Today is mostly a travel day, going from Bariloche to El Calafate, in the Andes near the southern border with Chile. El Calafate is getting close to Tierra Del Fuego, the Cape Horn, and Antarctica, so I’m pretty petrified of possible cold weather.
Final report on the mysterious American couple. I made it to breakfast a little late because I was finishing my packing, but saw the woman walking down the hall from the rooms with the man immediately behind her. They therefore are at least sharing a room. She was wearing an “LAN” ID badge. LAN is the other big airline that flies South American routes, so she’s probably based somewhere in South America or is a flight attendant or crew (although as I will explain in an upcoming post, the sad fact is she’s probably not hot enough to be a flight attendant down here). So, my refined guess is the guy is an American businessman of some sort, and she’s the little chippie on the side that he’s had down here for many years. Business probably takes him down here every so often, so when it does he just calls up his LAN woman and arranges another of their little get togethers. Neither the poor wife back home nor her four unimaginative punk kids have any clue that their otherwise anesthetizingly bland dad has himself a hot tamale south of Rio. Poor ignorant bastards.
Today’s yet another beautiful day in ski country, clear and cool. I spent most of the morning before my flight running tedious errands, like cashing traveler’s checks and looking for some sunglasses that won’t cost an entire day’s travel budget but also won’t fall apart the day I buy them. I found something that fit the bill, although they have the extremely unfortunate quality of making me look like Euro trash. Give me a scarf and a cigarette, like the Argentina national soccer team coach I saw on TV the other night, and I could be Rodolfo Laspieri just in from Palermo. They’ve played two consecutive 1-1 ties this last week, in what I finally determined were World Cup qualifying matches. Nothing like 90 minutes of gripping 1-1 tied soccer action. Knowing Soccer Fan, this guy’s going to have more to worry about than someone putting “for sale” signs in his yard like SEC Fan puts in his team’s coach’s yard when his team loses two games. This guy might get lynched. Oh, and nice outfit. Nothing like the coach of your national team looking like a Milan taxi driver. I can’t remember ever seeing Tom Landry or Don Shula rocking the scarf look on the sidelines. Nice going, rioters and injury fakers. One more way that passion for soccer shows that they have the inferior civilization.
At the Bariloche airport I see a woman who appears to be in her late 30s sitting on a bench near the departures gate that has her ankle in a cast and is wearing crutches. See, this is why I refuse to go skiing. I can’t even walk outside my back door anymore without spraining my ankle (as occurred about a month ago). If I go skiing I’m liable to have some sort of Daunta Robinson blown-out ACL/shear the hamstring tendon off the bone type injury. Seems like every time I turn around, I hear about someone coming back skiing with some gruesome sort of injury. The other thing is, if you blow out a knee or shoulder or something along those lines, its not like Dr. James Andrews is there to do the surgery. You can have breaks or tears bad enough to prevent you from traveling; or if your ticket doesn’t have you going back for awhile in the future, you could either get stuck with some huge change fee to go back earlier, or not be able to catch an earlier flight at all while your ankle or knee is set wrong by some Bariloche medic who’s last gig was at the Castle Anthrax. (Well, that might not be so bad).
The flight down to El Calafate had some spectacular scenery. I took a few photos while on the plane. We flew over something called the Patagonian Ice Field. This basically is an expanse of glacier and permanent ice that covers large portions of the southern Andes. The Perito Moreno glacier that I’ll see tomorrow is part of this Ice Field. I’ll also see parts of it on my trip up to El Chatén two days from now.
In the shuttle van leaving the El Calafate airport, I met a woman from Mexico City named Erica, who spoke English and who had done some research about tours that take you onto the Perito Moreno glacier itself. Without tour guides you’re limited to just going to the viewing areas near the glacier’s edge. These outings still provide beautiful scenery, but being on top of a glacier is completely different as I would find (see post for the next day). I also met an Australian couple in the van; we both noticed that we had seen each other and stayed in the same hotels in both Iguazú and in Bariloche. We visited about our respective travels so far. They had been in Brazil for about a week before arriving in Argentina, then came across the border at Iguazú, then went to Bariloche and now were headed to El Calafate and later Trelew/Peninsula Valdez just like me, and taking the same flights (going at the same times). I warned them to stop stalking me, but would see them again (and Erica) when I booked the glacier tour that night, and on the glacier trip the next day. They said they saw in the news in Australia that a big chunk of the glacier had just fallen off. I hadn’t seen anything like that in the US news, but then again, what with my busy schedule of putting together Continental Club outings and hiding from neighbors and unjustly angry ex-girlfriends, there’s a lot that I don’t hear about.
Interestingly, the Aussies told me that a friend of theirs had been in Iguazú the day before I/we had arrived. The friend said it was 100 degrees that day. They also said the day we went to the falls it was 5 celcius, which is about 41 degrees Fahrenheit. That means in three days time it went from burning hot to miserable cold. Sounds just like Houston.
With the possible exception of the main street, El Calafate is, shall we say, the road from Wichita Falls to Fort Worth without the charm. All around the outskirts of El Calafate are houses and hotels on dirt roads out in the scrub. Your used plastic grocery bags apparently go here to die, like old elephants. The brush is covered with them and other trash. There’s no “yards” to speak of, only dirt with scattered brush and trash. This place makes Baytown look like the Emerald City. The inner city, also known as the main drag, is possibly a little different. Its paved and has several different stores.
In addition to booking the glacier tour, I also rounded up some groceries (the store doesn’t give you a sack of any kind for your groceries, just a box, so I guess they’re not responsible for the conditions in the outback) and booked a bus up to El Chaltén, reputedly 2 ½ hours north of El Calafate and close to the famous Mount Fitz Roy and Mount Torre. El Chaltén is supposed to have some of the world’s best hiking trails, running through the northern part of the Los Glaciares national park.
Thought in closing I’d recap the scene of where I’m finishing my notes for this post. I’m in a small Italian restaurant on the main street of a town on the Chilean border closer to Antarctica than Buenos Aires, eating a surprisingly good shellfish stew (along with some savory mystery mollusk), as their music system plays reggae versions of classic rock hits like Stairway to Heaven and Sympathy for the Devil. You can’t get much farther out than this (except to Tierra del Fuego, which I have decided to bypass in the interest of not freezing to death). At least for two or three weeks a year, I can lead an interesting life. The rest of the time…pretty much not that interesting. I would use other adjectives.
Tomorrow-Perito Moreno Glacier
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