What, no Penguins?

From Ushuaia

 Our second, and final, day in Ushuaia was to feature a boat excursion in the Beagle Channel, which links the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, bypassing Cape Horne.  Alison had been hoping that we would have the chance to seem some penguins whilst in Tierra del Fuego, but unfortunately the only penguin colony in the area was some distance from Ushuaia and was not included on our 4 hour itinerary.  However we did get to pass various small islands in the channel containing colonies of sea lions and various species of bird, including cormorants and rockhoppers, and I managed to get some good photos.  We both agreed that from a distance, the cormorants looked very much like penguins when they were standing on their rock with their heads tucked in, so don't be surprised if Alison tries to pass of some cormorant pictures as being of penguins!

To the End of the World

From Ushuaia

 Ushuaia's main claim to fame seems to be based on the fact that it is the southernmost city in the world.  Consequently, many of its attractions are billed as "the last XYZ in the world!".  To be fair, it does also act as a base from which to explore the Terra del Fuego region, and also as a starting point for cruises to Antarctica.  Of course, we had to have our passports stamped with the "Sourthenmost City in the World" stamp! 

Our first day in Ushuaia involved an expedition to the Tierra del Fuego National Park, which included a trip down one of the rivers, paddling an inflatable raft, followed by a three hour hike around one of the larger lakes in the park.  Naturally, we also had to visit the starting point of the trans-Americas highway that runs up the whole length of America from South to North (or indeed the other way round, depending on how you look at it). All in all a very pleasant day out, if perhaps not quite as impressive as some of the expeditions that we had already done earlier in the holiday.  

In the evening we found a restaurant serving a tapas platter of local dishes, which turned out to be an excellent choice.

Tierra del Fuego

From Tierra Del Fuego

 Our itinerary involved a lengthy road journey from Torres del Paine to Ushuaia, which spanned almost two whole days, and involved an overnight stopover in Punta Arenas.  Not quite sure how we ended up with this route as a flight would have saved us at least a day's holiday, but anyway, it offered the chance to "view some of Patagonia's most stunning scenery", and cross the "mystical Straits of Magellan", according to the blurb in our itinerary.  In the event, the multiple bus hops were all comfortable enough and we did have a good meal in Punta Arenas.  However, the Tierra del Fuego landscape was pretty dull compared to some of the spectacular scenery we had encountered earlier on our trip, and the roads on the Chilean side of the island were all of the dirt track type.  As we approached the West cost of Tierra del Fuego we had to go through the whole Chile/Argentina border control again, with it's mass of paperwork. Why these two neighbours can't trust each other a bit more beats me.  After yet another bus change in Rio Grande, we eventually reached Ushuaia - the end of the world!

Torres del Paine on Horseback

From Torres Del Paine

 After much debate, I bowed to Alison's better judgement and agreed to tackle the journey to the foot of the Torres del Paine peaks via a combination of horseback and trekking, as the nine hour round trip would have been too daunting on foot alone - and besides, I insisted that Alison pay for the horses!
  Our hotel had a selection of 50+ horses available to carry guests on a variety of trips around the national park, and we were assigned two reliable and experienced animals who, we were assured, would be more than able to carry us to the staging post on the mountain trail.  I tend to distrust modes of transport that do not have at least two wheels, a brake pedal, and a reasonable selection of forward and reverse gears.  However, our guides explained the basics of how to drive and steer our horses, and it all seemed straightforward enough, with the added benefit that the horses had four legs as against our paltry two, which could come in handy on the steeper bits of the trail.
It was not long before I started to feel reasonably at ease with my nag.  Her only bad habit was to try to stop and eat every bit of green vegetation along the trail, which could be inconvenient at times.  Anyway, it certainly beats walking.  After about an hour we reached the refuge where we had to park the horses to await our return later in the day.  The remainder of the trek was to be on foot.  In the end we reached our destination, a viewpoint overlooking the towering peaks of the Torres del Paine, without too much strenuous effort. It was certainly less tiring than our assault of he Mt Fitzroy peak a few days earlier.  The peaks were certainly impressive, standing out starkly from the surrounding darker mountain rock.  Unfortunately we were not able to see their summits, which were shrouded in cloud for the whole day. (It  turned out that we were very lucky with the weather for our outing, as it got considerably worse the next day).
The return journey retraced our outbound path, and we were eventually reunited with our horses where we had left them at the staging post.  Although we could have done the rest of the journey on foot without too much difficulty, we were glad of the fact that the horses were there to take the strain and give us an easy ride back to the hotel.  In retrospect, the decision to go for the horse/trek combination was a good one, and one that I would be happy to repeat on some future occasion.

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Into Chile

From Torres Del Paine

 In fact we had already set foot in Chile earlier in this holiday, albeit only for 5 minutes to drink a hot chocolate on a mountain top in the Andes.  This time it was for real, with a trip to the Torres del Paine national park, which is located in Chile about three hours drive south of El Calafate.  Our expedition was in a rugged looking 4x4 minibus, which turned out to be an appropriate choice of vehicle, as the paved roads in Argentina turned into dirt tracks as we got close to the boarder, and continued like that pretty much the whole way into the national park.
The park itself consisted of a series of lagoons surrounding the centre piece, which was the towering Torres del Paine peaks themselves.  We had the opportunity to visits most of these lakes, which were each stringing different shades of blue, ranging from turquoise, where the lake contained rock particles from the glacier ment, though sky blue to indigo.  On the way we passed many guanacos, the llama like animal that is native to Southern Patagonia, and is currently undergoing something of a comeback.  Much of the park was still closed following the extensive forest fires that had raged there a few weeks earlier, but fortunately most of these were now under control and it did not affect our itinerary too much.
At the end of the days excursion on we were taken to our hotel, which is strategically placed as a base to tackle the various trails to be found in the national park.

Cerro Torres

From Cerro Torres

After yesterday's marathon trek, we decided on a more modest outing today - to view El Chalten' s other main set of peaks, the Cerro Torres. Rather than do the whole day trek to the lake at the base of the peaks, we opted for the much shorter 3 hour round trip to the main viewpoint. Still impressive, even from that distance.
Getting back in the early afternoon, we had plenty of time for a refreshing beer followed by loads of homemade ice cream, which is quite a speciality in Argentina.  Then it was time to catch the bus back to Calafate and an excellent vegetarian pizza in the restaurant attached to our hotel.

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Ascent of Mt Fitzroy by Camera

From Mt Fitzroy

 After a short warm up walk on our first day in El Chalten, we were ready for the big one: the assault on the towering peak of Mount Fitzroy (named after the captain of the HMS Beagle).  The trek started off relatively modestly though woodland and along flattish scrubland areas, for about 12km, with one or two lookout points on the way.  The final stretch was a steep 400m ascent up a rocky slope and moraine scree to reach our goal, the view of Mt Fitzroy and the blue waters of the Laguna des Los Tres at its foot.  A truly impressive sight, with several glaciers tracing down from the peaks to feed into the lagoons below, and the massive peak of Fitzroy in the background. We decided against actually scaling the peak itself, and settled for a photographic assault instead.
After our picnic lunch I descended the short slope to the Laguna to test out the water for myself.  Nice and cool at around 2deg, and very refreshing for my hot feet.  One braver guy even had a swim in it.  Refilled our water bottles with pure glacier water for our return journey.
The walk back down the slope was if anything harder then going up, but we had hired walking poles for the day and that helped enormously.  The route back retraced our outbound path, but it was still interesting seeing the landscape from a different angle.  We finally arrived back at our hotel in El Chalten after a strenuous, but very satisfying, nine hour, 28km round trip.

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