Patagonia in September

I can't believe it's October already... time is flying by here in the far south. I'm about to leave the latest school I'm attending (it's my final week) but it's been amusing since there's a fairly famous Canadian musician in class -- as I've learned from the various random Canadian students that come through the school. Apprently he played with 'SuperFreak' Rick James and opened for Jimi Hendrix, Cream, and some other 60s bands back in the day, plus was recently inducted in the Canadian Music Hall of Fame. So, I SUPPOSE he has credentials. A pretty modest guy actually, I had to Google & Wikipedia him to find anything out. Oh yeah, Bruce Cockburn is his name.

Moving right along to the recap of my two weeks down in Patagonia... it was INCREDIBLE! What scenery! What distances! What animals! What COLD!!! But worth it. A friend and I went down to see the Perito Moreno glaciar near El Calafate and Argentina's glaciar national park and then I planned to go it alone in Chile (one of the advantages of having more vacation time than others!).

The glaciar park was amazing... having already flown over it on the way to El Calafate, I could tell that we only saw a fraction of the glaciars because most of the place is off limits. But we were able to hike around on Perito Moreno so that was awesome. Yes, I was a little concerned about cracking through some thin ice and plummeting down a crevasse (sp?). But the guides were JUMPING up and down on it, thus proving how safe it was. Or else how short their potential life spans are likely to be. Whatever.

One day we stopped at an island to eat lunch and it was there that I learned about the "wild cows of Patagonia". It sounded laughable but the guides warned us not to mess with the "feral cows" since they were imported to the island over a century ago and their decendents are fairly ill tempered if you approach them. All I saw were a bunch of cowpies everywhere.

Anyhoo, I would have been happy to spend some more time in the area but after 5 days, it was time to part ways and go across the Chilean border, all by my widdle self to Puerto Natales. And then wander around the nearby Torres del Paine national park! It was stunningly beautiful just like the glaciar national park -- assuming you're into mountains, gorgeous landscape, glaciars, icebergs, and the occasional deer, guanaco, or ñandú (basically a south american ostrich). You know, "nature stuff".

Obviously we REALLY got lucky with the weather. The initial 5 or 6 days of my trip were just sunny-and-blue-sky days. The locals said it was really rare to have so many sunny days in a row down there because usually it's just cloudy and/or rainy. But the Torres del Paine park was amazing... it was a lot like Alaska without all the large, carnivorous mammals that would like to eat you. I was there about three months before tourist season kicks off in high gear so the crowds were nil. It would have been great to have several days to hike around in it while going from one refugio (basically shacks with fireplaces) to another across the park. But I didn't have that kind of time, so alas. Next time!

We ended the tour at a huge cave (but not that deep) where some Chilean cowboy back in the late 1800s discovered a frozen piece of ice-age-mammal hide that was still somewhat intact. It cost me $3 to go in but since we were there for the next half hour whether I liked it or not, I was stuck. So I paid and looked around... it was semi-interesting but hiking in the park was better.

OK, that's enough typing today. Next I'll pick up the story "on the road to Punta Arenas Chile," including their weird/surreal cemetary plus the Magellan Straights, Ushuaia, the Beagle Channel, and oh-so-much-more.