Argentina

 

I'm writing this for friends who might want to make a trip to Argentina.   This was a tourist-type visit, and I'll make no bones about it.   Still, this might be a semi-useful guide to folks who would want to see parts of Argentina. 

 Back in March 2020, Karen and I had a trip to Chile scheduled, but that was at the start of covid, so we cancelled.   We made an attempt back to South America in December 2020, but that was still a no-go.   

We tried for Argentina, and then a week on Easter Island/Rapa Nui for December 2021 because, surely, covid would be over.   Wrong.   Easter Island is still closed out as I write this (Jan 1 2022), but Argentina opened up on November 1st 2021.    Scrambling, we ended up with a patch-work of plans in Argentina to fill in the gap left from the Rapa Nui closeout. 

I don't know if this is the case, but the Argentinians said, to a person, that they had the longest pandemic shut-down of any nation, lasting from March 2020 until November 2021.   One tour-guide who was showing us around Buenos Aires high-fived another guide,  "We're back in the game."   Certainly the Argentine economy suffered like many others, and with tourism a significant component, they took a big hit.

We flew into Buenos Aires, had a quick nap and then got a tour of the city.   I'm not a huge fan of big cities, and BA is certainly big.   It has a population of about 3 million, and if you include the sprawling suburbs, it's a lot bigger.   The international airport is on the outside of town, and the domestic airport is right on the Rio de la Plata.   I had a minor issue when my credit card was hijacked at the domestic airport when paying for a heavy suitcase.

We flew to El Califate, the regional airport for the Patagonian region, and then took a van to El Chaten, which is a climbing and hiking hub for Los Glaciares National Park.   Most prominent of the mountains there is the famous Mount Fitz Roy (or FitzRoy, after the captain of the Beagle).   This granite spike dominates the landscape. 

Mount Fitzroy, surrounding peaks and El Chaten. 

We went to the Explora Lodge, which had just opened.   I don't know when precisely they opened up, but like most everything, this was a pandemic opening.  I'm tempted to say "post-pandemic", but we aren't out of it yet, but at the same time things are beginning to feel 'open', whatever that means and time will tell...

All of our hikes were guided, although realistically, we didn't need the guides, but they still added a lot of local information.   The first two hikes were up the Diablo and Electric Rivers, which both terminated in glacial lakes.   Patagonia is home to the third largest ice-field on the planet, after Antarctica and Greenland.   This left us to wonder, "what is the fourth largest ice field?," which we are guessing is in Alaska/Yukon (need to look this up).   The main up-shot is that the glaciers fed by the ice field come down quite low compared to sea-level. 

On one hike, we found out that our guide, Valeria, had summited FitzRoy.   This is quite the feat.  FitzRoy was first climbed the the French alpinist Lionel Terray in 1952, who wrote about it in his book Conquistators of the Useless.   Another notable ascent was in 1968 by Yvon Chinouard, who made it down to Patagonia with friends, driving all the way from California.   FitzRoy is quite a climb - not only is it tall difficult granite, but the weather is a major factor.    

We'd been told that the weather sometimes continuously shrouds FitzRoy, but on our visit, it was cloudless for five straight days.   Remarkably, in our 10 days in Patagonia, both on the Chilean and the Argentinian side, we had nothing but picture perfect weather.

Lake Diablo

The most famous hike in the area is the one to Laguna de los Tres at the base of Mt. FitzRoy.   The name comes from the three guides who took Francesco Moreno to the base of Mount FitzRoy.    There are a number of routes to the lake.   We were dropped off at the Pilar Inn to the north, and hiked to the connecting trail, next to a campground.   Before the hike I read about it, and there is a steep section just before the lake that's about a 400m climb in a bit over a kilometer.   Depending on who writes about it, you'd think that you'd have to be an ultramarathoner to make it up.   It wasn't such a big deal for me, but a couple of the folks on the hike were done in by it.   

After spending a lunch at the lake, we hiked out by the trail to El Chaten.   As a word of warning: this trail is quite crowded, but the view is spectacular.   Just don't expect to be alone. 

Laguna de los Tres

After the hikes from Explora, most of our party decamped for the lake district of Bariloche, while my son James and I had plans to go to Ushuaia, the southernmost city in the world (so far) in Tierra del Fuego.   On the way, we got a ride to El Califate, and then to the glacier Perito Moreno, which is an extension of the vast Patagonian ice-field.   According to the guide, it travels at about 6 feet per day, and is more or less in equilibrium, as opposed to so many glaciers that are in steady retreat from global warming.   

The hike on the glacier was my first time on crampons, which took a bit of getting used to, but fun nonetheless. 

Glacier Perito Moreno

After the glacier hike, and a night in El Califate, we flew to Ushuaia.   Tierra del Fuego is spectacular, with the tree line being only at 1000 feet, and the Beagle channel transecting the region, which shows all signs of recent glaciation. 

We did a hike in the national park, and then had a guided sea-kayak tour of a remote part of the Beagle Channel.   As a note - the sea kayaks had rudders on them, something I wasn't accustomed to.   Here was an example where guides were definitely helpful.   They had access to a remote stretch of the Channel that was something of an archipelago, and you could dial in the amount of exposure readily.

 In calm waters, I started to get the hang of using the rudder to steer, but then when a following wind picked up some waves, the rudder didn't do its job, and I somewhat instinctively went back to steering by paddle.  

I took Christmas day off from hiking, as every day there was some plans, but I just lounged.   The next day was a long trip from Ushuaia to El Califate to Buenos Aires to the wine country in Mendoza.   

We had two days in the wine country with a number of wine tastings and lunches with wines paired with the meals.   Argentina's wine industry has come quite a ways in the last several decades.   Originally, one would think of industrial grade malbecs in large jugs from the country, and that was that, but many high end vineyards have since sprung up and take advantage of the climate and soil to produce very high quality wines.   Malbec is still preeminent, but other varieties like sauvignon blanc have proven successful.   

After the Mendoza wine country visit, it was back to Buenos Aires, and then Boston.

In addition to getting some fresh air in the hikes, I suppose the most enduring impression was just getting out to the Austral summer from the gloom of the Boreal winter.   As I write this in Newton Massachusetts, it's overcast and gloom, but I was trying to soak up the sun and heat from Buenos Aires as a way of carrying me through.   At least we're past the solstice and the days are getting longer again.  Whoo-hoo!!