Argentina 2

Argentinians, men and women always greet one another with a kiss on the cheek, including the bus drivers who kiss each other when changing buses but I doubt this would be popular if Boris suggested it for London Transport.  Cordoba is a big place and our summary is the same as Dr Johnson’s of the Giant’s Causeway “Worth seeing, but not worth going to see”.  Still, it’s always good to see a city that’s not the capital.  Difficult to explain but a non-capital seems somehow more like the country, a bit less cosmopolitan, a bit less international.  We did have a first guided walk, in the National Parque de Condores, where we saw our first Andean Condors which are rather like elegant flying barn doors with their 3m wingspan.  Lovely wild country like the moors but hot.  


Our overnight bus back to Buenos Aires was extremely comfortable and we slept most of the way.  The big bus terminals are fantastically lively places, 40 or so stands at Cordoba, 75 at Buenos Aires, so you can just imagine the numbers of people and the bustle.  We always think that this is the way most of the population moves so it feels like getting into the local scene, as it were.

We had decided that a 28 hour bus ride across the pampas was a few stops too far and booked a flight to Calafate in the southern part of Patagonia.  Just after checking our bags in, I remembered that I still had my Swiss Army Knife in my pocket so tucked it in my camera bag to see whether it got ‘lost’ on the x-ray machine along with the camera.  Fortunately it did.

El Calafate seems to exist mainly because it’s nearish to Perito Moreno glacier, a stunning sight and much more impressive than the ones we saw in NZ.  The front of it is 5 kms wide and 60m above the waterline and we heard that there’s another 100m below the water.  It’s stable, which means it’s not retreating as quickly as most other glaciers worldwide, but even so we saw huge chunks of ice falling of it.  Because it’s so big, once you hear the noise the ice has already hit the water, so you have to be luckily looking in the right place to see the action.  The noise of cracking and crashing is really ear catching.   El Calafate itself seemed pretty quiet until we went to El Chalten, the next village to the north, a mere 210km away.  If anywhere deserves to be described as stark beauty, it’s this Patagonian landscape.  Pretty empty with a wide range of grasses and ground hugging plants, the only trees planted as wind breaks around the odd building.  Odd because there’s only 1, 3 or 5 of them over the whole distance.  Lots of subtle browns, pale yellow and buff colours.  Being 50kms or so east of the mountains we are in a serious rain shadow, which I guess probably qualifies this as desert.

About halfway to Chalten, we stopped at La Leona Hotel, a month long hideout for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and judging by what they charge for 2 coffees and a bit of cake it’s no wonder that poor ol’ Butch and Sundance had to rob banks.  Another bandit around the same area and time rode bareback, wore furs and only ate raw horse meat, so the fact that we can find vegetarian menus shows some sort of progress.

El Chalten was built in 1985 as part of a continuing border dispute with Chile and looks like a building site.  However, it is near some stunning mountain walks and we got in a 22km and a 20km in the two days we were there.  Weather was stunning on the first day and very good on the second so the mountain views were very special.  We heard that last January there were only two clear days and one American we met had been there the week before us and had left because the weather was so bad. 

We’re now about to leave El Calafate for Bariloche, some way further north and hopefully a little warmer.  It was touch and go whether we got a flight or had a two day bus ride up the ‘adventurous’ Route 40, a partly tarmac 1200km ride.  Yesterday we got confirmation that our standby for a flight had turned into seats, so flying it is and it only takes about two hours.  The very helpful Aerolineas Argentinas agent gave us left (Andes) side seats at the front of the plane and she even wished me a happy birthday as we left the booking office.

Arrived at the small airport to find the check in queue right out of the building, about 200 or more people.   The plane from Buenos Aires, which they turn around for our flight is over an hour late, so we spent the time waiting before check in instead of after.

Stardate 28.01.2011