¨I mean, think about it, man.  When else are you going to be able to go swimming in Antarctica?¨

It´s a more persuasive argument for me than it seems to be for anyone else, though I´m not immediately sold.  Cold water is just so… cold.

It´s our first landfall on the continent itself; everything else has been on Antarctica´s surrounding islands.  A refuge had been here, but cleared failed at its job as a particularly harsh winter only recently leveled it, littering the ground with wood, glass and supply containers as of yet unclaimed by nature.  The base of the refuge has been taken by penguins who seem more densely gathered there than over the more natural surroundings on all sides of it.

The trek upwards is one of the longer and most exhausting hikes our group has attempted thus far, but leads to a spectacular view.  And if penguins can make it up there with their awkwardly short leg spans, how tough can it be?

From the top, immense views spread out over 270 degrees, including a great vantage point of our boat, and a tremendous glacial wall spreading out just below us.  It´s a great spot, and gets my blood just pumping enough for what has to come next.

Making the long hike up to the lookout point.

Looking back down at others still working their way up to the top.

No complaints.

Our Ushuaia, as seen from above

I´m actually in no danger in this picture.

The Swim

Mildly sweaty from the walk down, I knew that this had to be the time and any hesistation might kill the likelihood of my actually making it into the water.  So I didn´t hesitate.

¨Can you hold this? ¨ My camera.  ¨And maybe take some pictures of me?¨

¨Sure,¨ the Australian woman says, smiling.  ¨Where do you want to pose?¨

¨From there.¨ I nod my head in the direction the water while flinging my coat off and onto a nearby rock.  As if clothing removal were a speed contest, I rip everything off as quickly as possible while a crowd forms, and fling each thing down onto the steadily growing pile of necessary (or not) Antarctican protection.

Down to my boxers, I run with as little grace as possible into the water, making it down to my waist in less than four steps.  The rocky ground bumps uncomfortably at my feet, but they´re already numb enough as to not mind.  I´m not cold from the water yet — it´s too cold to have hit me.  Now past my belly button, I drop quickly, hissing a sharp burst of air from my mouth as I sink down to my neck then shoot forward again in a giant, dorky splashing motion.  Another drop down and subsequent splash (I felt the need to do something grandiose for those watching) and immediately I begin my sprint out to the warm embrace of my clothing.

Undershirt, pants, t-shirt, right sock, left so–

¨You shouldn´t have your foot in the water,¨ a woman tells me.

I look down and see I´ve set my right foot, freshly socked, into an inch or so of water.

¨Oh.  I didn´t see that.¨  I didn´t see that.  That´s not good.

Most of me has warmed up nicely, but not my feet.  Back in the zodiac and my body feels fine, other than feet that I only am vaguely aware of.  Tense and release, tense and release.  No sensations.  How great a story would this be for the losing of my toes.  It was a really great photo op!

Such grace...

I really did get neck deep. This was the best picture the lady got, unfortunately.

yay.

Back in the boat, my feet come back to me eventually.

On the plus side, Patrick´s gathered up some dark ice — most of it is white and porous and would make for bad cocktail ice.  But the old, really dense stuff tends to float a little lower and appear darkly transparent rather than lightly opaque.

Good ice for drinking!

Cutting the ice down to acceptable sizes with a steak knife. ¨But Yancy, why not use one of those many axes we see all over the ship in pictures.¨ Well, I did. Turns out this is frowned upon.

Salud!

Our good cheer is short-lived. The boat bar has a weird policy where you can`t use their glasses for your own alcohol, and confiscates the glasses upon providing us flimsier plastic alternatives. Suddenly, my ice cube is over-large...

Zodiacs, stored at the MV Ushuaia´s stern until needed

The Zodiac Company first started making the rigid-hulled inflatable boats successfully during WWII, leading to a success that´s been so strong and consistent that all similar boats tend to be called ¨zodiacs¨ these days.  We rode the real deals.  It´s a good thing, because in freezing choppy waters filled with icebergs, killer whales, leopard seals and other cold-blooded threats, it´s nice to know you´re riding the best.  With the MV Ushuaia safely anchored in deep waters, it´s the zodiacs that serve as our primary means of getting in, on and around Antarctica.

Typically, zodiac rides are less than five minutes to set destinations, though in some cases, the ride is the destination.  ¨Iceberg Alley¨ is a reliable source of massive, imposing monoliths of ice, even more awe-inspiring from the fact that only about a third of the floating chunks are above visibly above water.  The sunken wreck of the Norweigian Governoren still remains a popular tourist attraction nearly a hundred years after it sank.  And any number of massive glaciers rendering my visit to Perito Moreno almost pointless by racing out to the water´s edge in monstrously forbidding walls of ice.

A flock of petrals takes to the sky as we pass a particularly interesting ice formation.

A flock of penguins swim by in their classic swim arch

More penguins. There was worry that we wouldn´t see many given that this trip was late in the season. We saw thousands.

Conditions were extremely choppy at times.

Brad, our tour master. Dropped out of an uninteresting life in HR back in the 70s and was amongst the first guides in Antarctica.

Chillin´

Passing by a tremendous natural ice bridge

Leopard Seals

Nearly at the top of the Antarctican food chain (it´s not a big chain) sits the leopard seal, who is actually fairly playful assuming it doesn´t perceive you as food (sorry, penguins).  Only the orcas — killer whales, a.k.a. ¨Willy¨ — look at the formidable seal and think ¨food.¨  Unlike the Weddell and Elephant seals (which we also get to meet), the leopard seal doesn´t swim too far below the surface of the water, focusing instead on penguins and krill for food.  The former are typically beaten to death before chowing down with sharp teeth and an extremely wide jaw (opens up to 150 degrees).  The latter — krill — are gathered by by swimming through krill-infested water and catching them with specialized molars.

While their necks are primarily white, they´re covered with black spots which helps give the seal its first name.  They tend to leave people alone, though have a strange attraction to the black ends of the zodiac pontoons, and have been known to puncture them, and we did notice a leopard seal take an interest in another zodiac on our trip, following it halfway back to the MV Ushuaia.  However, the one that came closest to any boat I was on was extremely playful.

A lone leopard seal swims around and under our boat playfully for twenty minutes, curiously checking us out.

This one caught a penguin and continously swung it back and forth on the water until it stopped moving before he proceeded to chow down. Brutal.

Iceberg Alley

Intermittant rain and slightly harsh conditions at times made this section of open water with an extremely high concentration of broken-off icebergs chillier and more damp than what would probably be optimal.  This would´ve been a great time to have a waterproof camera.

On the positive side, everyone in our crew traded pictures at the end of the trip, meaning that few great photo ops were lost.  On the negative side, this means I literally filtered through over 4000 pictures upon making it back to Ushuaia.  Fun day.

Getting up close and personal with an iceberg. I licked it. It was salty.

Whale Oil is Flammable

And around the turn of the last century, it was extremely valuable as well.  The ¨valuable¨ part is what brought so many whaling vessels this far south, despite such harsh conditions and a still mostly unexplored continent.  Sadly, the ¨flammable¨ thing is what put one of them, the Governoren, permanently out of commission and firmly locked into the Antarctic tourist circuit.

Celebrating the end of a season and a boat filled with the valuable — and again, flammable — whale oil, the crew participated in the tradition of having a tremendous party in the lower decks, complete with dancing, drinking, revelry and fire.  The latter turned out to be a problem.

The fire made the boat less than seaworthy at a rapid rate, but as a credit to the captain, no one was lost in the sinking.  Thinking fast, he grounded the boat just off of Enterprise Island where everyone was quickly evacuated.  Whaling was enough of an industry in the region at that point that it wasn´t long until they were rescued.

Now, an artifact from an industry that once pillaged natural resources stands as a monument for nature´s slow but eventually reclamation of everything.

Perito Moreno Glacier Was Probably an Unnecessary Trip

Don´t get me wrong: Perito Moreno´s a beautiful spectacle in every way.  But it loses a bit of its spectacle in comparison to almost anything here.  What else on Earth anywhere is like Antarctica?

Back to the MV Ushuaia

For close to six days, the MV Ushuaia snaked through the hundreds of Antarctic islands while making its way down the peninsula.  Our plans were rigid enough that we´d all receive a rundown of each day´s activities on the prior evening, but flexible enough to change given bad weather conditions or other unplanned mishaps.  Unfortunately, our safety always had to come first, meaning bad weather could potentially keep us from certain activities, and not all tourist attractions on our itinerary would definitely be covered.

We were mostly lucky in this regard.  The only stop in high demand that was denied to us was a Ukrainian scientific base that makes its own vodka and hails its bar as the southernmost one in the world.  There, women drink for free, on the condition that they sacrifice their bra to the bar´s decor.

Every year, old bras are removed to make room for a new year´s additions, with the exception of one which is a permanent fixture. See if you can guess which it is.

While the ¨free drinks for your bra¨ plan didn´t offer me much other than potential live entertainment, I was definitely looking forward to paying a quick visit to their equally southernmost post office to get out a few quality postcards stamped from Antarctica.  Sadly, the only day we had available to pay them a visit found another ship already in port — they´d be restocking all day in preparation for the cold winter months and couldn´t handle any tourists.  Weak.

We successfully stopped at all other initially planned destinations, so in general our hit rate was fairly high.  Twice each day — once in the morning, and once in the afternoon — we would make landfall on the zodiacs (small but incredibly strong inflated rafts), with a few hours in between for the MV Ushuaia to take us to the new destinations.  Through the night, our ship would generally be moving along as well, though once out of the Drake Passage, movement was smooth and barely noticeable.

The following pictures were all taken from aboard the ship.

Dark black rock juts out from the sea, covered in brightly contrasted white snow and ice

The steady mist that covered over things much of the time gave things (like strange, ominous, dead islands) a consistently eerie quality.

Skies were generally gray and overcast, but there were moments of exceptional beauty.

The further south we get, the more the nearby ocean is littered with chunks of ice and large icebergs

Great shot of an entire iceberg, due to the clarity of the water

Low clouds and blowing snow often gave nearby landscapes this effect

Along the continent, a small, low base of dark rock would often be covered by hundreds of feet of ice. This effect gets more intense further south, such that Antarctica is the lowest continent in terms of land (massive weight of the ice pushes the land downwards) and the tallest (from the ice itself)

Oh yeah, that reminds me:

Facts About Antarctica

• If all of Antarctica´s ice melted, its land mass would slowly rebound upwards by more than 500 meters (the ice had been keeping it down).  More significantly, the waters oceans would rise by 65 meters.
• Despite being covered in ice, Antarctica is still mostly a desert.  It has not rained in the ¨dry valleys¨ for over two million years.  Antarctica holds records for being the coldest, driest and windiest place on Earth.
• During the winter months, the accumulation of ice around Antarctica doubles its land mass, adding on additional surface that is close to twice the size of the United States.
• 90% of the world´s ice is in Antarctica and 65% of its freshwater reserve.  Perito Moreno glacier was the third biggest freshwater reserve.  What´s number 2?  Greenland.
• At its deepest point, the ice in Antarctica is about two miles deep.
• Krill.  They´re like shrimp, but smaller and less flavorful (for humans, at least).  Yet they´re the primary food for both penguins and whales.  It might seem like they´d be too small to feed monsters like the blue whale, but they travel in tremendous swarms.  In 1981, one was tracked that weighed upwards of ten million tons — that´s like 178 million people all moving as a group.

Neptune´s Bellows. A small channel leading into Deception Island, which is basically a hollowed out volcano that you can cruise into. Yeah.

Rough Seas. These are the nastiest waters I ventured outside to snap a picture of.

Blurry, but you can kind of make out the enormous wave of whiteness exploding upwards over the stem.

A rainbow after the storm

Sunrise at the bottom of the world.

...and sunset

A fairly cool ice formation floats by.

Ice-gazing

Slicing through some of the denser ocean ice

...and the trail we leave behind.

It Started With a Dare

Things had gotten cold outside, as one might expect.  First a picture is taken in our t-shirts and sandals.  Next someone is walking around barefoot.

So really, it was only a matter of time until this happened:

The Infamous Drake Passage

Sir Francis Drake was one of the greatest sea captains, naval strategists and explorers of his day, unquestionably circumnavigating the globe amongst his other many exploits.  But it´s very unlikely he ever made it as far down as the passage that now has his name applied to it.  Popular lore is that after making it through the Strait of Magellan, only one of his ships remained unscathed and was blown down to the treacherous meeting point of the southwestern Atlantic and southeastern Pacific Oceans.  No logs or testimonials have ever backed this, which makes one wonder who doles these names out and how I might get one.

Daily weather reports like this were shown regularly during both crosses of the Drake. The orange section on the left had the crew a little scared, but amounted to nothing.

Due to the complete lack of any land masses at this latitude, we end up with what´s known as the Antarctic Circumpolar Current.  With nothing to block the tremendous flow of water, the Drake ends up with the most powerful, steady ocean current in the world.  This is naturally a blast for sailors and cruise-goers.

I knew nothing of this, Captain Drake, or the immense stretch of water we´d be crossing prior to our departure, save snippets told in worried tones from those in Ushuaia freshly returned from one of the expeditions.  At least three people provided me with seasickness pills  — ¨You´ll need them for the Drake.  Trust me.¨ — and I was told to track down ¨the patch,¨ a slow-release sticker like the nicotine-saturated one used for quitting smoking.  While universally lauded (for good reason — I was never once ill with the patch on), it´s something of illegal contraband in Argentina, meaning they must be purchased in advance in the less pharmacologically strict Chile.

The front of the ship, with the bridge on the top deck.

¨Brother,¨ says an Irishman fresh off the boat (an Antarctic cruise, that is), ¨The Drake was one of the most ridiculous experiences of my life.  The boat tilted fifty degrees [Edit: It apparently never went past forty, though that is still a nightmarish angle] in either direction, back and forth.  Like, think about a ninety degree angle, man.  That´s like half of that!  [Edit Two: I required no assistance with this math]  At one point, a few of us went outside to the railing just to say we did it — as the boat rocks down and these massive, cold waves crash up against you and you just look down at this insane ocean and you think ´If I fell in that, I´d be dead.´  There´s no rescue out there.  It´s incredible!¨

It´s ¨crazy,¨ maybe.  But while I should be shaking my head incredulously, I´m completely sold.  ¨Sadly,¨ we had two of the smoothest Passages (going and coming back) that our guide had ever seen from a single trip, leading to the nickname of ¨Drake Pond¨ being given to those segments of our sea travels.

Our beds. Note that the small, white metal rail by my pillow was the only thing keeping me in place while asleep. I still have no idea how there are never any accidents from this.

I don´t mean to imply our Drake was as smooth and bland as an old person´s staircase chair lift — uneventful or not, it was still utterly seasick-inducing for plenty of passengers.  The patch kept me free from nausea (if slightly exhausted and dizzy at times), but was far less potent with others that sought its help, leaving many bedridden and miserable for close to 48 hours.

Those able to attend were invited to two lectures per day on a variety of Antarctic-themed topics, though attendence obviously waivered based on weather conditions.  Sample classes included Penguins, Geology of Antarctica, The International Antarctic Treaties, The History of Antarctic Exploration and The Weather of Antarctica (all of which were graciously placed on a DVD-Rom for us at trip´s end).

Early hours in the Drake had many of us braving the unsecured chairs of the common area (some mornings, we´d wake to find every chair in the room tumbled onto the floor) to play cards, chess, backgammon, rummikub or scrabble; by late into the Drake, most of us had retired to the relative safety of our beds to read and/or do absolutely nothing.

A game of chess

On the plus side, I got a ridiculous amount of reading done (even if I was limited by what books currently made up the MV Ushuaia´s library): Ayn Rand´s The Fountainhead (surprisingly readable, despite preachiness), The Kite Runner, The Neverending Story (it turns out the movie ends about 1/3 of the way into the book, with Bastion and his adventures comprising most of the book´s story), Cormac MacCarthy´s Cities of the Plain (cowboys and a complete lack of quotation marks), Paul Theroux´s Hotel Honolulu (pre-eminent travel novelist) and Paulo Coelho´s The Witch of Portobello (I see why chicks dig him).

As I read, there´s a tremendous BAMMM from in the room and a pained ¨MWHhuuhhhhhnMPHhh¨ that slowly dies down into a weak whimper.  Quickly looking over the side of the bed (but not so quick that my momentum combines with that of the ocean to carry me flying off of it as well — I never feel 100% safe in this narrow bed), I find over 250 pounds of septegenarian German sprawled on the floor, his head mere inches away from the hard, wooden edge of our bed.  He´d been sitting at the desk and a particularly persuasive sway of the ship brought chair and German both down painfully.

I run to the medical center (It´s actually right next door to our room.  Still.  I am a good person.) and drag the doctor back with me to find Helmut still laid out uncomfortably on the ground and moaning.  Nothing´s broken, but he´s probably looking at a few bruised ribs, we´re told.  A slight cough shows Helmut´s in the early days of what ends up being a debilitating trip-long cold.  Between that and the fall, he doesn´t have the smoothest vacation, but still makes nearly every landfall and lecture despite this.

At dinner, in our room, in common areas, anywhere with chairs: Helmut never really seems to trust them again.

Fallen chairs in the common room. We came in to find them like this after particularly rough seas.

A Brief Tour of the MV Ushuaia

After more than twenty years of Antarctic oceanographic research for NOAA, the blandly named ¨Researcher¨ (already changed once from the equally uninspiring ¨Malcolm Baldridge¨) was purchased the Ushuaia Adventure Corp, to finally provide all those people with no reason for being on Antarctica (raises hand) with a means of actually getting there.  Adding to the list of clever names this boat has worn, UAC rechristened her ¨The MV Ushuaia,¨ which doesn´t make blogs with lines like ¨leaving Ushuaia on the Ushuaia¨ confusing in any way.

One of the many narrow passageways through the lower decks

Hallways are claustraphobic, but serviceable, with no shortage of grippable things to hold onto anywhere on the vessel.  Rooms and common areas have been remodeled within the past ten years, but a brief tour through the engine room with its big dials and blocky consoles finished in a lime green that hasn´t been applied anywhere since the 70´s helps to give away the boat´s age.  The tour is  interesting but amongst the least informative of the trip; tremendous noise from all the heavy machinery keeping the ship afloat and unfrozen blocks out all but the loudest yells from our guide.

Aboard the Ushuaia, they inform us early on of the ¨open bridge¨ policy, wherein passengers may wander about the bridge in all but the worst of conditions.  As we stand about the bridge talking, brushing dangerously close to dials, buttons, levers and consoles that we´ve been instructed not to molest in any way, the Captain stands at his station staring forward as though unaware of our cloying presence.  Before him sits a line of plastic dolphins and fish — toys — with a single plastic horse mixed in confusingly.

A collection of whales, fish, dolphins and, um, a lucky horse

¨Why the horse?¨ I ask.

He doesn´t answer at first.  I stare forward for a time, and then make to leave the bridge and head to the front of the ship.  As I open the door, he simply says: ¨Horse is luck,¨ without ever taking his eyes off the fixed point in space somewhere in the forefront.

Massive black chains attached to a pair of winches hold the anchor at the front of the boat, though it´s only a small part of what makes this the most popular outdoor location on the ship.  The King-of-the-World spot at the tip of the stem nearly always has a few of us perched against the steel flagpole, as though being seventy feet more forward than anyone else might get us to the continent quicker.

A far larger deck — whose height allows a better 360 degree view as well — sits above the bridge, and the lack of ship lights at this level make it the primary lookout point at nights for expansive, Milky Way-filled night skies.  It´s here where we stand in the cold one night after being instructed that our latitude gives us the best chance of catching the Aurora Australis (the southern counterpart to the Aurora Borealis).  No such luck, unfortunately.

Into the Engine Room: Only eight of us could be guided through the loud, cramped section of the boat at any time

Our guides to the engine room, while we could still hear them

Note the ear protectors

The captain wasn´t posing here; he always looked this intent.

I wasn´t posing here; I always looked this intent. Note that there´s definitely an official eye on my hands on the steering wheel.

The anchor mechanism

Lifebuoy

Big waves and bad weather on a relatively small boat that is potentially hundreds of miles from other vessels both tend to cause small bits of anxiety from travelers at times.  To counter this (and potentially to prepare for the worse), we go in small groups to the lifeboats for a quick tour/drill.  The fully sealed vessels are fashionably orange to be quickly spotted and have everything a small crew would need to survive for up to three days in the worst of conditions.

Half-full for the drill and it´s already uncomfortable in here.  With its full complement of 45, there´s little room for movement, and no room for any personal items.  When the last cruise vessel sank in 2007, anything that couldn´t fit into pockets wasn´t permitted into the tight quarters.  Food and water are in short supply, but enough is kept below the seats to keep survivors going until a rescue.  Most importantly, a GPS signal sent outwards makes us immediately trackable to any ships near enough to assist with a rescue.

Australian Helen and I demonstrate proper non-panicking

The inside of the lifeboat

I´m Alive!

Nobody Has Better Sea Legs Than Waitresses

Breakfast, lunch and dinner took place at the same times daily, regardless of sea conditions.  While we sat, white-knuckled from gripping the secured table to keep our chairs and selves from suffering the same fate earlier displayed by Helmut, the three women on the wait staff effortlessly carried out trays of food and drinks to every table.  Only once in eleven days can I recall a food disaster of any kind.

Lunch and dinner both are beautifully presented daily with no repeats, always following the standard Salad/Main course/Dessert format.  The breakfast buffet never alters but covers all the basic standards: eggs, bacon, sausage, medialunas (literally ¨middle moons,¨ these are small, super-greasy croissants that are all the rage throughout Argentina), cereals, fruits, yogurt, coffees and juices.  Afternoon snacks are a daily standard as well; no one goes hungry here.

Breakfast Buffet. Another counter of cold food was set up to the left of the hot food above

A picture of food

Me taking a picture of food. People seemed to find this amusing for some reason.

Mockery did not stop me from taking future pictures of food, however.

Argentinians go nowhere without a parilla (large asado grill). Even to Antarctica.

A plate of meat from the parilla night. Sadly there was just one.

A group of us share lunch

Questions I Get About Antarctica, Starting With the Most Asked One

So what’d that run you??

A lot.  More than the rest of my trip combined thus far (with the exception of the Galapagos excursion).  More than any single vacation I’ve ever taken.  More than anything I’ve ever bought before that wasn’t a house or car.

In short, 3,900 dollars.

Could it have been cheaper?

Probably.  But not by as much as travel gossip would have one believe.  Countless people told me stories of last minute travelers with time to kill that hung out in Ushuaia, waiting until a cruise’s embarkation day, only to giddily secure spots on-board for a fraction of what I paid.

Last-minute travelers on my cruise did not find this to be the case.  I was surprised at how many people purchased their tickets within two days of the cruise, but every single one spent the same 3,900 dollars that I did.  On top of receiving no discounts, since there were open spots in some of the larger, upper-deck cabins, those that purchased tickets well in advance (me) were bumped up, with the lower decks now being filled with last-minute  stragglers.

This isn’t to say that these deals don’t exist; quite possibly they do.  But as our late March voyage was to be the last tourist cruise of the year, the crew didn’t seem to have much of a problem filling it up.

We tended to egg each other one when it came to being tremendous dorks for the camera.

Do you expect the price to change?

I couldn’t say for certain.  Looking in advance, there were some boats that offered deals as low as $3,500, and at times tour companies would run promotions knocking an additional five hundred off of that, but these deals typically were impossible to find, and meant the traveler had to be beyond flexible with dates for making the voyage.

There is also the threat of a fuel surcharge added on top of ticket prices at embarkation based on the current cost of gas.  Luckily, gas prices had sunk back down to reasonable prices by March, but back when my ticket was purchased in the fall, I was warned that travelers were paying an additional six hundred dollars upon arriving on the boat.

As these are boat trips are to some of the wildest, most unpredictable climates on Earth, costly accidents happen more regularly than one might hope.  Less than a month prior to my trip, the Ocean Nova ran aground and just in December, the MV Ushuaia — my ship — suffered a similar fate.  Both required evacuation to other nearby vessels while the cruise ships could be freed and repaired, but pale in comparison to the 2007 sinking of the MS Explorer which went full-on Titanic and sank after hitting an iceberg.  Everyone was safely rescued, but not before losing everything they’d brought along and sitting for several harrowing hours in the lifeboats waiting for help.

The Freestyle group unloads all of our gear from the taxi

Combining all of the above with general increasing demand, I wouldn’t think there’d be much of a decrease in price any time soon.

Why Antarctica?

When I announced my intentions to head as due south as possible on this trip, people either “got it” immediately, or were fairly incredulous.  It is a large, freezing and mostly dead place, and about as much of an opposite as you can get from traditional vacation destinations.  Despite this, the place has a calling to it that some people feel the need to answer, and since I was a child I’ve had a strange compulsion to make it there at some point in my life.

If someone says they intend to visit all seven continents in their lifetime and hasn’t yet been to Antarctica, the claim is laughable.  The same claim made after said trip is imminently believable.  So I’ve got that going for me.

As all cruises head out from Ushuaia, and as it was unlikely I would just happen to be down in this region again at any later point in my life, now was clearly the time.  Tickets from New York to Ushuaia never drop below a thousand dollars, so honestly I was saving money by taking this trip when I did!

Right.

A map displaying Antarctica and the boundaries of the Southern or Antarctican Ocean. It was only officially declared an ocean in 2000. The peninsula is the section at 10 o'clock.

So you went to the South Pole?

No, we just barely touched down on the Antarctic Peninsula, which juts out past the Antarctic Circle.  It’s a continent, so it’s still fairly large (fifth largest, it beats out Europe and Australia for size, even in the summer — it takes up nearly twice as much space in the winter due to ice).  At our furthest point inland, we were about as far from the South Pole as we were from Ushuaia.

How big are the boats?

They vary in size, though I was careful to select one that carries less than one hundred passengers.  That seems to be the magic number with regard to the amount of tourists that can land on any given site along the penninsula.  Over 100 and by international law, some people have to stay behind on the cruise ship while others frolic in the cold, barren Antarctic tundra.  They usually keep track of those left behind so that no one has to do it more than once, but given that none of us will likely be back on the continent again, every visit counts.

A newer trend in Antarctic travel is the taking of massive cruise ships down to the penninsula with upwards of 500-3000 people.  These involve no actual landings on the penninsula, which seems to defeat the purpose of going this far south.  In addition, little has been done to these ships to modify their hulls and make them ice-ready, so there is a good deal of Titanic-level worry about these new routes.  All the danger, none of the fun penguin harrassment!

The (St. Patrick’s) Day Before We Leave

Four of us have already pre-bonded together at our hostel the night before our cruise departs.  As two of them are Irish and this is St. Patrick’s Day, this bodes well for the evening.  They agree that the US has co-opted this holiday, often making it into far more of a green, drunken spectacle than you would ever find in Ireland, but they’re certainly not above celebrating.  As Ushuaia’s got a population of 6000 or so, I suppose it makes perfect sense that there are three Irish pubs here.

The St. Patrick's Day crew

Prior to any evening revelry, I’ve checked off every remaining task from  my official and unofficial pre-Antarctica to-do lists.

• Check in with tour company
• Pack, dividing things into “cruise gear” and “stored gear”
• Arrange return lodging at Freestyle and place any gear not coming along in their storage closet
• Rent winterwear — Coat and pants.  They rent boots as well, though these are provided by the cruise ship, and thus are not necessary.  All tour companies recommend the same rental shop, where a full set of gear runs one hundred American dollars, requires an additional hundred security deposit and refuses to take credit cards — a tremendous hassle.  Luckily, Patrick (one of the two aforementioned Irish, and a great guy) found a spot on main street that rents as well as sells winter gear — for about a third of the price ($25).
• Buy rum.  Food is apparently fantastic on the trip, and is part of the cost.  Alcohol, on the other hand, is charged to your account.
• I send my emails, make my calls and say my goodbyes.  For eleven days, I’ll be effectively cut off from everything.

It’s eight o’clock and an Israeli and I are the only ones in the Irish pub.  The decor and name may be Irish, but its hours are definitely Argentinian — it won’t fill up til around midnight, but it’ll keep going until dawn.  Despite knowing this, the Israeli and I start drinking while we wait for Patrick and some others who’d mentioned getting in around the same time.  The night picks up nicely, but my early start has me drained and exhausted by one in the morning, and I retire early to get well rested for my big trip tomorrow.

Embarkation

Adam and I post with our gear at the port with the MV Ushuaia in the background

The group that met at our hostel spend the bulk of the day killing time, blogging and recovering from the prior night’s Irish-themed excess.  A man in his 20’s from Hong Kong arrives in the morning for our trip, only to discover that his luggage was lost in transit and would not possibly arrive in Ushuaia before the boat departs.  He spends the day navigating the various clothing stores that are actually open (Arriving at noon, and having to leave by four places him directly in the midst of siesta hours) to re-purchase every piece of winterwear he’d only just bought in Hong Kong the week prior.

Our things are scanned as we pass through customs, though food and beverages aren’t issues here.  There are extensive international treaties keeping all types of food and human waste off of Antarctica, but on the cruise ships, nearly anything goes (excepting stuff that, you know, explodes).  Two or three other boats sit in port, but only the last one bears the marking “MV Ushuaia.”

I'm the tall one in the distance, watching Ushuaia disappear. The hanging orange thing on the left of the shot is one of the two lifeboats.

After an excessive photo shoot, our group of six present our boarding passes and walk the gangway onto the ship.  Immediately noticeable are the life boats, held aloft to either side of the ship and painted a vivid neon orange and shaped like futuristic mini-submarines.  A small line has formed around the bar, though it’s not open for drinks yet.  Names are being removed from the list and insurance forms are being checked — one prerequisite for the trip is to be insured for emergency medical evacuation up to $100,000.

One deck below, I meet my roommate Helmut for the first time.  I would’ve preferred one of the younger people I’d already gotten to know at the Freestyle to the German in his late 70’s, but he was a really nice guy, and I appreciated that his age didn’t preclude him from more adventuresome travel.  Daily conversations never really strayed beyond small talk, but he was a good guy.

The room itself is small; not as cramped as the broom closet masquerading as a shared bedroom that I slept in while on the Galapagos cruise, but still fairly minimal.  Bunk-beds are built into the wall along the far side of the room, and while the top bunk’s lack of a railing seems particularly frightening given that the Drake Passage is known to regularly rock boats as far as 35 degrees in either direction, it does come with a window.  Helmut being in his 70’s, my precarious placement above is assured without question.

Other than that, decorations are sparse: A desk, a shared closet, a picture of some ice (it must be assumed anyone on this trip likes ice), a sink.  There’s a bathroom as well, which is shared with the adjacent room.  Showering and/or urinating while in rough seas is particularly entertaining, and a surplus of steel handrails in key positions only makes it slightly easier.  I don’t know why it took several days for the idea of sitting down to pee to occur to me, as the normal alternative can be very messy in these conditions.

The "Welcome Aboard" buffet

A champagne toast and impressive buffet of meats, cheeses and assorted finger foods start us off, and as introductions are made, the MV Ushuaia departs from port.  The younger travelers tend to gravitate towards each other and acquaintances are made as the city of Ushuaia shrinks down to nothing behind us.

Hours later, inhabited land is long gone, but we’ve consistently been alongside the various islands around the tip of South America since departing.  Argentina requires that an official “pilot” remain with the ship as it navigates out from the southern islands of South America.  They’d announced that he would be leaving as soon as we were safely in the Drake Passage, though none of us were exactly sure how this would happen.  Just after ten, lights on the water announce the presence of another vessel, much smaller than our own.  Without either boat even slowing, the Argentinian pilot descends over the edge of the MV Ushuaia on a small ladder, jumping down onto the coast guard ship matching our speed alongside us.

As the smaller boat turns back towards Argentina, the last hints of land disappear into the horizon and out of sight.

We’ve reached the Drake Passage.

Champagne meet-and-greet

El Calafate

Nestled on the southern side of the chilly Lago Argentino, the small city (just over 6000 occupants) of El Calafate exists almost entirely as a Patagonian tourist hub.  Its small airport connects it to both Buenos Aires and Ushuaia, such that well-to-do travelers interesting in making the rounds between Perito Moreno Glacier, Mt. FitzRoy, the badlands and even Puerto Natales in Chile, can do so without braving any international 20+ hour bus rides.

The city of El Calafate, as seen from Lago Argentino

For about six blocks of the equivalent of a Main Street, the city caters to a higher class of tourist than I’m used to, with fine restaurants, hand-crafted souvenirs and the expensive prices to match.  Despite the climate never getting toasty here, even in the midst of its summer season, at least one gourmet Heladeria (ice cream store) can be found on every block.  This seems to be the status quo for Argentina, whose citizens apparently love ice cream above all else, regardless of the weather.  The city of Bariloche in Chile is unofficially the chocolate capital of Patagonia, but that doesn’t stop El Calafate from having a slew of home-made chocolatiers serving the traveler community.

In similar quantities are the “adventure”-themed travel agents, offering hands-on activities with glaciers, 4×4 off-roading and paragliding, as well as traditional sightseeing activities for those that want all the splendor with none of the exhilarating rush.  One such activity is the Perito Moreno “Big Ice” trek which offers to drag crampon-wearing hikers in peak physical condition deep into the glacier over the course of a four-hour trip, exploring sunken wells, caves and other strange, slippery, natural formations before painstakingly heading back.

After a recommendation in Ushuaia this was my initial plan, but still sore from Torres del Paine and with no shortage of ice looming in Antarctica, I opt to save sixty dollars and go with the “Mini-trekking” expedition instead.  It was a better choice, though backing down and going with “Small Ice” did challenge my masculinity somewhat.

With an extra day to spare, I capitalize on the excess of petrified forests in the nearby badlands, thus satisfying a childhood dream of seeing a “petrified forest.”  In reality, there are only occasional logs of the petrified wood but combined with the dry, lifeless alien landscape of the badlands, it’s a solid way to spend an afternoon.

Small Ice

Epic ice.

Buses representing different tour companies cycle through the circuit of hostels and hotels, picking up tourists headed out for a day at Perito Moreno — easily the biggest day excursion here.  The slow, steady onslaught of rain immediately makes me grateful for selecting the shorter of the ice treks.  My hoodie is thick and warm and has been an invaluable piece of clothing on this trip, but there’s only so much it can do once saturated with water in cold, inhospitable environments (…like glaciers).

Cheap, thin gloves are provided to all ice trekkers, “big” or “small,” as the aged ice is sharp and jagged, and even small tumbles have been known to slice up hands pretty bad.  Jackets and/or rain gear are in much shorter supply, and until a guide comes running up to me at the last moment with an extra poncho, it was looking to be a memorably miserable trip.  As it stands, the poncho is strangely designed without sleeves, leaving me hovering over the ice like a wet, plastic ghost and providing me with even more reason not to ever lose my footing.

The wall of ice establishing the beginning of the tremendous Perito Moreno glacier.

The wall of ice seems too even and uniform to be a natural structure, paralleling the coastline with a height rarely differing at any point by more than a few meters beyond its average of  200 feet above the surface of the water.  From here, the glacier continues nineteen miles into the horizon, consituting the world’s third largest reserve of freshwater.  While the glacier advances forward at about seven feet a day, it shrinks by an almost identical amount, immediately quelling any fears there might be about a new Perito Moreno inspired ice age.

A thin segment of Lago Argentino separates the tremendous body of ice from a lush forest that contrasts sharply against the endless white of the glacier.  At ice’s edge, a cluster of guides sit huddled around a massive pile of crampons — sharp, metal teeth latched onto the bottoms of our shoes for added ice traction — and one by one, we are guided forward and instructed in their use.

The tourguide is telling us something that is likely related in some way to "ice"

The soles of our shoes now hard and unbending, trekkers unaccustomed to using crampons (much like myself) begin to take on a more robot/Frankenstein-like way of lumbering forward over the ice.  A bi-lingual guide leads us forward, pointing out sinkholes, caves, subterranian streams and anything else that might fill out a tourist brochure for glacial trekking.  From behind, a second guide makes sure no one is lost, either to a poor sense  of direction or a cave-in, though both are extremely rare here.

We use the crampons like weapons, stabbing down into the ice exhaustively with every step.  Leg muscles not traditionally used with this frequency tighten and cramp; I can see from the expressions of other hikers that I’m not alone in this sensation.  Somewhat out of place, a table awaits us on the ice at the dead end off a naturally formed frozen valley, covered in several rows of small cocktail glasses.

Freshly chilled glasses of whiskey

“Some of you are cold,” says the guide.  I jerk my head back and forth in silent agreement.  The poncho has protected me from further rain saturation, but does little to block the wind or cold.  “Well, here is something to warm you up!”  She pulls a bottle of whisky out while her assistant begins chipping away at ice with an a specialized ice axe in the background.  Only a few people seem enthusiastic about this surprise, though they end up being the ones to get more than one serving.

I take three, for instance.

Into the glacier

Me, in my stylish, sleeveless poncho

Something to not fall into

The ice wall

Back to dry land

Badlands

The badlands

Scanning a landscape devoid of life other than small, olive-colored patches of brush, the alien rock structures remind me of going to the beach as a child.  Mixing sand with sea water, I would hold a wet glob of the mix aloft and let it drip down slowly, creating clusters of rounded stalagmites to complement whatever castle I’d been working on.  From where the van has dropped us off, it’s like looking out on a massive beach of tremendous globs of sand and rock, bulging out from the dry ground with little explanation for their existence.

Bosque Petrificado (”petrified forest”) is one of the lesser attractions from El Calafate, and the large van that’s carried us off into this arid wasteland contains exactly one English-speaking gringo (me, for those incapable of gathering this on their own).  For the hour or more it took to get here, our guide spoke in detail in Spanish, only to present what had to be the shortened form to me in English.  After a time, I take out the novel I’ve been working on and silently free her from her bilingual responsibility.

There is at least one thing alive in this picture.

Our hike through the badlands (apparently called such as a nod to the similar Dakota environment of the same name) lasts approximately two hours with a brief stop for a ham-and-cheese sandwich, cup of juice and an alfajore — a local orea-like sandwich cookie with caramelly dulce de leche filling between two large, fudge-covered cookies — which is about as close to a classic Argentinian lunch as is possible.

Trudging through the Martian landscape, we climb through small caves and strange rock formations,  stopping at times to take note of regular piles of fossils and petrified wood (Argentina has strict laws on pocketing either of these, which we’re reminded of many times.  I likely took nothing with me…).  Most of the trees are broken down into mere logs less than a meter or so in length, though there are a few toppled trees as much as twenty feet in length, which if nothing else make for good picture backdrops.

This region of Argentina gets very little annual rainfall.

Petrified wood

Back to  Ushuaia

I’ve been told that flights from El Calafate to Ushuaia are surprisingly affordable, and while it’s still close to twice the cost of a bus ticket, I waste no time in securing my spot on the plane.  This bus ride in particular is close to 24 hours long and loops back into Chile before returning to Argentina, thus involving four separate customs stops.  If avoiding that doesn’t warrant the extra cash for a flight, nothing does.

I still refrain from taking any apples with me onto the plane.

With an apartment in Buenos Aires for the past week, no job and a steady internet connection, I finally did some necessary updating to both the blog and the website itself.

Changes:

• Put in threaded comments.  This means I can finally respond directly to questions asked in comments, or other people can add on to someone else’s thoughts.  I think it looks nice.
• “Gravatar” (see below) support.  This lets people make icons if they like which show up next to their names in comments (rather than the bland silhouette icon)
• PICTURES.  I finally set it up so the link to images at the top of the page goes to actual images and not the horrible broken page it went to before.  It basically just links directly to my picasa photo storage site, then puts my theme (the colors, fonts, etc I use here on the site) on top of them.  I can create captions there as well, which should transfer right over.  The only down side to this is that photos from my pre-traveler days (from the 90s, even) are up there, which don’t exactly make sense in the context of this site.  But I’m not going to be moving everything around to fix this any time soon.

Gravatars

I don’t know if anyone would be intereted in doing this or not, but if you’d like your own personalized picture attached to your name in comments, go to Gravitar’s Webpage and upload a picture that they will globally associate with your email address.  In the future, any comments on any blog (mine included) with that email attached will automatically have your selected icon next to it.

It’s fairly quick, and they use a simple photo editing program for cropping whatever picture you upload to perfect specifications.

If there are other things you feel would make the site better, don’t hesitate to share them with me, unless you are Bernie.

Bathed, rested and safely back in Puerto Natales, Chile after five days roughing it in Torres del Paine National Park and our accidental hiking club has gotten together at the parilla in town that came most recommended by ostel owners and locals some of us had inquired to.  If asado is a South American style of slow-grilling meats over a grate in a large brick barbecue, the parilla the grill and/or restaurant that handles the mass quantities of meat and gets them cooked to perfection.  Standard parilla style typically involves a grab-bag of meats — steaks, lamb, chicken, pork, chorizo, morcilla — served on a large metal hot plate and placed in central locations on the table.

“Have you tried the morcilla yet?” someone asks as I reach for one of the dark red sausages.

I hadn’t, but I’m about to.  I know that morcilla is “blood sausage,” and I know this turns a lot of people off, but I’m not sure entirely what it is comprised of.  It’s softer than regular sausage, like a warm, chewy paste, but the flavor is pleasant and meaty, with strong spices applied for extra kick.

“Not bad,” I say as they watch me chew.  “What exactly is blood sausage, then?”

“It’s just blood.  Blood, flour and spices!”

“Well, I like my steaks bloody as hell anyway, so I am not bothered by this,” taking another bite.  The soft texture takes some getting used to, but I don’t find myself disgusted by the meat (or lack of meat) in any way.

Over dessert, the topic of hitch-hiking in South America comes up and Renata, the Italian woman, is a pro it seems.  Viajar a dedo (”traveling by finger”) is far more common and accepted in South America than it is in Europe (and certainly moreso than in the United States).  She’s already had several successful trips — generally with a partner, but at times flying solo as well.

Having not purchased my bus ticket to El Calafate yet from Puerto Natales, this seems like an intriguing new idea and something else to cross of the ever-growing to-do list.  Her destination is El Chelten, but as it’s two hours past El Calafate, we’d at least be able to make the bulk of the unguided trip through border crossings and the infamously desolate National Route 40 together.

I had to add Puerto Natales to this map, and it turns out it's on the far west coast. You get the general idea, though.

The Long Way Out of Town

At 7:30, we meet outside the large landmark of a church in the center of town.

At 8, we’re safely at the edge of town, in the shadow of the Milodon.

At 9, we’re still staring at a Milodon.

Renata has never waited more than twenty minutes on a ride before, and I’m beginning to feel like bad luck.  It would be so much better if we could just hate the occasional townsfolk (this isn’t a high traffic town) that pass by, but they’re so polite in their rejections of free transportation.  As we thumb the universal signal displaying our need, every driver shrugs sadly at us, waving their finger in a quick, short circle.  The same signal, sideways in the direction of the head universally means “crazy.”  Aimed upwards, however, it loosely translates to “I’m just driving short distances around town so, really, what’s the point, eh?”

Waiting for a ride outside of Puerto Natales

The hitchhiking scene in the States is so overrun with boogeymen and homeless, it’s interesting to see so many people make eye contact with me.  At home, most drivers practice a focused forward gaze upon realizing a hitchhiker is looming on the shoulder, effectively ignoring them out of existence until having safely passed.  Each of these Chileans look almost — regretful? — that they can’t pick us up.

Eventually a truck stops and apologetically explains that he’ll only be going about two miles down the road.  I’m reminded of a scene from Steve Martin’s The Jerk where, upon waiting to be picked up all day, Martin’s character accepts a ride from a driver only going “to the end of this fence.”  After a long enough wait, even the smallest distances are worth the haul, just to break the monotony of standing around.  We get in.

Walking to Argentina

It’s been half an hour since the trucker dropped us off on the shoulder of a fairly barren road that disappears straight into the horizon, giving us a clear view of the cars and trucks that come by with a frequency of about one every five minutes.  In a patch of dirt across the way, the trucker is still assisting a friend, which is ostensibly what brought him out here in the first place.  He’s already apologetically told us that both vehicles will be returning to town when done.

Another shrine of plastic bottles. Being labeled "Difunta Correa" this time solves the mystery, as plenty is available online when that term is searched for.

With 156 kilometers to cover (Note: The Torres circuit was 76 kilometers in total, but it was spread out over five days), walking isn’t a viable option, but it does help pass the time.  A pyramid of disposable plastic bottles awaits us as we crest a hill, with no notes or  explanation for why they’ve been arranged as such in the middle of nowhere.  (see side picture: these are shrines to Difunta Correa, an unofficial saint that died on the road with her newborn child.  the “miracle” was that her newborn survived ten days alone as she continued to produce breast milk.  Yup.) As we investigate, a small blue hatchback pulls over and we grab our gear excitedly and stow it in the back.

Like before, Renata does most of the talking.  She’s fluent in Spanish, and without her, this entire trip would’ve been infinitely more awkward, as the primary reason most truckers seem to pick people up is the desire for conversation and a break to the monotony of the open road.  In the car, she talks to the man driving the car while his wife sits in the front seat silently and his small child in the back never lowers his fixed gaze from me for the entire ten-minute trip.

A road branches off from the main highway serving only those travelers headed towards Argentina, which we are but our ride is not.  A small, open shelter has been erected in the middle of the intersection whose purpose isn’t known, but given dense clouds that might be hinting at rain, I’m extremely appreciative of it.  Waiting another half an hour, we talk, eat, throw rocks, do nothing.  Another small car eventually comes — it’s the first one to head down this road since we started this iteration of the waiting game, and a rush of joyful adrenaline fills me as it stops.

An older woman — a mother, or mother-in-law — sits in the backseat and doesn’t seem overjoyed at our cramped addition to the vehicle.  It turns out that a small village is formed directly next to the Chilean border post, and while this family, freshly returned  from grocery shopping in Puerto Natales, won’t be crossing, they can get us directly to the border.  A trunk full of groceries means we sit with our unyieldy backpacks in our laps, filling their ride to almost clown-car proportions.

"You are now leaving Chile." On foot.

Leaving Chile is easier and filled with far less drama than coming in.  The guard seemed minorly confused by our lack of transportation in the arid, emptiness of the sub-Andean environment.  With no transportation in sight, we begin the slow, uphill walk into the no-man’s-land between Chile and Argentina — 7 slow, uphill kilometers with full packs, wearing us down.  A single 7o’s Trans-am with tinted windows passes as we slowly walk our way into Argentina.  He’s still at the border twenty minutes later and we subtly glare in his direction.

Argentina lets us in with little fanfare.  I easily could’ve brought apples along this time.  An American man in his 50’s waiting to be let out of Argentina chats us up for a while, expressing his jealousy for our free-form, low-budget travel.  As I watch him head back onto his climate-controlled bus, the jealousy runs both ways.  We’re eventually picked up by a Chilean couple heading into the first town past the Argentinian border, as they claim shopping is far cheaper there.  A significant intersection lies about five kilometers out of town, and for the ease of our trip, they offer to take us that far out of their way with no prompting from us.

At the intersection, a lone truck stop serves us lunch and we resume our post along the shoulder of the road.  It’s colder now, and I use the respite to put on long underwear while we wait.  An older trucker takes us in, giving us our longest ride of the day, over sections of desert highway that are at times unpaved, slowing our movement to a crawl.  He talks with Renata about a son that is also a trucker, and how they often pick routes allowing brief meets for lunch or dinner (or Christmas, he adds).  My eyes get heavy as they talk, and when I wake it’s hard to say how far we’ve traveled.  He pulls in to a gas station to let us out before kindly accepting our gracious thanks and heading off in a different direction.

Two German backpackers are already at the shoulder waiting for a ride when we arrive; they’ve been waiting here for close to two hours.  Renata and I wait several hundred feet down the road from them, granting them first access to whatever comes along, but a truck passes them by in favor of us and he’s only got room for two.  Our initial excitement gives way to guilt as the Germans come over to find there is only room in this truck for two.  Our backpacks are already loaded, but Renata and I stare at each other for a moment and then decide we can’t conscionably screw over the Germans like this and retrieve our things, clearing the way for them.

“That was the right thing to do,” Renata says.

“I know!” I say through gritted teeth, looking at the ground.  “We are Good People.”

Karma works in our favor, though.  Within five minutes we’re on a truck delivering bags of cement to El Calafate, and within ten, we pass the Germans, waving possibly more giddily than is necessary as we notice them vanishing behind us.  Our new driver speaks a bit of Italian, meaning that he and Renata now have twice as many ways to say things that I cannot comprehend.  I smile and node my head a lot and laugh when they laugh.  He’s going all the way to El Calafate, and that’s the only thing that matters to me.

My final ride drives off after dropping me off safely in El Calafate.

Eventually, conversation trails off and we spend the next hour passing few other vehicles on the barren highway until fifteen kilometers outside of town when we stop to let Renata off.  She seems if nothing, more excited about the prospect of moving on alone.  I tell her to email me when she gets in (it’ll take her another six hours to do the two-hour trip, but she eventually arrives safely) and wave her off, happy to see that a truck has already stopped for her before she’s even out of sight.  Maybe I was bad luck.

The young driver gives up early on trying to make small talk with me, but doesn’t seem bothered by my poor Spanish.  In town, he points down the road and I’m able to interpret that the primary hotel/hostel district is up ahead.  I know how to properly utilize the word “gracias” and do so relentlessly.

In the end, I traded ten hours of my time for what would’ve been a four hour bus ride and thirty-five bucks.  It was neither too difficult nor too dangerous for me to consider doing again, but it was definitely far too boring at times.  And while my Spanish is passable these days, it’s not quite good enough for entertaining the random truck drivers that might be willing to trade a ride for a little bit of conversation.

But it is fun to say I walked from Chile to Argentina.

Walking to Argentina

Paine, rather.

And in this case, the word refers to neither “suffering and anguish” (despite backpackers regularly going for the easy joke at the end of each exhausting day) nor some 19th century Euro-explorer (the popular assumption).  Rather, it stems from the Tehuelche indian word meaning “blue,” and is applied for obvious reasons.  After a long weekend at the Freestyle Hostel in Ushuaia, I had successfully picked the brains of all travelers stopping in after extended treks throughout Patagonia, and “The W” at Torres del Paine — a 5-day trek “best of” tour of the national park — had filtered its way to the top of the list.

The ‘W’

A color-coded map of my travels, broken up into days. The famous 'W' is seen above in pink, blue, yellow, purple and orange. It's the thing that is, oddly enough, shaped like a 'W'

The ‘W,’ then, is the sloppily colored path painted in above.  After arriving by shuttle on the first day, passengers are dropped off either far to the right of the W-shaped circuit by the east end of Lago Sarmiento, or they can stay on the bus and be dropped off at Lago Pehoe in time for the 1:30 ferry ride, starting the circuit  along Lago Grey.  The first refugio, “Pehoe,” awaits travelers upon exiting the ferry, and it’s possible to stow gear there and hike unburdened to Glacier Grey and back, or carry everything along and stay the night in Refugio Grey.

This waterfall is about fifteen minutes from the ferry pick-up point. There's generally an hour to kill after the shuttle drops people off, so this is the perfect diversion.

Day two involves backtracking down the Lago Grey trail and making it as far as the Italian camp at the base of the French Valley.  Hiking into the valley and back takes up a good half of the next day, leaving enough time to make it to Refugio Los Cuernos by late in the day.  The fourth day is the longest and most arduous, with about ninety minutes of strenuous ascent, as trekkers make their way to Campamente (”Campsite” — no refuge there, but a properly maintained campground complete with bathroom) Torres.  Ambitious/stupid campers like myself will then somehow wake at five the next morning, making one of the steepest climbs of the circuit in the dark to watch the sun rise from Mirador (”lookout point”) Torres, after which point they proceed to shuffle back down, collect their gear and make the final walk down to Guarderia (”ranger station”) Laguna Amarga.

Daily shuttles bring trekkers into the popular park twice a day (simultaneously making pickups of weary, filthy, stinking hikers ready to get the hell out — that is one pungent busride back to Puerto Natales…), stopping briefly at the park’s entrance for us to pay our gringo entry fees.  Chileans pay a single lifetime fee of 5000 Chilean pesos, while extraneros (foreigners) pay 15,000 with every visit.  Chile is the first country I’ve visited where the exchange rate involves this degree of irritating math with any transaction:

• 1 US dollar = 562 pesos
• 1000 pesos = 1.78 dollars
• 15,000 pesos = $26.75

Not exactly cheap for a national park.

The Lago Pehoe ferry

On the plus side, the park is immaculately maintained, and refugios are well staffed and spread evenly around the trails so that help/lodging/supplies are always readily available.  There’s zero carbon footprint as well, as modern wind turbines are erected in several key, wind-heavy locations to provide energy to the refugios.  It should be noted that the refugios also provide full meals and indoor lodging with beds for those only interested in roughing it by day.  Though at 20,000 pesos for a bed, it’s not exactly budget-oriented (9000 for dinner).

I will admit to feeling jealousy at times upon having smiling hikers briskly pass me by while wearing nothing more than a small day pack.  On the positive side, water — typically a heavy necessity — isn’t a problem here.  Hikers are nearly always within an hour of walking alongside a cold mountain spring, and all the flowing water here is safely drinkable.  Fresh, clear and freezing, every sip ranks among the best water I’ve ever drank.

By the first day, I’ve already got a group of camping partners, which makes the evenings far more enjoyable.  We spend the days hiking at varying paces, smiling and sharing a few words when passing, but by night we share soup, wine, cheese, rum and stories.  Nearly all of us are overdressed; we were promised cold air and relentless rain and received neither.  At one point, late in the trip, we stop for lunch at the base of a serene mountain lake and the French girl, Emilie, decides to go for a swim.

From aboard the ferry. I don't think I've ever seen water this color blue before.

“Eet can’t bee colder zhan thee wahter where i am from in Britanee.”

Her voice is high and lilting, and her accent is almost so perfectly what I’d expect a French accent to be that it sounds like a cute caricature.  She strips down to her underwear and walks slowly into the water, giving away nothing of its coldness on her face as she makes her way out to deeper waters, eventually submerging entirely.  The Italian girl in our group follows suit and then, eventually, so do I.  It’s as frigid as one would expect a lake in the shadow of ice-covered mountains to be, but imminently refreshing and after days without bathing it was probably the most polite things I could’ve done for my traveling companions.

Eating soup (it’s the lightest food to carry along, though began to get old by day 3) on a rock in my boxer shorts directly after my swim, it occurred to me that the waterproof, insulated pants I’d been wearing and relentlessly sweating into were completely unnecessary in the warm, sunny weather we’d been having.  My boxer shorts on the other hand were incredibly breezy and comfortable.  And so I hiked the remainder of my trip quite casually in my underwear.

I like hiking alone.  Lugging a backpack full of gear and food is exhausting enough, and engaging in any conversation would only exacerbate things.  Instead, I’ve begun using a thirty-hour “Learn Spanish” class on my iPod that apparently should have cost me four hundred dollars.  It did not.  But it is well structured and the only drawback that I discovered was that at times I would get so into following along out loud that I wouldn’t notice people walking by and staring at me quizzically as I complimented Senora Rodriguez on her hair, or asked for the doctor’s telephone number.  At one point, another hiker actually stopped when I requested a glass of milk.

He didn’t have any.

Patagonia in Pictures

Glacier Grey, with ice-covered mountains just beyond in the background. The mirador I took this from was a ten-minute walk from where I camped the first night.

My first night's campsite. Fairly windy, but the view was unbeatable.

Taken from the middle of the French Valley (the center line in the W). A few years back a careless Czech tourist let his fire get out of control, burning down more than half the trees in the valley. The Czech government is working with Chile on a reforestation project.

Powdered soup and boxed wine -- My nightly dinner

Despite being unseasonably warm for this late in the year (anything past February here doesn't come recommended), hikers are nearly always in sight of massive, ice-covered mountains like these.

It was just windy and steep enough up there that this wasn't entirely the safest place to pose.

Avalanches are common and loud, going off regularly in the background like thunder. When I was lucky enough to witness them, they nearly always seemed small and insignificant in size, despite the tremendous noise they made.

The bridge to the Italian camp. Inherently precarious, the bridge warns that no more than two people may cross over the raging river below at one time.

This picture pretty much sums up Patagonia.

Dirty and scruffy on the final morning with the Torres in the background. We woke at 5 and scrambled up rocks in the dark during the only rainstorm of our trip. Even without our gear, this was easily the hardest hour of our trek, and the gorgeous sunrise we'd ostensibly climbed to the mirador to witness was blocked by the overcast sky.

Our group. We were told to "pose silly"