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).