To the end of the earth: an expedition through Patagonia

 

 Our party arrived in the sleepy town of Puerto Natales after leaving the hospitality of the Hernandez Family of Victoria de Chile. At this stage, the expedition consisted of myself, Dave ‘the nut’ Coutts, a trekking veteran of 25 over years, whose feats have included climbing Everest whilst maintaining a handstand, armed with only an elastic band, a can of WD40, duct tape and a hairdryer. Accompanying the nut was his adoring wife, compañero Sharon ‘Shazbot’ Coutts with over 20 years’ experience, known for her uncompromising stamina often compared to that of a mule. Sharon has demonstrated this by braving the extreme conditions of the Sahara for 86 days, surviving solely by extracting the moisture from Camels.    

After one day in town spent gathering provisions we set off. Upon arrival, which involved a bus and boat we arrived at the origin, where we were greeted by 100kmph+ wind, whose gusts resulted in lashings of rain and hail battering down against our already fatigued bodies. It was now that we realised – we have really made it to the end of the earth. The sideways orientation of the vegetation, and the extreme ruggedness of the areas animal populations, was evidence that for survival in Patagonia, life needs to adapt to the conditions.

 

After 2-3 hours of battling the elements, we were exhausted and in need of a rest, and still at least 3 hours away from our destination of Refugio Grey. We established Refugio Coutts on the Southern Edge of Lago Grey, in a rocky outcrop, which provided a small amount of protection from the Patagonian weather. After a stop to recompose ourselves and rebuild our shattered morale, we left the safe confines of Refugio Coutts and headed north, in search of a glimpse of our first glacier of the expedition, Glacier Grey.

 

Refugio Coutts

After two or so hours, we reached Glacier Grey, and immediately we were rewarded as it was truly an impressive sight. We then pushed onto Refugio Grey and spent our first night in a valley, which offered some respite from the wind. It was here that we added another compañero to our expedition, Johanna ‘Unbreakable’ Baron.

 

Our first glimpse of Glacier Grey

 

Close up of Glacier Grey. Our faces tell the story here

The following day, after a short detour to gaze upon Glacier Grey one last time our party set off for Campamento Italiano, at the entrance to the Valle de Frances. The walk was difficult – even stronger winds combined with ankle deep swamp crossings meant that our advance was frustratingly slow, however shortly before nightfall we were able to set up camp in the swamp/camping area, known as Campamento Italiano.    

Shaz and I with Jo

After spending the night, we set off at dawn for the next segment of the journey into the Valle de Frances, where we experienced some of the hardest terrain for the trip, caused mainly by the fact that the path which was actually a stream for most of the way. After struggling for over an hour, we reached a clearing where we were able to view the whole valley, another amazing site. Frozen waterfalls and glaciers clung to the side of the mountains, and even an avalanche were seen from our vantage point. However, as we left the protection of the forest, we were hit by extreme winds and horizontal rain which caused us to be frozen to the bone. With morale hitting all-time lows, we made the decision to return to Italiano to have some tea.

 

The conditions even got the better of our toughest compañero, putting on wet shoes was a tough job

After returning and regrouping, we pushed on to the next location Refugio los Cerenos, where we were greeted with one of most amazing sites of all… blue skies!

Los Cerenos

 

From Los Cerenos, we pushed onto the final segment of the hike, to the base of the Torres del Paine, where we set up camp, and waited eagerly for our first glimpse of the towers at sunrise the following morning.

4am on day five. We managed somehow to move our frozen, battered and bruised bodies from our slice of heaven: a 1cm thick bedroll and soggy tent, slammed a granola bar down our throats and commenced the 45 minute march to the towers along with around 100 lights coming from the headlamps of 100 other very dedicated individuals. 

 

While the hike up was the very definition of pain, we found our rock and waited until the sun rose over the mountains. Soon enough, the sun appeared and we were greeted by the most magnificent view imaginable; the morning sun setting the towers ablaze against a backdrop of an almost cloudless blue sky – apart from the few wisps of cloud which where bright orange.

 

 

The towers at sunrise...wow

After some time the clouds rolled in, however it made for an amazing photo

 

Everyone scrambling for the best spot!

After basking in the view for 2 hours with tea and porridge in our stomachs, we set off to pack up camp and finish hiking the last 28kms to the exit. Wet socks, empty stomachs and lack of sleep all were a distant memory as we pushed towards a hot meal and a warm bed back in Puerto Natales.

The hotel at the end of the trek, for those who prefer the more luxurious things in life!

Upon returning to Puerto Natales and parting with compañero Jo, we crossed over to El Calafate on the Argentinian side. Given the fact that El Calafate was about as touristic as you can possibly imagine (picture a town version of an airport, every third shop sells the same, expensive stuff. Also cheap meals were completely non-existent ), we quickly renamed the town to El Calasharte. Calasharte, did however have 2 amazing things. An absolutely massive glacier, Perito Moreno Glacier, which was absolutely breathtaking, as well as our first taste of Argentinian BBQ, referred to in this part of the globe as an Asado. Basically lamb cooked over coals for over eight hours. I’m sorry fellow Australians, we ain’t got nothing on the Argentinians!

 

 

 

Cheers,

The Nut

 

And we're in South America...!

After an unexpected 15 hour stopover in Mexico City, (thanks for that Escape Travel!) we were finally on our way south to Chile. The first thing we noticed leaving the airport was the motorway, the quality of the roads in Central America leave much to be desired – so it had been a while since we’ve seen a real road! Second thing we noticed, no one seems to care about the speed limits. Whilst driving past an 80km speed sign I looked as the taxi’s speedometer click over 120km/h!

It was so nice having a little bit of ‘home’ for a couple of weeks in Chile. Staying with Pauly and Sergio we had the luxury of our own room and the ability to use a fully-functioning kitchen and stock up on our vegetables intake with some home cooked meals. We also got to meet little Eloisa and spend Christmas and New Years with Pauly and Sergio. In South America, Christmas Eve is when you celebrate Christmas and Christmas day is pretty quiet. Dave decided to ride through the deserted city up the top of San Cristobal Hill for a sweet view of the City, and then we spend the rest of the day people watching in the local park.

 

We decided to spend a couple of days at Valparaiso, the ‘cultural heart’ of Chile, about 2 hours away from Santiago on the beach. On our usual ‘free city walking tour’ we discovered the amazing street art that lines the city, as well as possibly the ugliest/weirdest building we’ve ever seen.

The photo doesn’t really do it justice, but its basically this beautiful old style building with roman pillars, with a ultra-modern sky scraper sticking out the top. The people of the city hated it so much, they got the town heritage listed so no one else could destroy the landscape like that again!

 

 

 

 

(this is a single step in a stair case... incredibly detailed)

 

Next to Valparaiso is Vina del Mar, the closest beach to the Santiago. This place is much more modern – similar to the Gold Coast, and super busy, which wasn’t really our thing, but it did show us the busiest beach we’d ever seen... Oh how we miss Australian Beaches!

 

Returning to Santiago, we spend another couple of days lazing about and then headed south about 5 hours to Concepcion and Victoria, to meet some more of Pauly and Sergio’s family, and eat a ridiculous amount of food. We love Chilean hospitality!

Our first taste of ‘asado’ (South American BBQ), which was the first time we’d had lamb, possibly the whole trip, and it was incredible!  Australia’s are pretty proud of their BBQ skills, but I must admit, South American’s do it better!

 

 

Our final day down in Victoria we headed out to Conguillio National Park. It was our first glimpse of snow-capped mountains/volcanos and we were pretty excited!

 

 

 

 

One last dinner with Pauly’s amazingly hospitable family and we were off on a 3am bus south heading towards the wild weathers of Patagonia and our next big trek….

Lastly, a HUGE thank you to Pauly, Sergio, Eloisa and all of your families and friends that we met along the way for looking after us, being patient with our terrible Spanish, feeding us, housing us and showing us your town. It was really special for us and a perfect ‘mini’ break from travelling for a while.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Guate Part 2 - Antigua, trekking and beautiful lake Atitlan

 

 

After finishing up at Semuc Champey, we endured another 8+ hour bus ride in another old van to head down to Antigua. We had originally planned to stay in Antigua for a little while, but after meeting some fellow travellers who highly recommended we do a three-day trek through the Guatemalan highlands, we had to cut this section of our trip short, and only really got to stay in the town for a day and a half. The town itself is stunning, the word ‘antigua’ in Spanish means ‘old’ and the town lives up to its name. All the architecture is very colonial, there are no new structures putting a blight on the landscape. The cobblestone streets are lined with large coloured building walls, and its only when doors are opened you can see another world inside each one; courtyards, fountains, restaurants and shops. I can definitely see why many expats set up home in this neighbourhood.

 

 

Onwards and upwards we had to organise transport to Xela (pronounced Shay-la) to begin our trek. Our shuttle picked us up at 5am, (this time in a nicer van), and we were on our way for another 5 hour trip. Slightly disconcerting, our driver swapped over with another at a random petrol station, some other travellers got out and swapped into a car at another stop, and by now our minimal Spanish wasn’t helping us work out what was going on! When we were relatively close to our destination and the bus driver said this was our last stop for another 4 hours, we started to get worried! Trying to convey where we were going, they then kicked us out and into a waiting car to take us the rest of the journey, which thankfully actually worked. If we didn’t speak up I’ve no idea where we would have ended up.

Our trek was organise through a company called Quetzaltrekkers (Quetzal is the Guatemalan currency and national bird), which started running treks about 15 years to fund a school and shelter for street kids. To this day, there are no permanent workers or volunteers who run the company and all the profit from the cost of the trek goes directly to funding their work with street kids. We were stunned to realise the volunteers just pass on information to new volunteers about running the finances, recruiting more volunteers, running the website, running all the treks etc, and there is no one there to facilitate the whole thing to ensure it actually continues. It’s like a giant game of Chinese-whispers where the end result was still the same as it was at the beginning.

Being the first multi-day trek either of us had attempted, we may have been a tad over optimistic about our personal fitness levels and the difficulty of the trek! We started with about a 1500m climb to reach our highest peak of 3600m, and were told this was the most difficult part of the trek. They were lying! We walked through little villages where all the kids came out, hiding behind doors and fences to look and wave at the crazy gringos walking through their town. When one of the group stopped to take a photo of a puppy, a little boy proudly appeared holding about 4 more to show off the rest of his ‘toys’. Most of the people who live in these remote villages don’t have jobs per-say, just sustaining their household. We watched little kids going into and out of the jungle with their families collected wood, carrying loads on their heads while wearing run down old shoes. Put my complaining about a heavy pack into perspective.

 

 

Our first night we camped out in a little village town hall, Dave put his glow-in-the-dark Frisbee to good use and somehow managed to stay outside playing with the locals for a couple of hours, while I was struggling to move at this point! Our guides organised for us to have a traditional Mayan sauna while we were there, which basically involved crawling into a little hut with hot stones, a bucket of hot water and a bucket of cold water and you just sit in there and sweat it all out. The cold water was a good substitute for the lack of showers and we felt surprisingly refreshed by the end. Our last little surprise of the evening was a group of locals put on a show for us, with music and dancing depicting a Mayan story about the beginnings of the world (well at least I think that is what it was!). It reminded me a lot of the Aboriginal dream time stories.

Our second day of trekking began with ‘record hill’ a steep incline which fit people somehow manage to race up. I certainly wasn’t one of the fit ones! For me, this was the absolute hardest part of the trek, because even after record hill, we still kept inclining.

it took every ounce of my being to look up while dave took this photo!

Lunch was a well needed chance to recover, and the afternoon wasn’t nearly as bad. We spend the second evening at a local’s house, where we were all pretty much out-to-it by about 8pm. Probably a good thing considering we had to be off by 4am the next morning to complete our trek; eating breakfast while watching the sunrise over lake Atitlan. This was my favourite part of the trek, we got to watch day break over the volcanos and lake, with the clouds dancing on the horizon.

 

 

After our decline back down the mountain, we finally finished up our trek with lunch at a local restaurant and made our way to our accommodation on the lake. I don’t remember ever being so sore and the next couple of days were spent doing very little and enjoying our slice of heaven, with a real bed, right on the lake.

 

Next stop – flight to Santiago, Chile, to meet up with Pauly and Sergio for Christmas, New Years and some well needed R&R and home cooked food!

Welcome to the Jungle - Guat pt 1

 

The van pierced through the jungle, coming to a stop at checkpoint on the outskirts of the Tikal mayan ruins. The guard, reluctantly lurking from the safety of the guardhouse approached the vehicle, 12 guage shotgun at the ready– you could never be too careful with the banditos in the area– and searched the inhabitants of the vehicle. A fatigued lot of faces squinted back, the flashlight against the blackness of night temporarily blinding the travellers. After a short exchange of grunting and cash between the driver and guard, the van continued forward into the jungle.

The van came to a halt. The group leader, was a short and stocky man, whose face displayed every one of his 52 years. He walked with a limp, probably from an incident with a jaguar, who are said to be re-incarnations of the Mayan leaders murdered during the collapse over 10 generations ago. They stalk the jungle and protect it with ferocious brutality. “Vamos gringos!” ordered the leader, and travellers exited cautiously from the van, unsure of the task awaiting them. They were immediately greeted by the terrifying howls of the howler monkey, and the suffocating embrace of the jungle. It became clear almost instantly that there was hatred in the jungle. The travellers sensed they were not welcome.

The travellers marched through the jungle at a fearsome pace, tripping over the many tree roots which are slowly, but surely, reclaiming the road. As the march continued, the torturous conditions mixed with the deadly effects of dehydration and fatigue started to take their toll – a sprained ankle suffered by one of the group. After the member faced the impossible task of continuing at half capacity, the horrible realisation set in - the needs of the many outweighed the needs of the few. The group, driven mad by the early stages of starvation, synonymous with sunrise tours, agreed that to survive, the group would need to resort to the lowest form of human survival. They would eat this person.

Wow that got way out of control, that’s what sitting on a Guatemalan bus for 12 hours does to ones sanity. That and not having to commit any brain power to licence plate recognition systems – the imagination tends to fill the gap. Anyway we got to our destination unscathed – Temple IV in Tikal just before sunrise. It was amazing, sitting there, listening as the jungle woke up, while watching the ruins of Tikal pierce through the mist as the sun rose.

After descending, we took a tour through the site, definitely the most grand of all the sites we have visited so far. The wildlife was amazing too, we saw Toucans, howler and spider monkeys and our tour guide lured a Tarantula from its lair and let us pat it.

We returned to our hotel in the sleepy town of El Remate. Located on the other side of the Petan lake than Flores, the local tourist mecca, it gave us awesome access to the lake for swimming and kayaking.

 

 

 

From there we said goodbye to our good mates Ryan and Vanessa who have been with us since the start if Belize and moved to the high country, to a town called Lanquin. It was a very tough journey, taking 13 hours in a van that reeked of diesel, but it was well worth it…the countryside is amazing. At this stage we really got the meaning of Guatemalan time. Basically add an additional 50% on any quoted time.

The main feature of the area is Semuc Champey – and it was breathtaking. Its basically a part of the river where the river flows under a massive rock shelf. On the top of this shelf are pools with the most amazing colour of blue I have ever seen. There were also other shenanigans like scurrying through a cave with only candles as light and some awesome jumps.

 

Possibly my favourite photo of the trip so far

 

 

 

 

We stayed in this area for a week at one of our favourite hostels so far, Utopia. Beautiful spot, and only accessable by 4wd. Shaz didn’t like that part very much.

From here, its onto the second half of our Guatemalan trip.

Cheers,

Dave

 

 

 

 

 

Belize Pt 2: Waterfalls, Jaguars and Caves

Our journey through Belize continued with some friends we met on our boat tour, who happened to be travelling the same path as we had planned. For the next 10 days or so, Vanessa, Ryan, Dave and I navigated the Belize chicken buses, climbed to the top of a waterfall, were conned by the town scam artist and managed to get across the Belize/Guate border all in one piece.

 

After we realised we could not afford to stay in Placencia, despite its charm, we moved on to a little Garifuna (rather similar to Rastafarian culture) town on the coast called Hopkins. This was our first, thankfully successful, trip on Chicken buses. For those not familiar, Chicken Buses are basically really old American School buses that were decommissioned years ago from the states for being too old/unroadworthy, and now live their life in Central America. Hopkins was definitely ‘off the beaten track’, although it did have a couple of hostels and one restaurant catered to tourists, it really felt like we saw the real Belize here. Despite the poverty, we were astounded by how friendly absolutely everyone in the town was – to the point where we didn’t pass a single person who didn’t say hello to us! Certainly puts us westerners to shame.

 

First point of call after walking aimlessly down the beach in sweltering heat was a drum lesson for Dave. These kids who teach at the drumming school are incredible, they’ve even toured through Canada drumming.

Note the intense concentration face!

Next stop in Belize was to visit Antelope Falls. We managed to convince another few people from the hostel to join us, and all 6 of us hiked up the steep incline to be greeted with some spectacular views and amazing waterhole.

 

 

 

 

 I hope this is deep!

 

 

Tarzan up to his tricks

 

Only downside of Hopkins… the Sand Flies. Dave was well and truly attacked (that is what happens when he refuses to listen to my advice to apply the bug spray!)

 

 

When it was time to move on from Hopkins, we decided to visit the Belize Zoo on our way through to our next destination, San Ignacio. Generally not the biggest fan of Zoo’s, this is by far the coolest Zoo I’ve ever been too, primarily because the Belizeans seem to trust people’s innate response to avoid harm, and as such, let you get as close as possible to the animals. Along with that, the only animals they house are native in Belize and generally have been rescued from people trying to keep exotic animals as pets.

 

If you were dumb enough, there is nothing stopping you putting your hand in the Jaguar cage to try and pet this creature!

 Toucan Sam!

Onward and upward to san ignatio, the closest town to the Belize/Guate border, which is famous for its ‘ATM Cave’ tour. The ATM  (Actun Tunichil Mumnal) cave is massive with a river running through the pitch blackness, and hosts an old Mayan sacrificial site with some 800+ year old human remains. After a slight hiccup with the town scam artist, we were on our way. Unfortunately no cameras were allowed, which is understandable considering they were banned after one tourist managed to drop his on an 800 year old skull, however slightly disappointing because the stalagmites and stalactites were incredible. Aside from the fact the cave would probably be considered too dangerous for Australian standards, in Australia we would never be allowed so close to ancient history. Throughout the cave there were heaps of ceramic pots and other artefacts as well as human remains that haven’t been touched in hundreds of years literally cm’s away from you. Slightly creepy yet well worth it, definitely the best tour we’ve been on so far. here are a few photos courtesy of google.

 

This is the most complete set of remains in ATM, perfectly preserved by a layer of limestone. Note the relaxing pose of the remains, being Mayan was easy.

 

The mouth of the cave - for the Mayans, exiting the cave after performing sacrifices was akin to a second birth

Lastly we visited some more Mayan ruins before heading towards the border, saying goodbye to our favourite country so far, along with our last luxury of an English speaking country for the next few months!

 

Cheers
Sharon