Torres del Paine

The Google tells me that "Paine" is a Tehuelche Indian word meaning "blue", and it's pronounced pie-nee. Until today, I've been pronouncing it like the English word "pain" because quite frankly, it's just as appropriate.

Torres del Paine National Park in Chile is consistently rated one of the best trekking spots on the planet, and most hikers spend four days doing the W or seven days doing the circuit (see here). But thanks to some nimrod who allegedly set a fire, burning down large areas of the park, no-one could do either trek. Until this weekend.

Part of the Torres del Paine National Park

So which trek did I do? Neither of course! As previously mentioned, me + camping = misery. But I couldn't pass up the opportunity to at least TRY to see the park's main attraction, the Torres del Paine.

Crossing streams and rivers

It took me three and a half hours to get there. I cursed my way up a massive hill, wandered through a forest, imbibed water straight out a fresh mountain stream, clambered over boulders, braved wind and even snow to get to this:

Torres del Paine

It was breathtakingly beautiful and the photo really doesn't do it justice. I spent about 20 minutes up there soaking in the view before scrambling back through the boulders, the forest, the streams and the hill. Three hours later, I was on a nice warm bus headed back to Puerto Natales.

You can still see the Torres from the bus stop!

It took me seven hours to make it back and forth to the Mirador las Torres. My right knee is crying mutiny (mutiknee?) and my hips hate me. But all things considered, the pain of the Torres del Paine was worth it.

• Sidebar: if anyone is thinking about coming to Puerto Natales, I cannot recommend the hostel at Erratic Rock enough; it is amazingly comfortable, the staff are incredible, there's a pub right next door with daily briefings on the park and plentiful beer/food/movies at night. It's been my favorite place on this trip by far.

Hike-u

As previously mentioned, I'm not much of a hiker. When I was sixteen, everybody in my class was doing something called the Duke of Edinburgh award. Part of it consisted of hiking for two days in the Wiltshire countryside and camping overnight. By day two, I was so incredibly grouchy, mumbling obscenities and cursing the lack of concrete, that the rest of my group was honestly worried that I was in the beginning stages of hypothermia. I wasn't. I just hated being cold and wet and sleeping in tents and peeing in bushes and being covered in mud and hauling a backpack... I hated all of it.


That hasn't changed.


And yet, I found myself in the self-proclaimed "hiking capital of Argentina" on Thursday. Mainly because everybody I've met kept telling me that I HAD to go to El Chalten. That it was the most amazing place. That I would really be missing out if I didn't at least go for a day.

El Chalten

When I arrived, I was greeted by sleeting rain and the worst non-hurricane winds I've ever experienced. You couldn't see the mountains, you could barely see the ground in front of you. As I trudged towards the trails, I silently cursed everyone who told me to go to El Chalten. And then I binned my nascent trekking attempt and went for pizza and a beer instead.

Tasty local brew

An hour later, the weather had marginally improved (no sleet but still ludicrously windy) so I tried again. And this time, not only did I make it up one of the easiest trails, but I also passed several septuagenarians along the way and beat them to the viewing point by five minutes! Achievement!

Mount Fitz Roy

Several quick photos later, I scampered back down the trail and promptly sank into the nearest pub to sample some of the local microbrews while patting myself on the back. Job well done.

Me up a mountain

Ice, lots and lots of ICE

This is the magnificent Perito Moreno Glacier near El Calafate in Patagonia. It is freakin' HUGE, apparently the same size, including all the ice you can't see, as Buenos Aires. The glacier moves slowly but steadily down the mountain until water seeps in enough to cause huge portions to drop off into the lakes (apparently the technical term is "calve", though please, correct me if any of this is bollocks!)

According to our guide, snow falls on the mountaintop, then gets compressed into ice, which then takes between two and five thousand years to make it down the mountain before falling into the lakes and becoming water again. The cracking sound as the ice shifted around was incredible, and very eerie, much like a thunderstorm, and I'm terrified of storms. But the sight of a two hundred foot wall of ice crashing into the water was unforgettable.

(My apologies if the video is a tad shaky, it was pretty windy and cold out there by the glacier!)


Perito Moreno Glacier from Tina Cone on Vimeo.

Land of Fire

It took me thirty-three excruciating hours, three different buses, and two border crossings to get from Puerto Madryn down to Ushuaia. While both cities are in Argentina, the road through Tierra del Fuego crosses into Chile, so a good four hours were spent going through customs and immigration. Twice. I'm actually flying back out because I can't face the idea of dealing with it all again!

While Ushuaia itself is a bit touristy (there are dozens of Antarctic cruises that run out of here), the surrounding countryside is gorgeous. I went for a boat ride down the Beagle Channel, which essentially divides Argentina and Chile on the southern tip of Tierra del Fuego, and saw my old friends the sea lions hanging out on rocky islands with cormorants. I thought being on the boat would protect us from the stench but unfortunately we ended up downwind.


Tierra del Fuego from Tina Cone on Vimeo.

After the boat ride, I went to an Irish pub where I hung out with two guys from New Zealand and drank way too much of the local Beagle beer while watching the Giants beat the 49ers.

I'm not much of a hiker (and by not much, I mean not at all), but I still managed to drag my hungover carcass out of bed the next day to get on a chairlift and take a short walk towards the Glaciar Martial in the mountains surrounding Ushuaia. It was very rainy, and very pretty, and I'm glad I did it.  Now on the Glaciar Perito Moreno in El Calafate!

Sea Lions and Penguins and Dolphins, oh my

I've been in Puerto Madryn, Patagonia for a couple of days. And for a place that looks like a desert, it has a TON of wildlife.

A couple of hours south in Punto Tombo, there is an enormous colony of Magellanic penguins. 170,000 of the cute buggers. There used to be 250,000 back in the 1980's, but the usual culprits (oil, climate change, overfishing ie. us, us, us) hit the population hard. Still, wherever you look, there's a penguin.


Punto Tombo Penguins from Tina Cone on Vimeo.

And if that wasn't enough cute for you, here's another much smaller colony of them on Peninsula Valdes, just north of Puerto Madryn.


Penguins in Peninsula Valdes from Tina Cone on Vimeo.

To the south, at Playa Union, you can see a species of dolphin that until now, I had no idea existed.  They are called Toninas Overas.  Please to enjoy, I certainly did!


Toninas from Tina Cone on Vimeo.

And on Peninsula Valdes, just north of Puerto Madryn, there's also a huge colony of Sea Lions on Peninsula Valdes, one or two elephant seals, Guanacos (a kind of llama), Armadillos, Rheas, and Maras (those things behind the Rhea, they are apparently close cousins to the rat).


Wildlife in Patagonia from Tina Cone on Vimeo.

By the way, the sea lions?  Took up the ENTIRE beach. And they smelled like week old sushi that's been left on the radiator. Yay nature!

Five Hours in Uruguay

One of the things that scares me a little about this trip, aside from my terrible spanish, is the fact that I really have no clue where I'm going, where I should go, how to get there, how long it takes to get there, what I should miss, what I shouldn't miss... in other words, I know nothing.

Fortunately my college room mate and his lovely girlfriend have just spent seven weeks or so touring around Argentina (you can read about their adventures here) and they are currently in Colonia del Sacramento in Uruguay, a lovely little cobblestone town just an hour boat ride away from Buenos Aires.

Colonia del Sacramento, Uruguay

So off I went on the ferry yesterday, in complete ignorance of the one hour time difference between Uruguay and Argentina. Not only did I get in way after 11 am (and not at 10 am as I told Rick and Sue) but I had less than five hours to hang out with them. But what a cracking five hours it was. They both gave me loads of tips, not to mention plenty of much needed laughs and great conversation.

Rick & Sue in Uruguay

After too short a visit, I got back on the boat to BA. It was early enough that I thought I'd take a quick swing by San Telmo's legendary Sunday market but I got utterly stumped on how to get there from the port. Another ferry-goer, seeing how lost I was, took pity on me and walked with me all the way to the market. We spent a couple of hours wandering San Telmo and talking in Spanish (her, fluently, me, embarrassingly bad).

San Telmo

After leaving the market, we stumbled across a crew shooting an ad on Roque Saenz Pena, one of the big diagonal streets leading away from the Plaza de Mayo. Apparently the spanish word for ad is "propaganda", which seems very appropriate!

dozens of ad extras crossing the street

Thanks to the ad, the entire street was closed to traffic. How often do you get to do this on a major thoroughfare in one of the busiest cities in the world??

one whole giant street to myself

Estoy en Sudamerica!

I think.

Something I have realized very early on (and I'm talking on the plane early on) is that despite my naive belief that everything would be just fine, my limited Spanish does NOT suffice. I even resorted to that extremely embarrassing English habit of just adding an "o" or an "a" to the end of an anglo-saxon word. Right now, to quote a friend of the family, my spanish is "muy shitty".

Palermo Viejo

Much like the sidewalks in one of my favourite neighborhoods in Buenos Aires. Nearly four years ago, when I first stayed in Palermo Viejo, I had to learn to stop admiring the buildings while walking around otherwise I would end up with something ghastly on my shoes. The problem wasn't just lazy pet owners, it was all the very friendly and very spoiled stray dogs wandering the streets.

very friendly stray dog

I still saw a whole bunch of stray dogs, but strangely this time around, not so much shit. I can't work out if it's because of gentrification or because I managed to arrive here during vacation time in Argentina. Either way, it made me feel a little homesick thanks to the preponderance of brown stuff in Greenpoint, Brooklyn (as so often excellently documented here by Miss Heather). And just as I was having that moment of hankerin', what did I see? A polish union right here in Palermo!

Union de los Polacos

And thanks to that, this neighborhood will forever now be the Greenpoint of the south to me. Which is probably why I haven't left it much. I've just been wandering around, absorbing the sun, watching the beautiful people, admiring the architecture, drowning in Malbec and chowing down on fabulous food like Bife de Lomo (tenderloin steak) and Morcilla (blood sausage).

mmm...morcilla...

I'm basically just using the opportunity of being in a city that I feel comfortable in (crappy spanish notwithstanding) to try and figure out where I should go in this vast and beautiful continent. I've got a trip to Colonia in Uruguay tomorrow and a bus ticket for Puerto Madryn in Patagonia on Monday. It's a twenty hour bus ride which should give me the opportunity to edit together a short video I shot in the Plaza de Mayo today.  And by short, I'm talking 30-45 seconds. Twenty hours is enough time to do that in final cut pro x, right??

Plaza de Mayo