Patagonia in Argentina

Tierra del Fuego and Ushuaia, Argentina - To the bottom of the continent, back into Argentina and to the world’s most southerly city of Ushuaia where the temperature was in single digits. I chillaxed for most of the time, mainly recovering from drinking games and sleeping off late nights. The Argentineans don’t go clubbing until 1am and finish at around 5 or 6 am. The one activity I did do was go on a tour looking for beavers. After watching a few beavers we went and had another Argentinean steak dinner. By the end of the trip I will have probably eaten several cows worth of steak and chorizos (beef sausages).



El Calafate, Argentina - We left the bottom of the world and headed north again crossing a couple of borders to get through Chile on our way to El Calafate. From here we went to the nearby Moreno Glacier which is regarded as one of the most beautiful in the world. The glacier is surrounded by forested hills and calves (breaks off) into a lake. We caught a boat and went close up the glacier to watch huge chunks of ice break and fall into the lake. Only a couple fell while we were out there and we returned to the hostel where we spent the night playing drinking games.



El Chaltén, Argentina - From one glacier area to another we went to the small touristy town and spent a couple of days in the cold. One of the days we trekked a 30km roundtrip up to a glacier to walk on it and do a little ice climbing. I was allowed to wear my jandals up to the glacier but they wouldn’t let me put crampons on them so I had to put boots on again. We each had a turn ice climbing with ice picks up a small 10m part of the glacier before heading back, jumping over crevasses and water pools.



Bush camping, Southern Patagonia, Argentina - It was then a couple of long drive days as we headed north through the very flat and unexciting part of Patagonia. In between camping in a quarry and a campsite in the middle of nowhere for 2 nights we visited a petrified forest which is actually a number of logs that have turned to stone but look like wood and even have rings and knots still.



Puerto Madryn, Argentina - Back to civilisation again to stay in a hostel for a few nights and air out the sleeping bags. Puerto Madryn is near the Valdez Peninsula which is well known for its sea mammals so we took the truck out for a look at the animals. The peninsula is one of only two places in the world where a family group of 10 orcas deliberately beach themselves, grab a sea lion pup and then swim back into the sea to devour it at their leisure. Unfortunately for us the tide was well out and we were about a month early but we did see the thousands of sea lions and their pups who will become an orca feast in the future. In the car park we met a bunch of friendly armadillos that scampered around not caring about the people. Further along the peninsula we checked out a group elephant seals but they were in the process of shedding their skin so didn’t move much on the beach. We also came across a large penguin colony before heading back to town where we had more drinking games and a night on the town trying to salsa in the nightclubs with the locals to no avail.