Saturday, January 24, 2009

Ruta 40

After spending a good couple nights going out with my friends from my exchange, it was time to move on. i knew my british friends would be in calafate (my next destination) the next day, and my bus was to due there the same day, perfect. i was just a bit shocked when the got off the bus for a breather as i was waiting to get on! we ended up on the same bus for the remainder of the 18 hour trip. there was also a very annoying american who grew up in an amish town in pennsylvania who took everything too seriously. when we got to El Calafate, a town known only for the massive glacier that lies 60 kilometers away, i tried to check into the same hostel as my friends, but it was filled up, even the couch upstairs has somebody on it. so i got a room in a place just a hundred yards away that had a bed and hot shower, which was ill i was looking for. i spent more time at the other hostel (the one i wasnt sleeping at) than i did at mine, and the staff adopted me friend and i was always welcome there. calafate is probably the most expensive town i have been to in south america, which means we were cooking. steaks. we had great food for a fraction of the price and i now have some more receipes to add to my mental cookbook...

the next day natasha and i took the bus out to the glacier. natasha´s friends rachel wanted to hike on the ice itself, which was out of my price range, so she left earlier than us. let me just say, this piece of ice is massive. we took a boat ride on the lake that it help to create and got really close, watching enormous chunks of ice fall off the face of the glacier, less than 100 yards away. we then headed to the cafe for our packed lunch, and then proceeded to the various obsersevation decks. sitting in the sun watching this piece of ice was somehow captivating, and at the slightest sound we would jump up hoping to see another piece of ice calving from the face. we managed to see it happen quite a few more times, in awe as the suprisingly blue ice would, with a resounding CRAAACK, BOOOOM, of huge tree falling, slip into the lake below. of course i forgot my camera, so pictures will have to wait until natasha emails the pictures to me.

they left the next evening on a flight to Buenos Aires and i got on my 3 am bus to Ushuaia. my friend chris from queensland happened to sit down next to me on the bus. what luck. we changed buses in a town called rio gallegos and then headed toward the end of the world. the road crosses into chile, which sees itself as an equal in quarentine conditions to new zealand, so everybody was made to get off, open their bags, fill out delcaration forms, get passports stamped, and then get back on the bus so we could move on. that happened leaving argetina, entering chile, leaving chile again, and re-entering argentina. we also had to have the bus loaded onto a boat to get across a channel, so technically, im on an island right now. the road to Ushuaia is for the most part Ruta 40, and the chileans dont maintain it, since there is nothing this far south in chile worth seeing. so the going was slow--about 29 km/h--on a think gravelly road, for much of the time before re-entering argentina. lovely.

but we made it to ushuaia, i got to the hostel and already met a nice aussie woman who is headed to antartica tomorrow. how i envy her. if it wasnt $2500 for the 11 day trip down there, i might just consider it. it occured to me that my birthday is 2 days away, and the only plans i might have would be to take a 2 or 3 day sailing trip around cape horn, that could be fun. off not to investigate prices.

2 comments:

Gma said...

Happy Birthday Jeevon, It has been fun following your journey. I have been bugging Bob about those Iquaz Falls. He has a friend that spends a lot of time in B.A. his son teaches there. Your mom beams when she talks about you. Thanks for having the blog...Rox

Anonymous said...

You were in Chile!!! Que padre. :)
- Sela