Published on March 23, 2008

A Journey to the Brink of the World: Patagonia, Tierra del Fuego, and Ushuaia

I always felt a kind of fascination with remote, untouched, pristine places like the Pacific Islands I saw in the videos my father would bring back from his business trips. When winter break rolled around I was ready to see such places myself. So I packed my rarely used hiking backpack and got on the plane to Argentina; for a trip through Patagonia, Tierra del Fuego, and Ushuaia, a place I had first learned about reading Radu Tudoran’s "Toate Panzele Sus."

After the few days in Buenos Aires and constantly feeling like we were in a polluted sauna, Bariloche was a breath of fresh air.
The Nahuel Huapi National Park made us marvel with our mouths open, but I sill had my eyes on getting all the way south to Patagonia. I was impatient as we were waiting for the bus in the lobby of the hostel. As 7:20 rolled around, our "bus" pulled in front of the hostel and "shocked" is not strong enough of a word to describe our reaction. Think more in terms of mouth hanging open, eyes popping, "someone please wake me up" kind of reaction.

The minibus was similar to the kind you take on the Bucuresti-Ploiesti route, but with no middle walkway or as much legroom, no place for luggage and 13 passenger seats. I would have called those minibuses luxury compared with the one we were going to spend the next two days in. We got on the minibus and managed to pack our backpacks and sleeping bags under the seats and by our feet. It turned out not to be as bad as I thought. It was actually rather comical how at each rest stop the driver had to come around, open the door, take out the luggage, let us come out, then put the luggage back in. At least we can say Argentineans are very efficient at using all available space.

Not even 30 minutes into the trip the driver pulled over and looked on the side of the road for a wire then disappeared under the van for a couple minutes. I did not want to know what he was fixing so I got in the sleeping bag and went to sleep. I woke up at the drug checkpoint right before Esquel.

The police proceeded to check all out passports, my friend’s, Sen, and mine twice and kept asking us questions. Sen had a grin on his face the whole time and I was wondering if he was thinking what I was: "I wish these guys would ask me to come out of the car and search me and my bags. Have them take their time going through all those dirty clothes I have accumulated and not find anything. Boy, what a story that would make." None of that happened though.

The two-day drive was rather uneventful in terms of the landscape we passed through. The roads were unpaved which gave me the feeling we were really roughing it on this trip. The only vegetation were bushes growing not higher than 30cm and the only occasional fauna were some animals that looked like lamas with a haircut.

We stopped a few times in villages that seemed deserted, houses and stores looked locked up. The windows were replaced by pieces of wood nailed together and you could not tell when it was the last time they got a coat of fresh paint. Everything was flat all around us, with the road cutting straight through the landscape, getting lost in the horizon.

The surroundings seemed covered in a permanent cloud of dust unsettled by the wind. It gave me a feeling of truly being at the end of the world in terms of how isolated and run down these places were. They had their charm though and everywhere we stopped, the few people, that probably made a habit of hanging out of the gas station, were always happy to talk to us and smile at everything we said.

As we approached El Chalten, the Trek Capital of Argentina and the base point for exploring the Glaciers National Park, I was mesmerized staring out the window and seeing how the pictures I had previously almost drooled over in the National Geographic were now materializing before my eyes. El Chalten is a tiny little village, only 200m above sea level, tucked away in South West Patagonia.

The facilities are limited here. There is no bank or ATM, so you have to budget accordingly before you get here since only some of the hotels take credit cards but no food establishments. There is only one place where you can make phone calls, one "supermarket", an overpriced internet café with 3 computers and a recently added gas station that has reduced program and is not opened in the winter at all.

We stayed 5 days in El Chalten, and we didn’t let one pass without making the most of it. My measure for it was how much I was aching as the sun set. We bought a map as soon as we stepped out of the shower and over a couple bottles of Quilmes beer we grew excited just by looking at it and jotting down all the routes we could hike without the need of a guide. I was filled with anticipation.

First day we set out for Fitz Roy (3500m) base camp and Laguna de Los Tres, we brought our backpacks along since all the hostels were booked in town, and we figured we should pitch the tent in one of the camps inside the park, as it was free anyway. The hike is the most popular in the area due to its relative shortness (only 3.5 hours in each direction) and the fact the Fitz Roy is the highest peak in the area. I was amazed at how relatively flat the trail was, I guess I was expecting a continuous ache in my legs as we made our way to Fitz Roy, but as it turned out, even 70 year olds in somewhat of a good shape could do it. After three hours of "wow" and "look at that" as we came across different vistas we were finally across from Fitz Roy.

You could see how the trail winded up a hill and disappeared at the top, probably continuing to the Laguna, at the bottom of the glacier. We pitched the tent in one of the camps along the way and left most of our things there. Beyond base camp is where the challenge of the hike is: a stretch of 2.5 km and a difference in elevation of 420m.

After an hour of dragging our feet up the mountain and only thinking that one more step also meant one less step left, we finally made it to the Mirador. I cannot really explain that feeling I got when I was up there without sounding cliché. What my friend Talar said as we were catching our breaths was "This is what I think God’s idea of art is." This was probably one of the few times God was mentioned, and it did not cross my mind to disagree or question her further.

At the Mirador we were stared at by a mass of snow and ice unmoved by the winds. From the ice, thousand meter high rocks of an orange-brownish color shoot up, literally like towers, daring you to get closer, to climb higher..."little" is not enough to describe how you feel looking up at them, almost straining your neck. At the bottom of the glacier is the Laguna de Los Tres, which seems to have been transported from the tropics, given its clear turquoise water. We did not get back to the camp until 10 pm that night, at the same time realizing that we had no knife to open the food cans and that the lantern we just bought was useful only as a battery holder and nothing else. By the second day however, we were pros at opening the cans of paté only with nail clippers.

Next day we decided to switch camps and go to camp Agostini, the base camp for Cerro Torre, the second most famous glacier in the park, given the wind did not die down from the night before. The hike was supposed to take only 3 hours more or less. It took us around 5 due to Sen’s blisters and the occasional detours we took from the trail for more picture-perfect vistas. Time had a different meaning in that environment though. Just the sunrise and sunset had any significance in the days we were hiking because they were our only constraints. If it took us 3 or 10 hours to get somewhere it did not matter because the goal was not so much to reach the end but to enjoy as much of the trip there.

The hike between Laguna Capri, where we spent the first night, and Agostini, by Rio Blanco, is through a transition trail that connects the trails that set out from El Chalten towards Fitz Roy and Torre respectively. The trail is somewhat less marked but not nearly as many people take this route, which made it more pleasant.

Agostini camp seemed to be more popular with climbers and many of them were waiting around for the weather to clear up and venture up Torre. I probably seemed a kid across from them, without even a lantern, pads for my sleeping bag or eating utensils. Maybe a kid, but to me it was the most amazing, adventurous, "me on my own" thing I have ever done.

By the third day we were really missing the showers and hot food so we decided to call it quits with camping and get back to El Chalten. We started back after I spent the morning taking lessons from a German photographer on how to better frame pictures and writing my twelve postcards sitting on a perfectly flat stone with Cerro Torre staring at me and Rio Blanco hurrying towards the valley somewhere in the back.

Fast-forwarding to last day in El Chalten, our bus was not leaving until 6pm, which in Argentina’s time meant it will not even show up until 6:30. Sen’s blisters grew exponentially so, though I knew I would not hear the end of it if my dad ever found out, I went for a hike by myself. I figured I’ll take the risk now and explain it to dad later. Loma del Pileque Tombado is a peak barely 1300m high, about 4 hours from El Chalten. The first two hours are on the same trail used to get to Cerro Toro, another glacier that most tourists skip due to the higher degree of difficulty of the trail and the fact that two days are needed to complete the return trip. I was apprehensive and every time I heard a noise I would stop in my tracks. A part of me was hoping it was some endangered animal like the hemul, while the more dominant part of me was hoping for a cow or somewhat of a more domestic animal, so I would not have any unpleasant surprises.

The first thirty minutes were a brutal uphill climb followed by another 2 hours mainly through the forest and water filled fields. Once at the bifurcation between the path leading to Torre and the one I was to follow, I lost the trail the minute I stepped on it. The only map I had was of no use to my very low sense of orientation. After looking at the map a little longer hoping it will talk back to me I just started going in the direction I felt the peak should be in: up and across, simple enough. It was almost noon and the sun was getting hot; I could see the heat floating, suspended almost in the air. The rest of the hike was through an open mass of sand and incredibly flat, thin, black stones that I was sinking in just as it would be snow, which was making me even more tired.

After another 30 minutes I could see where the mountain was starting to descent but the views were still nothing like the ones advertised in the guidebook. I headed straight up puffing and wondering if I was ever going to make it, if I should have turned back the moment the trail disappeared. I got to the ridge and though I was still far away from the peak I could spot the trail again. I headed towards it and minutes later I was at the bottom of what seemed to be the last stretch, another 100-150m elevation difference.

Looking up I thought I did not have the stamina to get all the way to the top, a top I had no idea how far it really was. The heat was unbearable, and the sky was spotted by just a few clouds that seemed to come from beyond a peak suspended above a few rocks. Climbing up and just looking at my feet so I would not realize how much I still had left, I could see Fitz Roy coming out of hiding with the corner of my eye. When I reached the top I felt as I had just opened my eyes, suddenly taken back by the beauty of the wilderness in front of me.

The view from the top, sitting on a few rocks piled together to designate the peak was startling: Cerro Torre, Fitz Roy, Laguna Capri and Torre, Rio Blanco on one side and Lago Viedma as far as it stretched on the other. I sat up there for a few minutes, alone but not lonely, taking in the horizons, wondering when and if I would see something as amazing, thinking about what thoughts, what events and which turns got me there.

Another 360-degree turn later and hoping I could retain that that feeling even after I had turned my back, even after the pictures in my albums would just become pictures I could only associate with distant instances I cannot even keep in chronological order, I headed down. I made it back to the hostel and collapsed in the lobby, dusty, sweaty, and hungry. Sen asked me how it was, and I realized that I could have said "great", I could have said "just ok," I could have said "not worth it" and it would have not made a difference to neither of us. The reason: I was to define not a view but a trip, an experience that no two people would see the same way.

Our trip continued to Calafate where we took a tour of the Perito Moreno glacier and learned yet more somewhat useless facts (i.e. how fast it moves, how wide/long/deep it is). Though a quaint city that in some ways reminded me of Sinaia, it was too touristy and commercialized. You could not find someone who would invite you in their home, whether for a glass of water while you waited for the bus or for a hot meal, as in the small villages in Patagonia. The streets were lined with high scale restaurants and overpriced souvenir shops, not with people chatting on their doorstep.

We ended our trip in Ushuaia, and though there would be much more to say about those last few days too, I would not know what to pick and chose. More breathtaking views, hospitable people, and ache inducing, but every step worth, hikes. When I came back home I looked one more time at the map and thought to myself "Theoretically I have only really seen with my own eyes an area of a few hundred square kilometers, at most. If only that portion of the world had so much to offer, can you only imagine how much more is left?" And so, I bought two more travel guides and booked my next trip.