March 19th 2019: Why?

While we were enjoying the healing nature of Argentina we got news of two terrorist attacks by insane people in our native country the Netherlands and before that in our new country New Zealand. We are absolutely shocked and can't find words to express our sadness. Our good friend Margareth wrote a beautiful reaction on this horrible terrorist attack in Christchurch. So well worded and exactly how almost all people living in New Zealand will feel, that's why we want to share it with you all:

As a New Zealander today I feel like a thief has come into my home and stolen something very precious from me. I have grown up knowing this country was a safe place and had a reasonable amount of tolerance for others and the respect for people who are different from me to live their life freely. Shame on you people !!!! for what you have done in Christchurch. I who have not travelled the world but have had a huge pride in my country and fellow countrymen. We do have our own problems recognise that these exist but have lived in relative safety. New Zealanders and New Zealand have been altered by events beyond our control. Why can't people learn to live and respect our differences and live in a peaceful way? We are now different and the same as the rest of the world. We are exposed to the horror the rest of the world has experience We must hold onto the pre-New Zealand before these events in Christchurch.
And a few days later there was another tragedy in Utrecht in the Netherlands, another madman decided to kill people, for reasons this insane man probably doesn't even understand himself. It happened in Utrecht, the town where Nienke and I both studied, met and lived. 3 people died, amongst them a beautiful young woman of 19 years old. Why?

The reactions of the people in New Zealand and especially our prime-minister Jacinda Adern (read this article in the Guardian) made us proud. Before continuing to our story we'd like to show an emotional tribute to the victims of the terrorist attack in Christchurch by the New Zealand opera trio Sol3 Mio in Auckland.

So we were in El Chalten in Argentina to climb to the famous Mount Fitzroy. In order to see the amazing 'El Dorado' you had to be on the top, very early! So Nienke and I decided to walk to Lago Torres first, with our big backpacks full of warm clothing etc.

A beautiful lake surrounded by snow tops and in the back Mount Fitzroy.

From there we walked to base camp, passing a few stunning lakes, trying not to trample on the thousands of caterpillars lying on the tracks. Met a nice English couple who did not like selfies either, so we helped each other.

Almost at base camp we saw this woodpecker having a go at a tree next to the track, not fazed at all by the audience that had gathered on the track.

Base camp turned out to be a crowded piece of forest where people had put up walls of fallen branches around the tents to protect themselves from the relentless Patagonian winds. Since all the good spots had already been taken by teenagers who took the short cut we put our tent up next to a kind America couple. Found a nice spot next to a stream nearby where we could have dinner and enjoy the evening sun.

Unfortunately another American couple decided to put up their tent on our front lawn while we were having leisure time at the stream. Both men had deep voices triggering me at 10 pm to yell "Hey, Barry White, why don't you try to whisper for a while". It did help, much to the amusement of the other American couple.

So we got up at 5 and followed a Japanese couple up the mountain. It was pitch dark and the track was only illuminated by our headlights.

We soon overtook the Japanese (the woman was clearly not so enthusiastic as the man).

Reaching the top we found out we were not even the first ones. Some people had spend the night at the top in freezing conditions. When the sun started to pop over the mountain ridge behind us a little cheer rose from the shivering a mature photographers on the mountain top.

Little though as it was bitterly cold. Looking at Mount Fitzroy at this time we were not even sure the wonder was still going to happen as it looked like most of the pictures we'd seen in shop around town.

But the miracle did happen. At first only the top of Mount Fitzroy turned orange.

Then a full scale 'El Dorado' developed before our eyes. Even though I could not feel my fingers anymore and my phone only now and then reacted to the punches of my icy body parts, it was well worth all the effort.

I'm pretty sure this is the most beautiful picture I have ever made. Google, it's mine, and if you want it you'll have to buy it. Where do I have to be to collect the Pulitzer price?
On our way back to El Chalten we met the two young French psychologists again we had given a ride from El Calafate. They were invited by a couple of guys to do a 5 day hike with them. The ladies had experience they told us in the car (they'd been scouts at 14). No, they did not have equipment and no they were not sporty. Great insight for psychologists! When we met them I briefly hang my backpack on the oldest shoulder and she fell over! That'll be a success story!

We had a well deserved day of rest (well, we did walk to a waterfall where a few idiots,(and their even more stupid girlfriends who were cheering them on, decided that the sign 'No pasar' meant that they had to climb along a dangerous slippery ridge till the were standing under the waterfall. I decided I was not 'on call' and if they were going to fall (what could possibly go wrong), I would not help. So we left the Salto grande for what it was and headed 'home', a cabin with too many ventilation holes and the weirdest bathroom I've ever seen. Next day we did the Piedre de Fraile walk.

A stunning trip along the Rio Electrico, a wild river, all the way to the end where the Marconi glacier ends in a turquoise lake.

Very rewarding.

Of course I had selected my red shirt as Nienke says it good for the  contrast in the pictures.

We left the beautiful Parque de los glaciares and headed north. In Tres Lagos we stumbled upon a road block which said 'Carretera cerrada', road closed. Nienke asked at the local police station what our options were. 'Just drive past it, you'll be fine'. Apparently nobody took this serious and everybody just continued their trip. It served more as a warning. Granted, the road was pretty rough and very muddy at times, but we made it to the Estancia (farm) where we had a lovely evening and a great dinner (hare as entree, as much lamb as you could eat as a main and creme brulee as desert, of course accompanied by a nice malbec from Mendoza. We though we deserved this treat was we were heading for Parque Nacional Perito Moreno, a very remote and isolated park. No shops, no internet, no petrol station, just puma's, quanaco's, nando's, foxes, armadillo's, wind, and beauty.

It took us 90 km from the main road to get there. If you do want to undertake a trip like that you need to have at least 30 liter of extra petrol with you, on top of a full tank. And don't forget the extra spare wheel. Under the rocks and mud there must have been a road somewhere, but we got there. Even saw our first live armadillo.

Of course the tracks we wanted to walk were closed because of damage (thank you head office), so we had to settle for some other tracks. Since we were the only people in the park at that time we could pick the huts we wanted, and after a short but extremely windy climb we reached our accommodation for the night, a comfortable 2 by 4 m. hut on the shore of Lago Belgrano.

I've been in worse places. The only problem was that the toilet was about 50 meter from the hut. Around the hut we found many bones and some puma poo (which we'd seen on the track as well). Unfortunately we did not get to meet the beauty, much to the relief of my comrade in arms.

We were literally blown back to our car the next day and praised the Beast extensively for starting instantly, even though it had spend the night in freezing loneliness.

Nienke giving a demonstration of the windy conditions on our walk to Pasarela Rio Volcan. 

Unfortunately the Pasarela had been blown apart by the famous winds, which gave us a good excuse to redirect course to the next hut and light a fire.

We were already told that we had to cross 2 streams to get there. The first one was not a problem, but the second one demanded from us to take our shoes of and let our toes experience what our fingers had been experiencing all day.

Luckily the hut was about 200 m. from the last stream and in no time a cosy fire was warming up the small hut. An hour later the wind geared up and hail started to test the roof of the hut.

Waking up was a bit weird, cold, of course, Nienkes walking sticks hammering the outer wall and the mountains around us had white tops. Needless to say, we were not in a hurry for our next challenge. After brekkie, another cup of tea and a cup of choco followed. Eventually we had to leave and punish our feet in the stream again.

We were going to climb Cerro Leon, where you could get a nice view of the peninsula in Lago Belgrano (and the tracks we were meant to walk). A very steep climb was not so much n issue, but the winds, trying to blow us of the mountain was an issue.

We reached the top and I have some images of it, but this one, taken just under the top, is sharp. On the top I could not keep my camera still enough for a good shot. I say, Wellington doesn't know what real wind is!

A quick decent to a more wind protected area brought us to this lovely lunch spot. We signed of at the rangers office where the 2 young rangers were impressed with our record time on Cerro Leon. The Beast brought us quickly to Routa 40 again, having had a nice drink of cooled petrol from one of our jerrycans.

Of course the petrol station in Bajo Caracoles was out of petrol (this time tomorrow you'll be the fourth). Luckily I still had 20 l. on the roof  which I poored into the Beast while a few stranded bikers jealously looked on. Because the owner of the petrol station and hotel was not the friendliest, let alone the cleanest, we decided to take our chances and head in the direction of the border instead of going north to the Cuevas de los manos. We figured we would have another chance to see some petroglyph's elsewhere. Found some new friends at the petrol station in Lago Posada (i.e a contact in Montevideo, an Uruguayan rugby player), and a great hotel.

The owner was so kind to direct us to a local rock formation the next day, where we found petroglyph's, in the wild!
And not just that, also to some great beaches on the Lago Posadas.

Here we had a nice picnic, sheltered from the wind. Tomorrow we're going to cross the border into Chile again and all the fresh food needs to be eaten by then or thrown away. Being Dutch...... we had a picnic.

Amazing views, beautiful scenery. Grassland going over in a lake.

A weird land tongue separating two lakes, with wild horses enjoying all the fresh green. Argentina is beautiful. Tomorrow Chile again.
Remember people, love the people around you!

March 10th 2019: Bloody Aussies

Punta Arenas was not as exiting as we thought it would be. It's cold and there is not that much to do. We visited the local museum which was quite interesting, but it's like in New Zealand, a 'settlers museum' in every town. We managed to renew our obligatory insurance and solve our phone problem though.

The walk in the National park was nice, European trees, some sun and heaps of wind. The walk which was supposed to keep us busy for the rest of the day but turned out to be an easy stroll and we had to do some more tracks to keep ourselves warm.

A condor managed to lighten up our lunch.

We made the obligatory pictures and tried out our new tires on the, according to Nienke, clearly not well maintained roads in rural Punta Arenas.

We treated our 4Runner to a nice massage and spa at the Toyota service center. The beast just passed the 150000 km so it was a well deserved present.

Happily jumping over potholes and still purring from the pampering from the day before the beast brought us in no time to the end of the world. Well, almost.

After reading up on the attractions of Ushaia, the most southern town on this continent, carefully considering the freezing temperatures, the distance we still had to cover in this cold, flat and windy country and the absolutely ridiculous prices for a trip to Antartica we decided to visit the King penguin colony instead and to head north again after that.

We had booked a hotel in the last village before the border crossing. The village had a petrol station, a gas plant and .....nothing else. Boring as. Luckily they did have direct TV and I was able to watch Real Madrid against Ajax. WOW, what a game, the proprietor had to check on us a few times to see if nothing was going wrong in our room. Next day, being Dutch, we of course followed all the advice given to us to be able to cross the border without problems. No veggies, fruit or dairy products, etc. The border crossing took us less than 10 minutes. Immigration man briefly looked into our honest Dutch blue eyes, considered the temperature and wind speed at that early hour and decided it was not worth searching our car. Didn't even ask if the jerrycan on our roof was filled with petrol. What a wast of all the fruit.

Having seen the activity of the King penguins (none whatsoever) we decided to visit another penguin colony in a very remote pace. There were supposed to be 500.000 Magellan penguins on the Cabo Virgenes. In order to see them we had to drive 2 times 100 km over a dirt road full of potholes, in the middle of nowhere, with fierce winds and a bit of rain Great prospects! The beast did not complain and managed to get there in record time (according to Tripadvisor).

We guessed about 400.000 were gone fishing, but we had a great time anyway. We were the only people there.

Lovely creatures, smelly though......

We braved the cold and managed to hang around for over an hour or so, enjoying the penguins popping up from the waves, waddling over the beach with their well filled bellies to feed the young, while young sea lions where frolicking in the waves.

We even saw a whale resting a few hundred meters from the shore. What a great place.

This is a picture of our drivers door. Someone managed to damaged our car a few weeks ago on a parking or so. No note from the driver who did it of course. The worst thing though is that the damage is in the shape of Australia. We had some hilarious reactions on the Panamerican Travellers Association on Facebook. Someone said 'They must have been in a hurry, they forgot Tasmania'.

After 200 km of dirt road we kind of solved the problem, covering the whole car (including Aussie) in a thick layer of mud. We had to get it cleaned as we had booked a posh hotel in Rio Gallegos (including secure parking) and we could not look through the windows anymore. Not that it mattered for the police car that followed us for a kilometer or so, apparently not a problem in Argentina.

Going from Rio Gallegos to El Calafate, it is a very long drive. The only thing you see is pampa's and it's extremely windy (Wellington ain't seen nothing yet). They even have special traffic signs for it. We've seen motorbikes coming from the other side hanging in a 45 degree angle to be able to keep driving. When a truck passed us from the other side our car was almost blown into the ditch. Still, some armadillo's and guanaco's live here happily. Somewhere in the middle of nowhere we picked up 2 Russian hitchhikers from way far in east Russia,who were dropped of by a trucker and survived the night by putting up a tent in a ditch.

El Calafate is not a town for backpackers and adventurers. The town is for the cruise type of people. We managed to find only one decent hike there. The main street is covered in souvenir shops, restaurants, bars, booking agents and even a casino. Even we managed to buy a heavily overpriced souvenir. It's famous for visiting the Perito Moreno glacier and thus attracts millions of people, including us. A nice picture of 2 crested Caracara's, a falcon like predator, who like our kea likes to hang around parkings, in this case a mirador of the glacier.

Picked up a nice French couple who were hitch hiking, about our kids age and had some nice conversations with them. Like us (...) hey thought we were cool. It was indeed pretty cold and very windy when we arrived at the glacier. What an amazing spectacle it was.

We walked around the trails the remainder of the day, enjoying the immense glacier from all angles. Saw several big pieces of ice coming down. Got quite frustrated that we managed to miss all of them with our camera, even though we'd been waiting for that one piece that just had to go. Of course it fell after we had just given up on it. Luckily the weather changed for the better and it was suddenly very pleasant to keep hanging around. 

And therefor we are happy to present to you: the 'mother of all ice collapses'. Ehhhh.

This thing moves 2 m per day and is one of the few glaciers in the world still growing.

Nienke was ecstatic having witnessed the wonder.

At some point in time you just have to leave all the beauty behind you.

So we went to the restaurant to celebrate our visit with a whisky on the rocks, special rocks though: glacier ice. This is where we handed back the iPhone to Matthieu, our French hitchhiker who lost his jewel in our beast (and thus securing a ride back into town😂).

The view from the ice museum, a very interesting museum about ice, glaciers and the doom of the world. We've (that includes you) only got a few more years to go!!!

Time to leave El Calafate and head for our next adventure, the climb to Mount Fitzroy in El Chalten. Picked up 2 French hitchhikers again, always handy for our picture (we're not that good in selfies).

What a shot ay? That high peak in the middle is where we're heading for. A 2 day walk and camping at the base. Can't wait. More in the next blog (that is,if we survive).