Before New Year begins, we think it’s a good timing to look back and review the second part of our journey. HighlightsThis was always the most difficult question to answer when we conversed with fellow travelers. Honestly, the highlights were plentiful, which is not especially surprising, as we had tried our best to pick all cherries while planning our backpacking trip. Here is our selection in pictures. PlanningIf comparing backpacking with touring by bicycle, we quickly realized that travelling by public transportation and depending on lodging involved much more organization on the spot. We spent quite a bit of time looking for accommodation options, bus routes and supermarkets! By now, we enjoy “genius status” at booking.com :-) and we agree if someone states that travelling is not to be confused with being on vacation. Sometimes, we seriously grew tired of planning! Here, we fairly also have to admit, that we do not fit into the common description of a backpacker on his gap year. We have too much of a precise idea what we want to experience at a destination, too much money to keep always looking for the cheapest deals and we are too old to newly discuss the world all over again while staying at hostels. Means of transportationHaving taken buses in India, we were prepared for a very basic service when starting our backpacking travels in South America. However, we were surprised by the quality of long-distance buses and their booking system in Peru! Tickets could be bought online, paid for by credit card and the comfort inside the buses was significantly better than flying business class and even meals were served. In contrast, organizing tickets and finding bus companies in Chile and Argentina was more difficult (and surely more expensive, especially as foreigners sometimes pay up to double the price than locals). Sitting in a bus for more than 12 hours was soon a routine and made our flight home suddenly appear short. One of our best recipes to kill time on a bus was to listen to BBC's audio book "A History of the World in 100 Objects", which we highly recommend. FoodOne of our biggest gastronomical surprise in South America was the bread. Maybe our expectations were low, having accustomed to toast bread during our months cycling, but we felt exhilarated by the offered variety! Another fantastic custom, according to us, is the daily lunch menu, which is served throughout Peru, Bolivia and Chile. For an affordable price, fresh set meals of three courses are served. The food is traditional, but a great opportunity to try local specialties. As for the meat and wine, of course, Argentina was heaven. In general, we enjoyed eating out as much as we did cooking for ourselves. The big difference to the food at home was naturally the price: often, it was more expensive to buy our meals at the (super-)market than eating at a restaurant. SafetyWe consider ourselves very lucky with no loss or theft to declare for our entire nine months journey! The only exception is a handful of caramel sweets, that a boy took out of our backpacks while "guarding" them during a lorry hitch-hike ride in Peru! If we recall, what he could have taken instead and without us noticing, we think this is rather "sweet"... Neither did we feel threatened or unsafe at any moment. However, we had also been weary and attentive constantly. Fabienne felt utterly relieved when she could cease wearing the money belt and loose these optical 3 kg of weight :-). Also in this aspect, we appreciate the comfort of our home country! Back home
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Buenos Aires – the capital of Argentina – was the only destination on the Atlantic shore (and not the Pacific shore) that we visited on our journey and it was our final destination. Big expectations were set, especially also, as we visited the city over Christmas. When we arrived, beautiful and warm weather welcomed us. We were back in summer! It was fantastic to stroll along the docks at Puerto Madero during the evening and watch the "Porteños" (= inhabitants of Buenos Aires) enjoy their pre-Christmas drinks with colleagues and friends. Nowadays, the docks are a hip neighborhood and are solely used as promenade. The industrial port – located slightly further north – is still one of South America's most important and yearly handles over 11 million tons of freight. Buenos Aires is often also referred to as "the Paris of South America". At the quarters of San Telmo and Recoleta, we could see why: beautiful façades in art-nouveau style let the streets look very pretty. Additionally, the city has many parks and big trees. It was very pleasant to simply walk through the streets. Of course, we did this with the necessary precaution and in the end also decided to skip the entire quarter of "La Boca" (where the famous football stadium of Diego Maradona is located), as it was predicted to be too dangerous there as tourists during the festivities. Of course, also in terms of culture, art and literature, Buenos Aires has a lot to offer. San Telmo is well known for its "milongas" (= tango dance halls) and its antiquities market on Sundays. In Recoleta, we visited the famous museum of Latin-American art MALBA, the cemetery and afterwards strolled through the artisan market. A bookstore, installed at a former theatre, was a special attraction. On Christmas we treated ourselves to a delicious "bife de lomo", joined a mass at the Catedral Metropolitana (very different to protestant services we are used to) and enjoyed experiencing festive traditions here. Porteños celebrate Christmas Eve at midnight on the streets to firework, eating "pan dulce", similar to "panettone" in Italy, and drinking "sidra", fresh apple wine. On the 25th, though, the streets are empty and the majority of restaurants are closed: everyone is celebrating with family at home. Overall, we spent a good time during our last days in Buenos Aires, but the city could not quite live up to our high expectations. Maybe this was due to the fact, that we were already thinking of going home or because during the Christmas days (which additionally fell on a weekend this year), the city seemed without much life.
To our families and friends at home and around the world: we wish you merry Christmas and a prosperous new year 2017! For those of you desperately waiting for a white Christmas, we dug into our image archive and here is what we have found. El Chaltén was an ideal place to undertake a handful of smaller hikes. Initially we had intended staying at a nearby Estancia for volunteer work, but one week turned out to be too short of a period for being of help. Therefore we changed plans and pitched our tent at the local campsite for a series of days. The campground also offered a cozy common room with reliable internet connection, so we could use the rainy and windy days to start organizing our lives back at home. When the sun was out, we were hitting the trails visiting Laguna de los Tres, Laguna Torre and Chorrillo del Salta, a nearby waterfall. We met up again with Yaara, whom we had gotten to know on the Antarctica cruise, for some empanadas. And Marlen, whom we had met in La Paz, joined us for a hike and a delicious parrilla as well as some locally brewed beers in a comfy chalet-style restaurant. Never had we dwelled at one place as long as we did in El Chaltén; this was, however, lamentably also due to bad weather. Our stay in Southern Patagonia will end with our flight from El Calafate to Buenos Aires. As we were still not tempted to visit the glacier Perito Moreno from El Calafate on a tourist bus, we wanted to briefly rent a car and drive to the nearby Lago Roca to hike Cerro Cristal. As it had been raining heavily the previous days, the (gravel) road conditions were predicted to be bad and the rental company did not want to offer their cars for this drive! Hence, we had to spend two days in El Calafate where we enjoyed the shore of Lago Argentina.
After an overnight stop in El Calafate (back in Argentina!) - wherefrom one visits the Perito Moreno glacier (if you have not been to Antarctica...) - we arrived in El Chaltén, the capital of trekking in Argentinian Patagonia. El Chaltén offers a variety of hikes of different lengths and difficulties. As the weather promised to be extraordinarily good for four days, we directly opted for the Huemul Circuit. The shorter and easier treks we saved for later. The Huemul CircuitThis 4 days hike (ca. 70 km) leads through an extremely diverse landscape, passing along pastures with blossoming dandelions, the mountain ranges of Fitz Roy, Poincenot and Cerro Torre in the background, thick forest, rough rocks and gravel moraines, finally overlooking the immense Southern Ice Sheet and Viedma glacier and lake with floating icebergs. The trek is technically demanding and we had to rent harnesses to traverse the Rio Tunel twice on a Tirolesa zip line, but otherwise we were good to go after we had registered at the Ranger station where our competencies and gear were checked. The required technical skills and necessity to carry all gear and food for four days makes this trek still to be completed by only a few hikers. Having the chance to experience this breathtaking Patagonian landscape nearly for us alone was a real treat. The first day we started in El Chaltén shortly before midday and reached the first campsite, Camp Toro, in the afternoon. We walked through springy forests and crossed pastures while looking down on Lake Viedma scintillating like an emerald. Finally we followed the milky Rio Tunel upstream. Early the second day, as we had circum-walked the Laguna Toro, we had to cross Rio Tunel. You could basically ford the river in a few places; as we anyway had to rent the harnesses we naturally opted for the fun part: at the Tyrolian-zipline we traversed our backpacks and ourselves over the gurgling stream and afterwards stood grinning and boosted by the adrenaline in the warming morning sun. The trail continued over the glacier and moraine, steeply uphill along the gravel flank towards Paso del Viento (Windy Pass), which pays credits to its name! Once overcome, we had a spectacular view over the gigantic Southern Ice Field and Viedma glacier. We descended a few hundred meters to the second campsite, Refugio Paso del Viento. On the morning of the third day we walked over muddy and mossy grassland, adorned by blossoming mountain flowers and, occasionally, Calafate berries (the berries that guarantee your return to Patagonia if you eat them, according to the legend). It was a sunny day in the mountains and the sudden strong wind gusts that hit us, once we had started our climb towards Paso Huemul, could not have been foreseen. We grit our teeth and tried to overcome the pass as soon, steadily and safely as possible. A few times we had to get on our knees and hands and hold on to the ground in order not to be slammed towards the rocks or falling all over. Our hearts beating we had made it and were looking at the beautiful Laguna Viedma with the Viedma glacier calving icebergs into it. However, the descent proofed to be another challenge: the slope was extremely steep and of slippery sand and rubble. We held on to every possible root and branch; luckily the trail was in midst of a bonsai forest of stunted lenga patches. In the late afternoon we arrived at the third campsite at Bahia de los Hornos, the bay just next to the Bahia de Tempanos, where the icebergs were floating. Much to our concern the wind had not ceased and further continued to build up strength... We secured our tent with additional strings and prepared for a rough night. Wind gusts of wildly estimated 80 km/h maltreated our poorly aged MSR tent, but it withstood the torture. One of our neighbours, however, was not as lucky and his tent’s poles broke in the middle of the night. Early on day four we set off for the last leg, leading us back towards El Chaltén and hopefully into less hostile terrain. We spent the morning searching for the trail in the vast, thorny grassland… It seemed that the people providing the GPS track we used, were doing the same! Midday we finally could see the embarkation station, the official ending point of the Huemul Trek, and the delta of Rio Tunel, where the second Tyrolean-zipline was waiting for us as a final hurdle. This time, though, the zip line was very long, in bad shape and hanging low over the torrential river. As the 20 m rope (explicitly advised by the ranger station!) was too short, we were unable to pull our backpacks. Philipp thus decided to wear his big rucksack, which proofed to be the wrong decision. Once successfully traversed, he was unable to land and get grip under his feet as the backpack’s weight turned him over and he was hanging head down in the harness. Fabienne, on the other side of the river, could not do anything than hoping he could escape of this unfortunate and dangerous situation on his own. He had no other choice than trying to free him from the backpack and let it fall into the water, which he luckily did. In the end, we both had made it safely to the other side and were drying our sleeping bags, mattresses and clothes in the afternoon sun… Why not making the best out of this situation and meanwhile take a coffee break to process this shaking experience? Afterwards we had enough energy to finish the remaining three-hours walk back to the ranger station in El Chaltén. Exhausted but happy we had made it and still think it was a fantastic trek! About a month ago, while browsing the internet for further travel plans, we had accidentally found a blog, where it was mentioned that cruise ships heading for Antartica in November and March sometimes sell their empty cabins for significantly less than the original price. We immediately subscribed to a newsletter in order to be informed about any upcoming deals. We got extremely lucky and could book a last-minute offer for an 11-day cruise with a 50% reduction through a travel agent in Ushuaia (Freestyle Adventure Travel). We were jumpy like small children and finally, on November 20, set sail aboard the luxurious MS Hebridean Sky. This is a small cruise ship with roughly 100 passengers and an incredible number of 76 staff (!). In contrast to the Arctic, Antarctica is a true continent and hence is also referred to as the seventh continent. Half of its size, though, is due to pack ice and land is only accessible during the Antarctic summer (usually October to March). Antarctica has not been actively explored until fairly recently in history, during 1895 to 1922, when the majority of Antarctic explorations were undertaken. Nonetheless, the continent was first sighted already by the Russians (Bellinghausen), the British (Bransfield) and Americans (Palmer) around 1820. Until today, Antarctica does not belong to any specific country, but is ruled by the Antarctic Treaty (funded in 1959) and meant for peaceful use and scientific purposes. Several scientific bases are strategically positioned along the Peninsula and towards the geographical South Pole. Tourism to Antarctica has increased rapidly over the last years; still, the high price tag keeps the number of tourists comparably low (around 40’000 people per season). In order to protect this unique habitat, the IAATO (International Association of Antarctica Tour Operators) was funded in 1991 and set rigid regulations for the private travel industry. For example, one should not approach a wild animal closer than 5 m (unless the animals approaches; animals don't know this rule...) or the number of people per landing on Antarctic ground is limited to 100 persons. Our cruise with Polar Latitudes headed for the northern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula and stretched as far south as the Gerlach Street. To reach the South Shetland Islands - which is the most northern part of Antarctica - every ship has to pass the infamous Drake Passage, where the Antarctic circumpolar stream causes a very strong swell and ferocious winds are blowing. Luckily, we had bought medication against motion sickness, as even though the weather conditions were considered as average and the rough sea as moderate, the swell produced waves as high as 8 m. Below there are some pictures and two movies on how the ship was riding the waves. Our heroes were all the crew members who kept up a fantastic job and motivation even in these conditions, especially the waiters!
The Drake spook was over on the third day and the first iceberg was sighted in the early afternoon. We landed on Aitcho Island on our first expedition the very same evening. Since we were getting closer to the southern polar circle, the days were long and sunset was only after 11 pm. The following five days followed a similar pattern: due to fantastic weather (it felt like a sunny winter day in the Swiss Alps) we could undertake two expeditions in Zodiac speed boats per day; either landing and visiting penguin and elephant seal colonies or cruising along the glaciated shore or amongst icebergs. In between, we enjoyed gastronomic highlights - especially for dinner - and received information to Antarctic wildlife, geology and history from the expedition team. Overall we were (kept) quite busy every day and our plans to read, plan, write etc. we soon had to throw overboard :-)! However, it was a great contrast to the rest of travelling we had been doing and it felt very comfortable to follow a set program and indulge in all the luxury. Philipp's index finger remained utterly active during the entire journey, shooting pictures of Antarctica's unique wildlife and landscape. We saw three types of penguins (Adelie, Gentoo and Chinstraps), various species of seals (Leopard, Crabeater, Wedell and Elephant seals) and whales (Humpback, Minkie and even extremely rare Sperm Whales) and as a sensational sighting: one solitary emperor penguin! Normally, emperor penguins live further south on the Antarctic mainland, but right after hatching, the young swim the sea for 1-2 years before joining their colony. In general, the animals do not fear human beings (they do not know us) and thus are curious and approach everyone very closely. This, of course, led to funny and endearing situations and pictures. Aside the photographs, here are some short videos to give you an impression about what we could experience.
Although all animal encounters were always very exciting, we also were totally fascinated by the icy landscape, the volcanic rock formations and the steal-blue and extremely clean sea, all bathed in the one-of-a-kind Antarctic light. To summarize: This cruise was entirely worth every penny and we would recommend to everyone, who has the chance, to grab it and undertake this unforgettable journey!
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Blog Archive
December 2016
World Clock
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