On Ruta 40

So, we flew from El Calafate to San Carlos de Bariloche, where the main attraction is functional internet.  It's another ridiculously picturesque area, surrounded by lakes and snowy mountains.  For this reason it's known as the Switzerland of South America.  Well, that and its fondness for money from fleeing Nazis.

Ruta 40 is a national highway that spans the entire country from Rio Gallagos in the south, to La Quiaca in the north. It's in various states of repair from civilised tarmac to gradually more post-apocalyptic as you move south.  

Originally we were going to drive up from El Calafate, but the one-way fees were ruinous. So we decided to pick up a car and drive up and down the middle 1000km chunk of it as part of our ongoing Patagonian adventure.  Accordingly, we rented the local approximation of a Toyota, the Etios, which was made originally for the Indian market. No red flags there then.  The wiki is amusingly less-than-objective:  

(High road noise and vibration) is due to the cost-cutting construction and lack of insulation materials in the cabin, while build quality is edgy and has a low life expectancy in the long term, which could be interpreted as a vehicle built to be "disposable" after a short number of years. In regards of vibrations, there are some reports from users complaining about retinal detachment, as well as sore backs and split buttocks.

There are gaping holes in the front bumper for the optional fog lights that weren't opted for, but also not blanked, so as to remind you that you're driving the loss-leader.  Oh well, there's no point ruining a nice car on these roads anyway.

El Shed.  Come back Donkey, all is forgiven.

The first (and longest) drive was to Los Antiguos.

Apparently they grow a lot of cherries here. 

Basing ourselves there, we used the following day to travel to the Cueva de las manos (The Cave of Hands) where you'll find prehistoric cave finger-paintings.

The road off NR40 is all gravel and rock, which made for some interesting driving.  El Shed's engine sounds like a constant threat of cataclysmic failure, while juddering enough to make every pebble traversed feel like a reluctant favour it was doing me.  I'm unaware of the normal vent filtration configuration in modern cars, but I don't normally find myself shaking dust out of my hair at my destination as with this one.

The caves live down in a valley, where they have been preserved from the elements over the millennia.

The caves were painted by people of yore making paint out of whatever they had to hand, chewing it all up, and spitting a spray around their fingers.  The earliest date back 11,000 years.

3,000 years later they figured out using two colours by using a white background.  That's progress for you.  

They also figured out using the feet of animals - like the ostrich feet in the middle of the this one.

Then they had a bit of an avantgarde movement and started actually drawing things,  which must've been an exciting time.

What a time to be alive

Half the reason for being in Los Antiguos was to get someone to take us across the border to visit the Cavernas de Mármol (Marble Caves). They are a particularly unusual series of caves and monoliths formed from marble which live in General Carrera Lake (or Lake Buenos Aires depending if you're Chilean or Argentine, respectively), but you need someone to drive you around to Puerto Rio Tranquilo, to then take a boat to the caves in order to see them, as we couldn't take El Shed out of the country.

The various guidebooks and websites would suggest that Los Antiguos is lousy with tour providers, all gasping for your peso.  This is evidently not the case and we were reconciling ourselves to not going when our very jolly but very non-English speaking hotel receptionist managed to organise a last-minute deal with a local tour guide.  They picked us up at twat o'clock the following morning and duly took us on our 13 hour round trip.  Apparently we had to get back before 20:00 because that's when the border closed.  I was unaware borders had office hours -  there's always a surly jobsworth available to scrutinise my passport back home.

Our guides were a very friendly husband and wife team with a minibus: him doing the driving; her doing the nattering.  She spoke all of three words of English, but we managed to get the gist. We pulled over quite regularly so that we and the other couple with us could take photos, but also so that lady guide could smoke with ferocious efficiency.

To the caves - they are very pretty and the lake is really, really blue:

They provided us with a sandwich, but we were ravenous by the time we got back, so I indulged at the local parrilla, where they gave me a voluminous selection of roast beast:

Dear Lord

The next day we travelled back up RN40 to Trevelin (Trefelin in Welsh), one of those mythical 'Welsh' places in Patagonia.

To be honest, Patagonia did feel a bit like Brecon - venturing up into the hills was reminiscent of Sennybridge training area, complete with babies' heads and bastard grass.  The main spoilers of the illusion (aside from the Snowdon-eclipsing mountains everywhere), were the occasional glimpses of the local fauna.

Guanacos - Henceforth referred to by Chantelle as 'Guantanamos' because they're orange 

This armadillo is taking the "I can't see him so he can't see me" approach

Family of ostriches in process of buggering off from El Shed's cacophonous protestations

Back to Trevelin -  I think my Welsh might be marginally less bad than my Spanish (Cymraeg GCSE - D grade), but I'm unsold on how much good it would've been anyway.

Some signs were in Welsh and there were dragons aplenty, but I was unconvinced on the town's overall 'Welshness'.  That is until I saw how the weekend's main activity was apparently cruising around the main plaza roundabout in town in THE most fucked hatchbacks I have ever seen.

I could've watched this all day

"Smoothly does it"

Sick vent, bro

Bonnets are for pussies

I saw a 2CV missing most of it's front end. I saw Fiat Unos with suspension so dropped they literally had to take three attempts to clear a speedbump.  All this while blaring techno from grossly overtaxed stereo systems and wearing a studied expression of absolute cool.  Suddenly it felt very Welsh indeed, albeit Connah's Quay in the mid-90s.
I spotted an XR3i at one point: if it were a dog I would've shot it.

As was apparently required, we had tea at a local tea shop. I think my cred with the roundabout cruisers might have taken a hit.

Just like one would find in Flint

Bit iffy this.  The other tourists in the room were obviously Argentinian tourists and had set about pouring sugar onto the pre-buttered bread.  Seemed to be a toss-up between afternoon tea and an Argie breakfast.  The scones were definitely below par though.  Someone call Amnesty.

That night we stayed in a local cabaña, run by the very chilled Paulo, who was the second hairy man to kiss me in greeting - these foreigners with their foreign ways.  The place was very cozy, with several friendly street dogs who had apparently taken up residence. One quite old example of which gave me the most reproachful look as he crawled from a nice bit of shade under our car the following morning, when I had the audacity to load the boot.

We drove back to Bariloche the following day by way of Ruta 71 -which runs through a national park- as we cannot get enough of those lakes and mountains.

This road turns to gravel and rock as soon as you've paid your fee to enter the park and rounded the corner. At least I got my money's worth from the car's 2 year lifespan

Here's a couple of pretty pictures from the park:

Kurzfassung auf Deutsch: Meine Frau und ich haben sich Ruta 40 angesteuert, um einige Sehenswürdigkeiten zu sehen. Vor allem haben wir entdeckt, dass es eine Enklave der Welsh Menschen, die schreckliche europäischen Autos zu fahren.

El Fin Del Mundo

We flew to Ushuaia, the southernmost city in the world, which was a bit of a climate shock.  We'd rarely dropped below 22° on the whole trip so far, so we were less than acclimatised to the 2°C awaiting us.  Ushuaia has an odd history of being, at various times: a frontier outpost, port and penal colony.  This has given it look somewhat between that of a ski resort and a Siberian salt mine. The shops are pretty much exclusively selling souvenirs and outdoor clothing, as the town now predominantly serves as a cruise terminal for excursions around Cape Horn and Antarctica.

We visited the town museum, which was once the local prison.  The prison was a Victorian-style 'Panopticon' affair, with six wings spread off from a main hall in the middle. Think 'Porridge', but now imagine it set in the least hospitable place outside of Wolverhampton.  They've converted the various wings into exhibit areas, with one dedicated to nautical history of the area, one about prison life and notable inmates, and so on.  One wing they've left preserved as it was when it was still in use.  It was a bit parky.

Oh and I've been told to mention that we had lamb pizza. They're big on sheep and the uses of sheep in Patagonia.  Also, there were some welcoming signs as we walked into port:

I think someone needs a hug

We were there to take a cruise around the Cape, which was a departure from the last voyage we took in that this was focused less on pampered gluttony and more on facilitating Zodiac boat excursions to various islands and glaciers.  There was an open bar and a fridge of beer left unguarded though. Guess they don't get too many British guests.  The cabins were simpler than the conventional cruise type (no TV etc.), but had huge windows to see the continuous spectacle outside.

You get allocated a dinner table seat at the beginning of the cruise, and that remains the same throughout. Obviously this is a gamble as you might end up with someone like me. Fortunately we ended up sharing with a charming couple, Charles and Alicia, who live in Uruguay although he's an escaped Englishman.  They'd traveled widely and it is always great to get some insight into places we've been on this trip or are going to visit on the future trips already germinating in Chantelle's head.  Poor Alicia: her English is excellent but those of you who know me, know how hard it is to comprehend me when I'm in full swing.  Evolve, mortals. 

Check out the hard case in the T-shirt

After we made our very scenic departure from Ushuaia, we made our way to Cape Horn, where we arrived first thing the following morning.  It's the last anything you'll see before hitting the Antarctic.  There is a team deployed there, managing the lighthouse and going about other unknown tasks.  They enjoy visits from the likes of our trip as they are so very, very alone.  This is a shame because we couldn't leave the boat as the waves were ridiculous.  We had to content ourselves with taking photos of the albatross monument to the many lives lost on the Cape.  Then we joined the tiny proportion of humanity to circumnavigate Cape Horn, which was nice.

Sorry, guys

Later the same day we managed to get ashore at Wulaia Bay, where Chan and I diverged on different treks: I went up a big fucking hill and took in the view:

Chan took the coastal route and heard all about the indigenous people (spoiler alert: they were quite happy living naked in their canoes, and then civilisation came and now there is only one of them left). The Yamana were squat, with atrophied legs from never leaving their canoes, which they would carry over their heads on land.  This is why they lived on the coast: they couldn't climb the hills.  Charles Darwin, on meeting them on his trip with the Beagle, described them as an "infra-human subspecies".  Now Charles, that is not the preferred nomenclature.

It also transpires that beavers ended up here from Canada, as someone brought them to Ushuaia in a failed fur enterprise.  They let them all loose when things didn't pan out, and they subsequently made their way across to here and played merry hell with the local flora, as they have here no natural predators.  The trees are also not as robust as their Canadian counterparts and take ~100 years to grow back.  It's suspected that the locals have shot the last beaver though, as they've not been seen for a while.   

Oops

There are also pigs and mink causing havoc: buggering up the flimsy soil and eating the bird eggs, respectively.  There are no other animals living in this part of the world, so anything that walks about has gotten here by human interference.  Since the whole place is tenuously grown on moss and twigs, it's somewhat vulnerable to critters.  So by all means come on down with a shotgun in your hand and mammal murder on your mind.   It's enough to make one go native:

"Justice has a new face - and it is pink and squeezed into fluorescence"

The following day we stopped at Aguila Glacier, where we learned more than I'm qualified to relay about the interaction between the ice, the rocks and the local vegetation.  Short version though: trees growing on icy rocks shows ridiculous levels of environmental adaptation.  Also, the glacier is very pretty.

I shall at this point out our attire.  Since largely everywhere else we have or will have visited is ridiculously hot, we are short on winter attire.  So when we were in the US last, we were having a mooch around a large outdoors store for something to keep us from expiring from exposure when we got down here. I happened across two identical, extra large, lurid blue, "Frogg Toggs" rain suits on offer.  They keep the rain and wind off and pack down to next to bugger-all.  We might look like giant, baggy smurfs, but we are now at least prepared for the elements. 

Pictured: dynamism

The cruise firm coordinates closely with science teams from the local university, with a team on board with us.  This involves investigating the effects of tourism on the area but also in conserving it.  The expedition team went down to the islands and picked up 123 bags of rubbish before the season started, which must have originated from someone local due to when it was dumped.  We have noticed a certain out-of-sight, out-of-mind mindset in certain parts of South America when it comes to littering and the like, so this is probably down to the local fishermen.  Part of the research is figuring out who the culprits are, though. 

The last morning, Chan woke me up extra early to take pictures of the sunrise.  Urgh, fine.

It's not as pretty as sleep

This day was a particular highlight for her as we were visiting Magdalena Island to see the 70,000 penguins who live there.  The Magdalen penguins live in burrows on the land and it's the bloke penguin's job to put the literal roof over his family's head.  You may have heard about penguins mating for life, but with this crowd there are DIY-focussed caveats, and it is subject to annual review. If she comes back next year and the digs don't meet spec, she will bugger off with Derek from up by the lighthouse, like her mum told her to - he knows how to arrange sticks and mud like a real penguin. Jesus, why don't you call every Skua on the island and just feed them our kids yourself?

"Sheila's going to go spare when she gets home"

"I've got a stick. Game, set and match."

This glorious, brass-balled bastard stole a mouthful of nest from underneath one of the huge seagulls that live here. We saw him come tumbling down the hill, pissed-off bird in pursuit.  Don't hate the player; hate the sport:

Like a boss

"Hilarious, I'm sure"

Assorted photos for your viewing pleasure:

And here's some footage:

Kurzfassung auf Deutsch: Wir haben um das Kap Hoorn gesegelt, wobei wir Pinguine gesehen. Sie sind der Lieblingsding von meiner Frau in der Welt.