th. It just doesn't add up unless I skip the kayaking. ice climbing on the glacier is an option as well. all cost money. even the food here is expensive. actually, this town, puerto natales is supposed to be one of the most expensive places in all of chile because all the tourists flock here to get to the park Torres del Paine. hmmm....what to do.

Looking for Ben and Steph

Have you ever traveled half way around the world and one day happened to get a message from some dear friends from way back home telling you that they happen to be in the same little tiny town as you but they NEGLECT to leave the name of their hotel? This sucks. When this kind of thing happens you find yourself looking at every head in every restaurant and pausing before every bus that unloads hoping to see your homies.

In case my homies happen to tune in to this blog again from Patagonia..... I'm presently in Calafate, Argentina, home of the Perito Moreno glacier. Just passed the last several days in El Chalten, Argentina where I hiked among some of the most spectular mountains I believe I've ever seen. Tomorrow morning I bus it on over to Puerto Natales and will hike the W shortly, kayak the Serrano and then take the Navimag to Puerto Monte. I arrive in PN in the early afternoon on the 25th and hope to find familiar faces at Concepto Indigo.

Chalten, Argentina

Chalten town

I took the morning bus to from Calafate. Lucky for me, the bus dropped me directly at my hostel in Chalten. As I sat there eating my tuna sandwhich and contempating the rest of my day, Todd walked up and asked if I wanted to take a short hike that afternoon. Traveling can be just that easy. You wake up, the bus picks you up at your hostel and deposits you at your next hostel where the sun is shining and a nice guy with much wit asks if you want to take a hike. There certainly are those days where everything goes wrong, but this wasn´t that kind of day.

The weather held and Todd and I made the 6 hour journey out and back to Lago Torre. Todd told me about leaving things behind in the mountains like sad feelings. I told Todd about hugging trees. All good.

Next day Todd and I linked up with Ryan and Lynn for another day hike up to Loma Pliegue Tumbado. Our hike this day including getting lost and scrambling up steep scree slopes to great viewpoints.

Parque National de los Glacieres y Torres de Fitz Roy

Also hiked to Fitz Roy with Celine (an old friend from Calafate days). Hardly a cloud in the sky all day.

Fitz Roy

"Ready to go" pic posted

Cindy again. I finally downloaded a picture that Laura took prior to departure and put it where it belonged, in the initial entry to the blog. Which you can find here.

It's a great photo, because you can see our parents' house in the background, lots of snow on the ground, Laura looking ever so slightly anxious and quite cold.... So of the moment. I think it was taken moments before our brother Anthony drove her to PIT airport.

(It also has the distinct advantage of not including me. So, yeah!)

Anyway. On other topics: Amusingly (at least for me), Laura and I seem to be moving stuff around on this blog at the same time, trying to organize and make sense of stuff. It's because she's sending me stuff to post and trying to learn the system, and learning it at the same time, and we're not agreeing on what we're doing. And of course we're working at cross-purposes at various times. So I've gone and overridden her here and there, and she's doing the same I'm sure. If you find weirdnesses, please blame them on lack of sisterly communication. Nonetheless, I think you're getting full value from your blog-reading dollar. Let us know what you think.

Hey Laura: where are you today?

Photos from Antarctica

Hi all! This is Cindy, sitting in for Laura. Laura got in touch briefly -- she's returned from her Antarctic cruise, which she said was wonderful. She had only enough time to email me a few photos. Enjoy:

Mr. Toast cruising

Mr. Toast and Laura

Antartica

A Gentoo Penguin Colony and the Ushuaia

Antartica: the continent at last

The day was overcast as the Ushuaia sailed into a bay with many HUGE icebergs, several much bigger than our ship. The day was overcast and the feeling mysterious. The ice glowed in so amaizing shades of turquiose and blue. Accross the bay gigantic blue glaciers met the water. Such a volume of snow and ice, it's breathtaking. We loaded up into the Zodiacs at 8:00 a.m. for Portal Point, our first stop on the continent! Zodiacs are fiberglass bottom rafts which transport us from ship to land. The scene was exquisite. I´m sure I've never been to a more extraordinary place in all my life. In contrast to our many rough days at sea, the water at Portal Point was smooth as glass and perfectly clear. The zodiacs dropped us off and we wandered around on the snow. I felt I was in another world. I sat alone on a rock quietly taking in the view of the cloudy sky, and blue ice all around. Later we boarded the Zodiacs again for an iceberg cruise and saw several weddel seals naping on flat icebergs. A piece of ice broke free from one iceberg and disrupted the erie silence with a sound like a canon. For some time we rode around in the zodiacs admiring the abstract shapes of the icebergs and the shades of blue, blue, and more blue. Depending on the density, icebergs show 10 to 25% of there volume above the surface of the water. In the bay around Portal Point we could clearly see the icebergs beneath the water. As we began to head back to the Ushuaia we saw two whales surfacing near a couple of the other zodiacs. We sped up in our zodiac but we were too late, they were gone. The other zodiacs departed and we hung back a bit. Soon two humpback whales appeared right under our raft! The water was so clear and calm we could watch them under the surface. Their bodies are huge and black but their fins are mostly white. Screaming with excitement we searched the water below, the white fins would first appear and then the huge black whales would surface for a breath just 2 meters from the rafts. So fantastic.

After lunch the Ushuaia left this sureal bay got moving again. From the bow we enjoyed the glaciers and icebergs as we sailed by. A pod of about 16-20 orcas were spotted.

We landed at another large penguin colony in the afternoon. This time Gentoo penguins. Once saturated with penguins our guide Pablo guided us on a hike up the mountain. At the top we found a great and super long slide already tracked out to take us back down. Yip whoop! FUN! On the way back to the ship we spotted a few Minky whales but they weren´t so playful and we lost them. While searching for the Minkies we passed a huge and fierce leapard seal hanging out on his iceberg. Leapard seals are carnivors and eat other seals for lunch. Shit, that seal really had a fierce presence. Once we passed into it´s territory that seal let us know by getting into the water and circling our zodiac. We could clearly see him under the water checking us out. I think he was looking to see which was the best place to take a bite. This guy was the size of a large cow with black spots and a HUGE head. I can only assume that inside the huge head are huge teath. Chilling.

Antartica: Half Moon Island

Chinstrap Penguins

Half Moon island is one of the South Shetland Islands which we visited today, Day 5. Upon landing we were all elated with the hundreds of completely adorable Chinstrap penguins we met. There really is nothing cuter than watching these little guys leap out of the cold sea and waddle up discouraging hills, though heaps of stinky penguin crap and around many other hungry chicks to find their own yelping young only to upchuck krill (tiny shrimps) into the mouths of their babes. It just warms the heart, really. A few odd penguin facts for those interested....penguins mate for life. Couples lay 1 to 2 eggs per season depending on the species. Mom and dad take turns sitting on the egg keeping it warm inside the incubation pouch, a feathery flap of skin above the feet. Once the eggs hatch around mid to late December, the proud parents take turns watching the youngsters and hunting for krill in 24 hour shifts. Amaizingly, by 30 or 40 days the little babes are as big as mom and dad. When the weather starts to turn the parents abandon there chicks and it´s the young adults that end up teaching the new chicks how to swim and fish krill. On our cruise we saw Chinstrap and Gintoo penguins which are medium sized in the penguin world - about 2 feet tall.

Antarctica: the Drake

Day2: I woke at 3:30 am when I was nearly tossed out of my bed by rough waters. It must have been about this time that we entered the Drake passage - the body of water between America Sur and Antartida. The Drake is known for being some of the roughest water in the world. I knew this to be true when the chair in our cabin took flight and all doors and drawers opened and closed violently for hours. The entire contents of our closet exploded from within sending clothes, wine bottles, water bottles and crackers flying. I spent the rest of the night back and forth to the toilet leaping over and through the flying obstacle course in time to vomit, stumbling back to bed and holding on to the bunk just to stay in it only to get up again and again to vomit again and again. By 8 am I knew I had to make it out of the cabin or die there. I crawled out in only my pajamas up to C deck to find the doc. I wasn't wearing contacts or shoes, couldn't see straight, and made it as far as the dining hall. I lay there in the middle of the dining hall and called out 'Doctor, Where is the Doctor?' again and again (what a pitiful sight!). All sprawled out, retching and crying, I got the attention of the entire kitchen staff who took pity on me and found the doctor, cold compresses and vomit bags. It seemed like forever, but eventually the doc arrived and gave me a shot of Dramamine right to the behind as I lay on the floor. Two very large men carried me back to my cabin and placed me in bed. We were followed by some of the female kitchen staff who didn't hesitate to scold Neil for not taking better care of me. Hee hee. Poor Neil was himself quite sick, poor guy. With the shot in the derriere I was able to sleep many hours and when I finally emerged in the lounge later that evening, I learned that everyone was sick and some were worse off than me.

Bound for Antarctica aboard the Ushuaia

Day 1: Boarded the Ushuaia in Ushuaia in the evening. Happy with my cabin mate, Neil (from England) who must be the most funny silly person on board. Our cabin is on E deck. E stands for tiny berths at the bottom of the boat, no windows. Still, this seems delux as I've been sharing dormitories with 10+ stinky travelers for the last several weeks AND they've even give us TOWELS (tres delux). The Ushuaia will take nearly 70 of us on the 10 day cruise to the South Shetland Islands and the Antarctic Pennisula. I'm pleased that the passengers are of the younger budget travel set like myself and the crew is all Argentinian. The ship's doc sent us all to bed with a dose of dramamine.

Parque National Tierra del Fuego

While waiting for my ship, the Ushuaia, to sail for Antarctica, I decided to spend time in Tierra del Fuego National Parque here in Ushuaia. The bus from town drop me right off at my campsite and from there I made a few great day hikes.

First day in the park I hiked Cerro Guanaco with Andy and Martin (Switzerland). If I had known at the start it was 3000 ft climb I might have chosen another. As they say, ignorance is bliss. Even though my training routine of the last couple of months has been mainly shopping and TV watching and my training diet mostly Christmas cookies, I managed quite well through steep forest, wet peat boggs and a final push up some pretty steep scree. The view at the top of 'the end of the world' (they like to remind you of that as often as possible around here) was spectacular. I was pleasantly surprise to learn that my Swiss friends had prepared well and arrived at the top of Cerro Guanaco with a box of Argentina's finest vino blanco!

Another great day hike was along the Coastera trail. There were great views of la coasta, the Beagle Channel and the mountains in Chile accross the channel. The forests are lush and late in the day I spotted 4 woodpeckers drilling into downed trees. They are pretty big black birds with terrifically huge bright red heads and beak like ice picks. The wheather was terrific that day.

Ushuaia, Argentina

Yesterday it was 32 degrees Celsius (90F) when I left Iguazu. I changed planes in Buenos Aires (thunder storm and 2 hour delay), then stopped in Trelew (technical stop; not sure I want to know what that means), then Rio Gallegos (scheduled stop on my 'direct' flight). I'm complaining, but it beats the Indian train system any day and for this I'm thrilled. It was interesting to see Argentina from the air. South of Buenos Aires, the land is one huge empty flat expanse. Just before we landed in Ushuaia the Andes emerged dotted with snow. Ushuaia does remind me of Alaska - barren scree mountains that slide right into the sea at a jagged coastline. Cruise ships big and small are parked at the pier. It was 10 degrees C (50F)when we arrived in Ushuaia at 10 pm. My cheap hostel was an easy cab ride away. Hostel Amanecer de la Bahia is run by a super friendly bunch but it's CROWDED. This morning I met a young Brit couple who just returned from a 10 day cruise to Antarctica. They have totally sold me on the idea so I'm off to see the travel agent asap. Ushuaia is a nice little town nestled amongst beautiful scenery. It's full of foreign tourists passing time before or after their cruises. This means that there are many souvenir shops but also good restaurants. For lunch I had the most amazing bowl of king crab soup made with shallots, parsley, cream and nutmeg. Yummy!