Stuck in San Martin

I took a bus to San Martin de los Andes along the route of the 7 lakes, which was very beautiful althought, again, I had the problem that I couldn't stop at the places I would have liked to. Plus, I must confess, I have seen so many lakes in the last days, that I was beginning to lose interest on them.

When I arrived in San Martin, I had very bad news: all buses to Pucon were full until monday (it was thursday), so I was stuck in the place for 3 days more. At least the weather was fine most of the time (cold and a bit of rain), so I decided to take advantage of the place: I walked up to a nice viewpoint over the lake Lacar that same day, went mountain-biking along the lake the next day, took a boat across the lake afterwards and visited Junin de los Andes, Huechulafquen lake and the Lanin Volcano my last day.

The volcano was really incredible and it's been the first one that the clouds have allow me to see, after my frustrating experience in Puerto Varas and around. In fact, this volcano had been impossible to see for many days due to the weather.

I also learned a lot about Mapuches, the local Indians, both because the guide of one of the tours new a lot about them and because I met a mapuche kid when I climbed to one of the viewpoints by myself. Apparently, they live on land that the government has lend them (not given to them, to avoid the problems they had in Chile where Mapuches sold the land that had been given to them) and they have their own schools and their own social organization.

And finally, I was able to get into the bus to Pucón and enjoy the nice road trip from Argentina into the Chilean Lake Region. Ironicaly, I the Argentinian customs control was next to the Lanín Volcano and it was a day of complete blue skies, so I had a much better view of it than I ever did on the tour.

So, after waiting for 1.5 hours for the Chilean police to open and search all (yes, ALL) the bags of every passenger (and keeping my sandwich cheese and a tangerine), having my mobile phone stolen at some part of the trip and taking 6 hours to cover approx. 250 km., I made it to Pucón. It was a perfect sunny day with blue skies and the impressive view of the Villarrica Volcano (which, after all, was the main reason I went there) and the smoke coming out of its crater. But I had to, again, wait a few days to enjoy the view from its top.

Bariloche... and more rain!

On my way to Bariloche, I decided to stop at Villa La Angostura, since a British/Spanish couple I met in El Chalten had recommended me the Canopy (sliding from tree to tree hooking yourself to a poley that runs on metal wires from tree to tree, at a considerable height) in that location. Although it was snowing at the border cross between Chile and Argentina, I was blessed with a wonderful sunny day the day after that enabled me to do both the Canopy (a really fun and adrenalin-boasting experience) and the visit to the Myrtles Forest, with some of the highest, oldest and certainly most spectacular myrtle trees in the world. Many guidebooks and internet sites claim that Walt Disney inspired in this forest to design the background of the Bambi movie, but our guide made our fantasies disappear by assuring us that when he visited the site the movie had already been assembled.

And the canopy was also a lot of fun. 10 runs, some 40m long and some with a height of over 20m. Incredible!

La Angostura was a beautiful (and touristry) town, all with nice small houses made of wood and streets with trees and flowers of all possible colors. It seemed a lot like Switzerland and it was exactly as I imagined Bariloche (since everybody had told me that that city also looked like a Swiss one). And that's what my first impression of Bariloche was so dissapointing, because it was like a small big city, with lots of traffic, quite high buildings and certainly none of the charm of La Angostura (except for the nice buildings on the central plaza).

I only spent one night in La Angostura, so I took a late bus after the canopy and arrived in Bariloche at night. And to make everything more exciting, it was the beginning of Easter Holidays in Argentina, so all the hostels that had been recommended to me were booked out.

So I took a bus and told the bus driver to drop me off where he thought I'd have a better chance of finding a bed, and he was quite good because I was lucky at the place he recommended me. But just when I thought I was finally going to enjoy a well earned (and long awaited, after many nights sleeping less than 6 hours) night rest, I met this French guy who insisted on going out. Well, to make the story short, we had dinner at a cheap place with a local hair-dresser, then we bought beer at an illegal shop that was supposed to be a sport clothing store and drank it while playing "yaniv" (an Israeli card game) with two very fun Israeli girls while Stephan, a German guy who seemed desperate to meet girls, was having his dreadlocks made. Then we went to, as one person brilliantly described it, "the-least-Irish Irish bar in the world", only to be kidnapped afterwards by the Hebrew-speaking hostel's manager, an Uruguayan, who took me with his friends to this underground bar, revealingly called "Clandestino", who seemed one of those places you could only find in Madrid or Buenos Aires. The 60-year old owner was singing tangos to a devoted crowd in one room, while in others you could listen to electronic music, hear the lastest hits of Argentinian rock groups or simply sit down and share one-litter beers with your friends. I finish that unusual night by eating a delicious hamburger I bought in the street and sleeping in a sheetless bed (I didn't get enough courage to check the condition of the mattress). So, what was meant to be a quiet and repairing night, ended up being the craziest one since I'm here.

The next day didn't rain, so although I had only had 5 hours of sleep (and could still hear the tangos in my head), I decided to head for Cerro López, one trekking the hostel owner had asured me, quite rightly, that was certainly worth it. Beginning the trek, I met a quite nice group and we spent all day together: Salome, a cute British girl of Indian origin (who ended up being my companion for the 6 days I spent in Bariloche), Jan and Virginia (a nice couple from Germany) and Matt (an American who was studying music in Mendoza).

The trek was really spectacular, with a view of both Lake Nahuel Huapi (The Island of the Tiger, in Mapuche language) and Lake Moreno (one on each side of the luxurious Llao Llao hotel), and many peninsulas and islands. One of the most spectacular views I've seen so far, and it the day was quite cloudy, so it must even better on a sunny day.

Unfortunatelly, that was the only decent day I had in Bariloche, so all my plans there (2-day treks, paraglyding and kitesurfing on Nahuel Huapi, fishing, rafting,...) had to be cancelled. It was very frustrating, because this was the place where I had planned more things to do, but the weather was terrible and it was impossible to make (or at least enjoy) something outdoors. So, I used the time to catch up on my email, have some interesting conversations with Salome and other people (including an interesting guy who had done his 3-year military service at the Israel Army's Secret Service), try my luck at the casino (with a good and a bad experience), enjoy the excellent chocolate made in Bariloche and go out a few more nights to this "non-Irish" Irish bar.

And to keep up with coincidences, one day that I went to buy my lunch at this cheap place I had discovered with the French guy the first night, I ran into Geri, the Austrian guy who I had met in Comodoro Rivadavia and who I had spent my week in Ushuaia with. Truly incredible!

I decided to stay one more day in Bariloche because the forecast for the next day was sunshine, and I didn't want to spend the only sunny day in a week travelling on a bus. So I stayed, it was finally sunny, and I enjoyed a nice day at the Ventisquero Negro (an unusual black glacier, due to its ice being mixed with mud) and Monte Tronador (Thundering Mountain), called that way because of the sounds made by ice falling from the two glaciers that it has on each side.

And despite the next day, unlike what was forcasted, was again sunny, I decided to leave for San Martin de los Andes, where I would spend one day before going back to Chile.

Puerto Varas and the Lake Region

I arrived in Puerto Varas the same way I had been travelling for the last 7 days: under a heavy rain. But despite the weather, and even the landscape, didn't changed much, the place was completely different from what I had seen before.

After croosing through the poorly looking metal houses along the Carretera Austral and the modest wood buildings, the old German mansions, the modern look and the commercial activity in Puerto Varas made me feel as if I was in a complete different country. More exactly, I felt I was in southern Germany, which made a lot of sense since this city was founded by German settlers. And even people looked and dressed different there. More similar to Argentinians.

I visited Frutillar, a beautiful but touristry little town on the north west side of Lago Llanquihué (same lake where Puerto Varas is located) where, after a lot of rain, I could enjoy a very nice afternoon. It almost looked as a ghost town, as the rain had kept most visitors away or at their homes, so it was a great experience to have the town all for myself.

The next day I visited Lago the Todos los Santos, near the Argentinian border, stopping at Ensenada to visit a small green lagoon. Lago de Todos los Santos is claimed to be the most beautiful lake in Chile, and it's the one you can cross by boat to get to Bariloche on a boat + bus trip. But the weather was terrible (heavy rain) and the trip very expensive, so I decided to do a half-day walk near the lake and underneath the Osorno volcano (supposed to be spectacular, if you get to see it) with a girl from New Hampshire I had met hitch-hiking. Funny enough, I had not had any luck before meeting her, but we were picked up by the first car afterwards. And girls still claim they have not any advantages... :)

Anyway, I discovered that trekking under heavy rain is certainly not something I enjoy. Not only did we get completely wet, but we also couldn't enjoy the view. The clouds were covering the volcano and at one point it was raining so hard, that we couldn't even see the lake! And we were not too far from it! We had a good time, but I promised myself never to walk again under those conditions (the only good thing was that my cheap shoes proved to be absolutely water-proved, something I was not really counting on)

And keeping up with coincidences, one night I went out with Andrea, the Austrian girl I had met in Chiloé, and some guys from her hostel. Well, as it turned out, one of them was one of the Canadians that were bicycling along South America that I had met on the ferry to Puerto Montt one week earlier.

Anyway, since the weather was terrible and the forecast was even worse, I decided to head for Bariloche, and the Argentinian Lake Region (where I am as I write this, so that means I'm finally catching up!)

Chiloé, the magical island

This large and green island located a few km. southwest of Puerto Montt is not only an island geographically, but also culturaly, as everything there is so different from the rest of Chile.

Chiloé, the second largest island in South America (after Tierra del Fuego), stayed completely isolated from the rest of the Spanish empire for almost 200 years, after a Mapuche insurrection in 1599 that cut all communications with the mainland (a boat from Lima stopped there only once a year). It was also the last site in South America that remained loyal to the Spanish crown, until it surrendered in 1826.

This isolation led to the unique culture of islanders, a mix of natives and Spanish, and to the need of using only local materials for the constructions. That's the main reason why there are so many wooden buildings in this island, including around 150 beautiful wood churches built by the Jesuits, most of the World Heritage Monuments.

Chiloé reminded me a lot to the Celtic culture of Galicia, in Northwestern Spain, and less so, to Scotland. Green landscapes, rainy days, dramatic tides that cover and uncover kilometers of land, the devotion of its inhabitants to fishing and "marisqueo" (seafood picking), their mythology ("traucos", ghost ships, strange sea creatures,...). Everything is "magical" here, and I think the rain we enjoyed almost all days we were there helped us get this feeling.

Some villages, and specially Castro, the capital, have "palafitos" next to the sea. "Palafitos" are houses built on top of the water using wood columns as support. None of the people we talked to were able to explain what the reason of building this houses on the water was, but they certainly were something unique. Below them you can find thousands of empty mussles shells, and I still wonder if they were brought there by the tides or they are the left-overs of seafood dinners at palafitos.

The island is surrounded by smaller islands, also connected by ferries, and all over the place there are "forgotten" fisherman villages. Once again, a car is the perfect way to travel the island since by bus you can only reach the most touristry or larger locations.

I loved Dalcahué, with beautiful fishing boats dispersed between the village and the Quinchao island, right next to it, but there are many other villages, like Chonchi or Achao, in Quinchao, that are also worth visiting.

We ate great and very cheap seafood here, something I appreciated specially because in Argentina was not so common. Congrio (sorry, but I don't know the name in English), salmon, trout and hake are all common and excellent, and for seafood all shellfish were quite common and delicious: clams, mussles (steamed mussles were excellent), oysters,... You could see people picking them at the beaches when the tide was low, just like the do in Galicia.

One shocking discovering was finded dozens of dead "jibias", huge calamars (almost 1 meter long), on the beaches at low tides. One family at one palafito explained to us that they grounded themselves to death on purpose, because the temperature of the sea was rising due to global warming. The father of the owner of our lodging also explained to us that although that had happened before, this was the first time in 30 years.

After three relaxing days at the island (due to the weather and the nice place we stayed at Castro), I decided to head north to Puerto Varas, from where I was hoping to explore the Chilean side of the Lake Region. Xavi decided to stay one day more in Chiloé, so again, I started traveling on my own.

Along the Carretera Austral

The Carretera Austral is without a doubt one of the most spectacular and beautiful roads I have travelled in my life. This 1,150-km. long road, most of it "ripio", starts at Puerto Montt and goes all the way south along the Andes to Villa O'Higgins, near the Argentinian border, passing through jungle-like forests, emerald lakes, dramatic mountains, deep fiords, green rivers and breath-taking cliffs.

The road was a project started by Pinochet in the mid 70s. to connect by land a group of dispersed and uncommunicated villages that were only reachable by sea (or some, by traveling on the Argentinian side). Almost 30 years of work (the last section, from Puerto Yungay to Villa O'Higgins, was inaugurated last year) by 10,000 members of the army, many of whom lost their lives, have created the most important infrastuctural project in Chile in the second half of last century.

This road is certainly best travelled by car, so you can stop anywhere you want and reach the more isolated areas, but car-rental is very expensive here, so Uliano and I (Paul and Xavi decided to head north) had to use all imaginable means of transportation to make it through.

The traffic on this road at this time of the year is very scarce, so hitch-hiking becomes quite an adventure. Therefore, we took buses when available or would talk to truck drivers in the towns and some agreed to pick us up early in the morning and drop us in the middle of the road, literary in the middle of nowhere. We had Uliano's tent and bought food in case no one would pick us up and had to sleep on the open, but fortunately that never happened.

So we rode with a group of workers that were loading firewood and who stopped on their way to try to catch salmons on one of the many rivers we crossed; with an American who was a manager at the gold mine near Chile Chico, his Vietnamese wife and their two friends; we were invited to dinner by Patricia, a very nice woman we met on a bus to Cochrane, and her husband, who was a Crime-Scene Investigator with the Carabineros (Chilean police); we met Jordi, a true hippy that had been living in "comunas" in El Bolsón, making handy-works and working as a statue and who was a friend of another Catalan I met in Buenos Aires (incredibly, coincidences like this have happened to me a lot in this trip); we camped in people's gardens (well, just once),...

This has certainly been the most adventurous part of my trip. At least, so far.

The same way the sceneries we saw were absolutely spectacular, the villages themselves were not very much so. They were chaotic, old and with not very nice looking houses (except for the new "cabañas" being built for tourists). You can tell that these villages have lived in the most absolute isolation for most of the existence.

From Puerto Chacabuco north, the landscape along the road changes dramatically. Instead of steep and rocky mountains, now it was softer mountains covered by thick forest who become rain forest by the time you reach Parque Pumalin.

At Chacabuco we took the weekly ferry that brings provisions to those villages that still have no, or very limited, terrestrial communications. Uliano decided to go all the way to Chiloé island, but I decided to step down at Puerto Cisnes, a nice (and uncommunicated) village, around 30 km. away from the Carretera Austral, so I could travel the north part of this road.

It took me three hours to find 2 extremely friendly "chilenos" who dropped me at the cross-road with the Carretera (where, again, there was nothing at all and this time I had no tent). It started to rain and no cars had passed by in an hour, so I stopped the first micro-bus that I saw because the situation was not looking very good and I finally made it to El Chalten, my final destination, under a heavy rain (that didn't stop for many days).

And there came another surprise: when I went for break-fast at my lodging the day after, I run into Paul and Xavi, who were also there! Incredible!

We decided to visit Pumalin Park and then take a night ferry to Puerto Montt. The park, property of US billionaire Douglas Tompkins (founder of the The North Face and Esprit empires), is incredibly beautiful and it's one of the most important conservation projects in South America. Many centenary "alerces" (huge trees similar to Sequoias that were almost exterminated because they're used for construction work and ships) have been saved in this park.

Then we took the ferry to Puerto Montt, where we met 3 Canadians who had been bicycling from Ushuaia to El Chaltén (a few thousand kilometers, many in "ripio" roads). When we reached Puerto Montt, Paul decided to go straight to Bariloche while Xavi and I decided to head to Chiloé island, what you could call the "Galicia" of Chile.

But more on that on my next posting.

An unusual birthday

My latest birthday has certainly been the most unusual one so far. Not only it's been the first time that I've celebrated it on Autum and not Spring, but watching a spectacular sunrise while traveling on the open back of a Chilean firewood truck along the beautiful mountains surrounding the blue waters of lake General Carrera, with the snow at the distant Andes turning red as the sun appears is certainly not a common way to begin a birthday.

And the adventure didn't end there. The road from the town where the truck driver dropped us to our next destination was cut due to maintenance work, and once the road was open again very few cars passed by because it was already too late. So, after spending 9 hours in this little town in the middle of no-where, we found I guy that agreed to take us to El Maitén, on the cross with the Carretera Austral... for a few thousand pesos.

El Maitén turned out to be nothing but a cross-road and an expensive "cabañas" hotel, and it was starting to get dark. So, when we were thinking we would have to use Uliano's and Xavi's tent to spend the night, a pick-up passed by and agreed to take us south (all but Uliano wanted to go North) and, if we paid him some money, to the closest town. And that's how we ended in Puerto Bertrand, a small village (actually, a small group of "cabañas") next to the beautiful lake Bertrand.

And that's where we celebrated my birthday: at Alicia's (a local woman that takes travelers), with a bottle of cheap wine I had bought in El Chaltén and a can of beer Paul had, eating ham and cheese and tuna sandwiches, and blowing the candles on a loaf of bread resembling a cake.

Yes, definitely the most unusual birthday I think I'll ever have.

Entering Chile

Entering Chile was more dramatic change than I had expected. People looked different (darker than Argentinians) and talked different (and quite fast) and the landscape was completely different: everything was green here, quite different from the 700 km. of desert that I had covered the day before.

Having breakfast at my hostel in Los Antiguos, I met Xavi, a quite nice 43-year old Catalan from Vic that also wanted to do the Carretera Austral, and on the bus crossing the border we met Uliano, a unforgettable Italian from Bologna. Xavi and Uliano ended up convincing Paul and I not to cross lake General Carrera, but to go around it, which was supposed to be quite beautiful. The first problem: no buses were doing that route, so we had to hitch-hike. The second problem: a bunch of Israelis had had the same idea, and they were waiting one end of the village with apparently no luck (we were told they had been waiting for two days!!). We went up the road hoping that being away from such group will make it easier for people to pick us up, but we finally gave up and spent the night in Chile Chico.

The owner of the place were we stayed told us that there was a truck driver who went every morning to pick up firewood in a town on our way, so we decided to talk to him and he agreed to take us. And that was the day before my birthday.

Trekking on the Fitz Roy

After 2 days in El Calafate, Lauren, Teresa and I continued together to El Chaltén, where the spectacular Fitz Roy mountain is located. To get there we had to endure 6 hours along the famous (and boring) Ruta 40, crossing an empty desert through a quite deteriorated ripio (dirt and stones) road. And accordingly, El Chaltén looked like a town taken from a Western movie, with no streets, houses anarchically situated and a strong wind blowing plants along its paths.

El Chalten is very expensive town because provising have to be taken from hundreds of kilometers away and communications are very limited. This town was created in 1975 simply to stop Chile from trying to "enlarge" it's frontiers and now lives exclusively of tourism, having become one of the most important trekking centers of all South America.

I stayed there 4 and a half days, because half of them was raining and it was impossible to do anything outdoor. And the Fitz Roy stayed covered by clouds all but the last day I was there, frustrating all of us who had gotten there basically to see this spectacular mountain.

After 3 consecutive cancellations due to weather conditions (fortunatelly, I didn't suffered any of them) the ice trekking tour finally took place and that was one of the most exciting (and toughest) things I've done so far. We started walking at 7 in the morning and didn't reach the glacier Torre until 2 pm, going up and down steep hills and crossing the Fitz Roy river with a canopy (you attach yourself to a wheel and then slide along a cable to the other side), but when we reached the glacier we knew that all of that effort was truly worth it.

We put on the "crampons" (to walk on ice) and starting walking along the ice dunes of the glaciar, feeling completely as if we were in another planet. Then, we reached a vertical 15m high ice wall where we did ice climbing with piolets. It seemed impossible that this metal shoes and axes could hold our weight on an ice wall, but the did, and the sensation was incredible (specially when you looked down after reaching the top). It was during that trip that I met Felipe, a very funny Parisien; Eddy and Laura (a great couple from England and Asturias), who were doing the same trip as I but on the opposite direction; and Paul (a 25-year old English physiotherapist) with whom I would travel in the future. On the way back, to complete an excellent day, we were able to see (for the first and last time) Cerro Torre, a spectacular thin finger-like mountain covered by mushroom-shaped snow that it is claimed to be the second hardest mountain to climb (after K2 in the Himalayas)

Two days later, in an incredible and unexpected blue and cloudless sky, Eddy, Laura, Paul and I went up to the Laguna de los 3, to see Fitz Roy close by. The views all day were outstanding, and when we reached the lagoon, after a quite steep 400-m climb, the spectacle of its green waters and the Fitz Roy just behind left us speechless for a few minutes.

Then, the next day I would take a 14-hour long trip on "ripio" along Ruta 40 to reach Los Antiguos, where I would cross the border to enter Chile, after a full month in Argentina. And Paul would be coming with me.

In the land of the Glaciers

Teresa, Lauren, Frederic and I decided to go together to El Calafate, the gateway to visiting the "Parque Nacional de los Glaciares". Darryll went up to Buenos Aires to start his trip in Brazil and Geri decided to stay for a few more days in Ushuaia.

The first surprise when landing at El Calafate was how dry everything was (even dryer than Península Valdés!). Eventhought the town is next to one of the largest lakes in Argentina (Lago Argentino), it's completely surrounded by desert. I had imagined that by being closer to the Andes and having a lot of water nearby this would be a quite green region, so the landscape I saw had nothing to do with what I expected.

The second (and not very positive) surprise, was that the Perito Moreno glacier had finally broken the day before, after an initial breaking 2 days before, so we missed it for just one day! This glacier used to be one of the few in the world that was still advancing, but it is considered to be static at this moment. It still advances around 1.7 m every day (quite impressive), but the pieces that fall down neutralize that advancement.

The Perito Moreno glacier is located opposite to one peninsula at Lago Argentino, and when it advances and reaches the peninsula, it shuts down one of the arms of this lake (like a natural dam) making the water level on that side to rise which, eventually, makes the glacier break. And that's what happened last March. Initially the glacier would break down every 4 or so years, but this last time the whole process has taken 16 years, confirming that the advancement of the glacier is, at best, slowing down.

Eventhough we missed the incredible spectacle of the breaking (which may never happen again), seeing this 60 m high and 30 km long glacier is still amazing. Unfortunately, we didn't see many large pieces of ice falling (something that occurs many times every day), but the ones we saw were spectacular, making an incredible sound and producing waves in the lake.

But even more impressive for me than Perito Moreno was the trip to see the Upsala glacier, the largest continental glacier in the Southern hemisphere. The glacier is huge, around 80 m high, and it floats over the lake (meaning that the lake is over 800 m at that point) and it covers a surface about 3 times the size of the city of Buenos Aires. While getting there by boat you have to go around huge blue-colored icebergs that have fallen from it and are pushed away from it by the wind (extremely strong, I can asure you). The color and shape of these icebergs are incredible, and some of them are as high as a 6-story building (only the visible part).

Laguna Onelli was also a highlight of this trip. Three small glaciers end at this beautiful lagoon, filling it with lots os smaller icebergs that produce an amazing landscape.

The water from the glaciers is called "glacial milk", and it has a distinctive and beautiful greenish/blue color due to the sediments and minerals suspended on it. Most lakes and rivers on this region, both in Chile and Argentine, originate from glaciars and that's why the all have this unique color.

Ushuaia, the End of the World

Ushuaia. Tierra del Fuego (the land of fire). "La tierra del fin del mundo" (the land at the end of the world). Even the name of the region is attractive. No one was able to give me a certain explanation of why this large island located between the Strait of Magallanes and Beagle Channel is called "Tierra del Fuego", but one of the most reasonables theories is that it has to do with the native tribes. For both Yámanas and Onas, it was very difficult to make fire because of the constant rain, so they took the fire always with them. Even when they were sailing they took the fire with them and the younger kids would sit in the middle of the canoe taking care of it. So apparently, at night, you could see the fire from the Indians burning all over the island.

And another interesting fact about Yámanas: since they lived in the Southern part of the island (where Ushuaia is nowadays), where it rains constantly, they couldn't wear any clothes because they would get wet. So they were naked all the time, covered with fat from the sea lions they ate. So think of that next time you are cold :)

Ushuaia has certainly been one of the highlight of my trip so far. I didn't expect much of this small town except visiting the southernmost city in the world (actually, the small Chilean settlement of Puerto Williams is slightly further south), but I discovered a beautiful place with plenty of things to do and meet what I consider to be the best friends I've made so far in this trip. And on top of that, this town known for it's windy and rainy weather, offered has 6 full days of calm sunshine and blue skies. What else can you ask for!

The first pleasant surprise was landing in Ushuaia on a stormy and windy day, and seeing all those spectacular peaks, channels and islands surrounding the city under a dark sky with beams of light finding their way between the clouds. Truly unforgettable.

I travel to Ushuaia with Geri, one of the funniest people I've met in this trip (more so because he's not really trying to be funny). I met this young Austrian from Salzburg in Comodoro, where he had spent two days doing nothing because he doesn't speak any Spanish and no one there spoke any English (how he got that far it's a true mistery). Meeting an English speaker was to him like opening Christmas presents for a kid.

Anyway, we went to this hostel that some Australians had recommended us and that was also the best place I've been so far. Clean, relaxed, filled with great people and owned by Sebastian, a incredible (and usually stoned) guy that resembled the guitar-player of Status Quo and who was the heart and soul of the place. There I met Teresa (a mystical girl from Cantabria who is one of the nicest persons I've run into), Darryll (a great Irish guy who calls himself "malagueño", as he lived in Málaga for a few years), Frederic (a 20-year old from Munich who had worked at BCG) and Lauren (a cute girl from London, that spoke Spanish with a Mexican accent). For some reason, we all became instant friends and still keep in contact now.

It's true that Ushuaia is a quite touristry town, but it's in such a great setting and the views are so beautiful, that I think it's hard not to like it. Years ago this was a prison town, then it became the center for cruises to the Antartida and nowadays it has became a destination on its own.

The Tierra del Fuego National Park has some nice walks along the shore and inside forests, where you can see the dams built by beavers (a couple of beavers were brought here many years ago, and now there are over 24,000 of them since they don't have natural predators). Also, walking up to the Martial glacier and seeing the view of the city and the Beagle channel from there is quite an spectacle.

Geri and I took a boat trip on the Beagle Channel that was beautiful. The views where incredible (Argentina on the left side, and Chile on the right), with incredible mountains all around us. Along the way we saw pinguins, sea lions, wild gueese, cormorans, seagulls, albatros, flightless steamer ducks (the move quite fast in the water using their wings) all swiming or flying around us.

It was quite funny to discover that each type of animal had chosen a specific island in the channel to live, and all of them were concentrated only in that island. That way all cormorans live in the "Isla de los pájaros" (island of birds), all pinguins in the "Isla de los pingüinos" and all sea lions were in a croweded island with hardly any free spot left at "Isla de los lobos".

At the end we visited Estancia Harberton, the first one in the island. It was built by Thomas Brigdes, the first Western settler in this land, and his great-grand son (who is in his 60s) still lives there (we met him). The estancia was built with metal, instead of wood, because settlers were affraid that the Indians could use their fire to burn it, and each piece of it was brought by ship from England.

The day after we went horseback-riding along the Tierra del Fuego, in an unforgettable 3-hour trip with Marucha (my female horse) across rivers, forests, hills and beaches. I even tried going "trote" (sorry, I don't know the English word for it, but that's what you call when a horse is walking fast but not running) for the first time in my life (not bad considering it was my second time on a horse).

We also visited the beautiful lakes of Fagniano and Escondido with Nacho, a friend of Sebastian's who was also a tour guide. We became quite good friends with him, and the day after he invited us to go with him in his small zodiak for a trip along the Beagle Channel. Despite it was the only rainy day we had, the trip was incredible. We stopped at a desert island where you could see the spots where the Yamanas (the old natives) used to eat. We had a snack there and then walked along that beautiful island just enjoying the incredible sights and the absolute silence.

The only bad memory I have of Ushuaia is when I woke up on March 11th to discovered that some terrorists had killed 200 people in Madrid and injured more that 1,000. Everybody in the hostel was completely shocked (except for a Basque who was an ETA political party activist) and I still can't believe there are people able to do something like that or people that support them.

Anyway, it will be hard to forget those incredible 7 days I spent in Ushuaia. Discovering wonderful places, having a great time with the group, Sebastian and his Chilean right-hand Alfonso at the hostel, talking over a bottle of Trapiche Malbec wine (or Darryll's splendid Irish whisky) or sharing a round of beers at the Pub Dublin. Even though Ushuaia made me delay my plane ticket to Calafate and miss the breaking of Perito Moreno (I missed it for just one day!), I have the best memories from that place.

Check "Mate"

No one that has visited Argentina can ignore mate. This bitter herbal infusion is in Argentina what tea in the UK or beer in Germany. It's more than a drink, it's a social facilitator. Drinking mate is an excuse for socializing and talking among friends, and also a nice way of meeting other people or "breaking the ice".

It is common to see Argentinians anywhere (in the bus, in a bar, in the street,...) carrying with them their hot water thermos that they use for their mate. And they don't drink just a cup, they can drink liters of it. I've had mate in a boat after diving, in a bus, during a tour, in the hostel,... as I said, just anywhere.

Mate is made with "hierba mate", an herb that grows in Paraguay and the Misiones province (where the Iguazu Falls are) and it's is served a round wood cup with a metal straw. A single load of herbs is enough to prepare many servings of mate.

And there are strict rules when drinking mate: always the same person fills the cup (usually the one carrying the thermo), you have to finish all the water before handling the cup back, you never say thank you (unless you don't want more mate) and cups are served always in the same order and using the same cup.

I don't particulary like the taste of mate (too bitter for me), but I love the atmosphere around it. It's probably the closer that you can get to smoking a joint, but using "legal" stuff :) For some reason, you feel closer to everybody in a group after sharing several rounds of mate.

So, just a brief cultural note I though you might enjoy. And next, my report on Ushuaia.