Well I embarked on a 36 hour bus journey down into Southern Patagonia. The land is flat, thundra and arrid. Siobhan, it kinda reminds me of Mayo 🙂 Check it out…..

And just in case you´re wondering, a few hundred miles down the road, it looks ex-act-ly the same……

It´s hard to believe some of the most famous mountain ranges are going to spring out of the ground down here. I read an article in National Geographic about Patagonia, they stopped in a ¨town¨ that was literally a petrol station and nothing else. Now I thought they were exaggerating but then we stopped there…..

Hmmmmm we were on our way towards the end of the world and the way the wind was picking up, it certainly seemed so. Now I could have gone the more remote and desolate route (believe it or not), the famous Route 40 but it took too long so I went for the conventional bus that literally crosses to the east of Argentina and back again but it was still a day quicker so that had to be my choice. I arrived in El Calafate and it seemed there was some life down here in Patagonia. El Calafate is on it´s way to been another Bariloche, it´s geared towards tourists, offering tours, boat trips and buses all over the region. Still though it´s a nice town and I met some good people there.

I was greeted at my (fab) hostel with the words, we party tonight!! So myself, Kerstin and Albert (who I met in Bariloche) said we´d check it out. It was good craic.

…….and were entertained by the likes of mime artists, a group playing drums and digeridoos (yes really) and then some bands, some of which were good and some of which were ¨entertaining¨ 🙂 Band Good fun though and we drank huge beers……..

Up early the next morning to go to the Los Glaciares National Park. Myself, Kerstin and Albert went to check out Glacier Perito Mereno for the day. We had a couple of nice photo stops along the way.

Anyone who is checking out my flickr page will see I´m getting somewhat obsessed with sky down here, it´s just amazing. When we got to the park, we started off with a boat trip to view the glacier from the bottom up…..

Then we went up to the viewing balconies to see it from the top down……

The glacier was much different to Franz Josef, that I had seen and trekked in New Zealand. It was very much wider but nowhere near in height. It was however, very dramatic!!! It advances at a rate of 2 metres a day so we got to witness it ¨calving¨, i.e. huge columns of ice collapse, break off and plunder into the icy water below, much to the delight and surprise (every time!) of the crowd watching. You can watch a video of it on my flickr ( Perito Marino and Perito Marino 2) but I didn´t capture any good one as it happens so quick. It sounds like loud thunder when it happens. Very dramatic and by the end of our day we were totally addicted!! It was a case of ¨oh let´s just stay for one more¨Good fun though and beautiful scenery. Really amazing.

The next day I went to see Torres del Paine National Park (Chile) Now I have to explain that Torres del Paine and it´s famous granite towers are a huge draw in this part of the world and one that many travellers like to tick off their list by either trekking the ¨W¨or the whole circuit. As the ¨W¨takes five days to complete, I had to settle for a day trip and, for reasons I will explain in a minute, I don´t think I would have been able to do it anyway. We headed off at 5.30am and had a boarder crossing into Chile on the way. Then the landscape began to change from the flat plains to gorgeous mountains with great layers of colours. We stopped at this turquoise lake and in the background part of the National Park was coming into view.

Just beautiful and so dramatic. We entered the park and it was a little cloudy but as soon as we got out of the bus the famous towers came into view.

They are dwarfed here completely as it would take more than a day to actually reach them and see them properly so this would have to do. We continued on and had a little walk to get a closer look at some of the scenery. Just check out these…..

The different types of rock in these mountains are amazing when the light catches them. Anyhoo we were taking photos and the wind there is unbelievably strong. So there was a huge surge and one minute I was standing and then next I was on the ground. This freakish wind just literally picked me up off my feet!!!!

So as I said, I don´t think I would have been capable of it – especially with a big backpack!!! Ah no I would have loved it and when we were leaving I was totally gutted that I couldn´t stay to trek at least the ¨W¨but them´s the breaks and I had some trekking planned on the Argentinian side anyway. Spent the bus jouney bacl to El Calafate staring at the landscape, I just love it here, it´s so unusual.

Even saw some flamingos in a lake. Flamingos are really stoopid though, if I´m remembering a documentary I saw a while back, can´t remember why though……

I´ve been thinking about language again and I have picked up some spanish, enough to get by but the problem is that you don´t really need here so then you get lazy. I´m looking forward to being forced into it when I move out of Argentina. I think that english speaking people have it too easy and I really want to make an effort. Although I don´t know how good my pronounciation is anyway as everyone corrects me when I say Torres del Paine, it should be pronounced ¨Pan-ye¨but I say PAIN and what people don´t realise is that this is on purpose – I maintain that you´ll be in a lot of pain after you trek it so it´s pretty fitting 🙂 It´s also pretty unfortunate that my name is spanish. Linda means pretty is spanish so every time I check into a hostel, they say Ah Linda, Linda, Linda, you know what it means??? – the horrible thing is I´m usually after a 20 hour bus journey, wearing grubby clothes, hungover or just a bit wrecked looking in general so I don´t feel very ¨Linda¨at all. Booo hooo 🙁

That´s about it for now, I´m off to trek in El Chalten, wish me luck…….

More photos on http://www.flickr.com/photos/lindybear/sets/72157613495075799/   http://www.flickr.com/photos/lindybear/sets/72157613495371415/   http://www.flickr.com/photos/lindybear/sets/72157613678645418/