Day 44

Wednesday 15^th December 2010

Another early start but this is the last one for while, coming up we’ve got a free day tomorrow ( = lie in), a flight to Buenos Aires at a very reasonable 15:30 on Friday, a flight to Sydney at very sociable 13:05 on Saturday followed by eight days in Sydney with no plans, so we weren’t too perturbed by today’s early start (06:00).

I’d managed about four hours kip once “Fatboy Slim” had finished DJing so I didn’t really have much of an appetite, but I managed to stuff some toast down me as I was aware that first stop for food would be 11:00, not good for me, all that time without a meal.

Our transport arrived half an hour late, so my obvious first thought was …..

YOU BASTARDS, I COULD HAVE HAD ANOTHER 30 MINUTES SLEEP!!

I politely greeted our guide and settled in aboard the truck. The travelling time today comes in at a massive 10 hours round trip to Chile, plus all the travelling in-between sites at the national park once we arrive. I turned to my left to discuss today’s activities with Suz but she was already asleep, something she would manage a further 6 times today!

I got stuck into my new book (Lee Child’s “Gone Tomorrow”) and watched our driver clock up the kilometres – mostly it seemed in the wrong gear!

We arrived at the Chilean border at about 09:30 and from there it was another hour and a half to two hours to the National Park of Torres del Paine.

It was formed in 1959 and has been voted as one of the top 10 national parks in the world by the National Geographic Society.

The Paine Massif is a small mountain (not a local gang) system that formed some 12 million years ago, completely independently from the Andes, when magma penetrated through a crack in Magellan’s basin. With the passing of time sedimentary rock was pushed upwards. Part of the mountains are granite that has been carved out of the glaciers melting over millions of years and eroded by the harsh Patagonian weather so you get some quite odd shapes.

We stopped at the first viewing point to discover that the winds from the first day were back, and back with a massive axe to grind (maybe the wind had been kept awake by “Pete Tong” last night too). We could barely stand up it was so strong and the guide, bless him, was doing his best to describe what we were seeing, but the words were being stolen from his mouth by the wind and flown off across the lake!

 

The park itself is named after the 3 Torres (towers). They are so called because the granite is a bluish grey colour (Paine). They make up the iconic picture postcard shots of the park. This first stop should have given us our first sight of them. However, we weren’t destined to take these picture postcard shots as the clouds wouldn’t budge from the mountains – déjà vu of Machu Picchu at the sungate all over again! We could however, see the snow capped mountains in front of them including ‘the horns’.

We barely saw the towers all day – at one point the cloud lifted slightly to see the lowest one and half of the second but that was a good a glimpse as we got. However, the lakes were incredible, all sorts of shades of blue, from quite a milky turquoise to an almost navy blue, the turquoise one was due to the glaciers near by constantly rubbing against the quite soft rock and creating a power which turns the water milky turquoise, the further down stream you follow it, the more the sediment settles and therefore the clearer and darker blue it becomes.

These lakes are pretty unique and they are closed systems meaning they have an inlet but no outflow which should make them salty, but there not. Hmmmm? They have these weird unicellular type organisms that use the carbon dioxide in the water and release oxygen making calcium carbonate type masses in the process. Apparently this is how the whole world evolved millions and millions of years ago and there are only a couple of places in the world where they still exist.

The first stop was the Sarmiento de Gamboa Lake and the scenery was stunning. There were Condor flying over head (remember them from the blog back in Peru?) which was amazing to see in the wild, they very, very rarely flap there wings so they just sore overhead searching for grub, awesome! They are scavengers and only eat dead flesh – apparently they can’t hunt because they have feet like a chicken although much bigger and lack the ‘thumb’ claw – well that’s how our guide explained it!!!!

We also came across a pack?, heard?, bunch??? a load of guancos, which are part of the camel family. There are 4 members of the camel family in South America and now we’ve seen the guancos we’ve got the full house (others are llama, alpaca, vicuna). We got out of the truck (the guide told us it was too windy for explanations and stayed inside) and the guancos ran off, then they appeared to have a discussion, turned around and started walking back towards us, which was a bit scary.

Anyway two of them must have disagreed on what action to take and started having a fight, this seemed to take the onus off us tourists and we continued to take some snaps.

We had been forewarned that guancos will spit at you if they feel threatened (as they are part of the camel family after all). So if you don’t want to get covered in ruminated grass mulch don’t piss them off. Before they spit they will put their ears flat back against their heads…. So when this guy showed up we decided it was probably better to jump back aboard the truck!

We stopped for lunch next to a waterfall and the guide said if you want to sit outside and eat your lunch you are welcome to.

In 100mph winds? Er, no thanks mate, I think I’ll stay in the truck where the risk of a tree trunk hitting me in the face is significantly decreased.

Unbelievably some people (I think they were German or Russian) got out and had a picnic in hurricane conditions! Some people eh? And then the woman’s glasses got blown off her head (shock) and we all had to get out of the truck and search for them in a big line like you see the police do when there looking for stuff in fields. Yeah thanks for that you insufferable fool, why didn’t you just eat inside like everyone else, now I’ve got to remove a branch from my eye socket!

We actually found her glasses in case you’re bothered, I wasn’t.

After lunch we entered the national park where we were scheduled to go on a trek to Sierra Masle.

We began the trek and the guide told us that it would be 40 minutes instead of two hours due to the conditions. But, if we weren’t enjoying it after 20 minutes we could go back to the bus. 20 seconds in I was already not enjoying myself. I had to pull my hood so tight to stop it blowing that all I could see was my feet, when I did look up rain hit my face like stones and for every two steps forward I did one to the side.

20 minutes in the guide asked if anyone wanted to go back, me and Suz clarified the directions and took off, almost literally.

We saw the waterfall on the way back and almost blew away on several occasions and then we waited on the truck, everyone else went for a walk….. what on earth are these people on????

We dropped some people off at a hotel inside the park (yep they were staying the night, good luck with that) and headed back to the boarder. Suz has managed 200 pages of her book today and 6 naps, that’s how long we spent on the sodding truck.

We got dropped at the hostel at just after 21:00 and headed out for a quick tea in town then we headed back to the hostel for bed and some more Inbetweeners.

Day 43

Tuesday 14^th December 2010

Up for 07:30 today as we were getting collected at 08:00. We had breakfast in the hostel which was pretty good actually, cereal, toast and jam, fresh orange and coffee.

We boarded our transport for the day and headed west towards the Perito Moreno Glacier which is about 80km from the hostel. We arrived at the first look out point just after 09:00 and got our first view of the glacier. It’s set at the back of Lago Argentino and is absolutely stunning.

The most amazing thing about this glacier though is how accessible it is, its literally at the end of a road. If you wanted to go and see most others you would have a fairly big trek on you hands!

The view from a distance is spectacular as it sprawls up the mountain behind the lake, apparently it takes the ice at the back of the glacier 300 – 400 years to get to the front wall and eventually drop into the lake. It’s a stable glacier which means that it flows down the valley and calves off at the front edge at the same rate that it is forming as the snow falls in the mountains at the top. Like a river the middle of the glacier flows more quickly than the edges and it calves about 2m a day here. The edges only move about 13cm a day.

After this we were taken to the harbour for our boat trip (don’t you know). We boarded (embarked?) and set off across the lake.

The wind hadn’t settled any from the day before so we were delighted to be invited out onto the deck. The wind and spray cut through our clothes like a knife as we watched the glacier approach. The front walls are 60 meters high and it carries on for another 100 meters below the surface, although it doesn’t float, its actually sat on the rocks at the bottom. The boat took us up close to the moraine (front edge) which was hugely impressive with massive crevasses in the ice, some are 30-40m deep.

It’s very impressive indeed, listening to the ice crack off and fall into the lake, but it was bloody freezing! You could see some people on the glacier ready to go trekking, we quite fancied doing this but we were told that it would cost us about $150 (US) each so we thought better of it. We found out whilst on the trip that on the other trip you do everything that we were doing today plus the trekking, so we could have cancelled this trip, booked the one with trekking and made up the difference which would have been a lot more viable. Grrrr, Suz was not a happy girl.

We made our way over to the national park and were told about the routes and various lookout points.

We decided to do things in reverse so we went to the (empty) restaurant first and had cheese and ham pie. With the hope that we would then miss the crowds at each lookout point for the rest of the day and it worked!

We were stood at one of these lookout points when Suz turned to me and said

 “it’s big innit?”

“what?” I replied.

“Nature” she said

“yes darling, nature is big”.

We wandered around the various lookout points for a couple of hours and were lucky enough to see quite a few big bits of ice break off the glacier into the lake. The noise is deafening, like a fire work show and you have to be constantly watching as the ice falls before the sound reaches you, so if you hear the noise forget it, you’ve missed the ice falling.

Back aboard the coach we headed back into town and asked to be dropped of at the supermarket. We have to be up early again tomorrow (06:00) so we decided to eat in tonight and get to bed early. We bought the ingredients for Bacon, Pasta, Peas (my favourite dish from back home) some strawberries and ice cream, and yes a bottle of red wine. What? Were on holiday!

We went home for a siesta (well Suz did), Skyped my folks for the last time before we hit Sydney and then cooked up a storm at the hostel (slight exaggeration).

We took the remnants of the bottle of wine with us back to the room and watched a film on the laptop ( I Love You Phillip Morris starring Jim Carrey and Ewan Mcgregor), which wasn’t bad. Suz just about managed to keep her eyes open until the credits and then she was out like a light.

Somebody in the hostel had been annoyed enough by last night’s argument to retaliate tonight, with some hard house music! So I sat and read my book until they gave up. Yey!

Day 42

Monday 13^th December 2010

Today we fly to El Calafate for 4 days. We plan to see the Perito Moreno Glacier, go to Torres Del Paine ( Pine ) in Chile for a day trip and maybe do something else. We checked out about 11:00 and caught a cab straight to the Airport. Our flight was until 14:30 but there was no point hanging around in BA trying to squeeze breakfast in a decision I almost immediately regretted.

We got to the airport in good time and reluctantly bought some overpriced food, there is a McDonalds every 200yrds in Buenos Aires so we were sure that the Airport would have one, no such luck. I already had a bit of a stinker of a hangover from the night before and had only managed a few hours sleep, so to make me feel better, Suz trapped my finger in a fridge door and gave me a blood blister, brilliant!

The majority of the flight went without incident, 3 hours and your still in the same country and we whinge about flying at home, another hour and you can be almost anywhere in Europe! The landing was quite sketchy though, we landed in a gale force cross wind which brought us down with a bit of a thump. We wiped the cold sweat from our brow and boarded the transfer.

El Calafate is really pretty, definitetly the prettiest place we’ve been so far, it seems to be placed in a valley, surrounded by mountains and turquoise lakes. The hostel is really cute too, its like an alpine lodge, you feel like you should be going skiing. The Christmas lights are up here and because it’s really cold it’s got us into the Christmas spirit I even played “The Fairytale of New York” on you tube so now its officially Christmas time.

We had a bit of a mess about in the room and a nap (obviously) and headed out for dinner. There is a recommendation in one of the guide books for a restaurant chain in El Calafate which is supposed to be really good but a bit pricey, we reasoned that we hadn’t spent much of today’s budget due to travelling and treated ourselves to a nice meal.

Suzi had the Patagonia Lamb which is roasted over an open flame in the window of the restaurant which just fell apart on the fork, delicious!

I had the Rib Eye Steak (proper bloke) and we shared chips, salad and a lovely bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon.

The restaurant had it’s decorations up too and was warm and comfortable, we spent the next couple of hours eating and chatting the night away, we even managed dessert, Tiramisu for the lady

and crepes and dulce de leche (caramel sauce) for me.

We settled the bill (ouch) and then wondered back to the hostel, we climbed into bed and listened to the Chinese couple downstairs row for an hour before we fell asleep, how romantic.

Day 41

Sunday 12^th December 2010

We woke up late after our night out and headed to the English pub, Gibraltar, for full English breakfast and football (Tottenham vs Chelsea). The breakfast wasn’t the best but the result went in our favour with a 1-1 draw, much to the disappointment of the landlord who was a Chelsea fan from County Durham (if you can work that out?!).

San Telmo was heaving with tourists as Sunday is the day of the antique markets at the central square, Plaza Dorrego. This has been taking place here every week since 1970.

We had a wander down the packed street and admired the street performers and artists.

However, the market wasn’t really our scene and it was a bit cold so we decided to head back to the hostel.

It’s been a lazy day really. We had a late lunch / early tea and Franky had a sleep (do I need to report this on a daily basis or is it a given?). I did some blogging and realised quite how much we’ve got done over the past couple of days.

We had been hoping to go to a Tango show tonight but when we discovered they were in excess of £50 each we rethought that plan and opted to check out some local bars we’d discovered on Friday instead.

Buenos Aires struck again though – on Friday the street had been heaving with drinkers sat out on the pavements having a drink. Tonight the same bars were all shut – with the exception of one!!! We really don’t seem to be able to pitch this right no matter how hard we try. Trying to maintain good spirits we found a table outside and ordered a litre of Heineken – it worked! We soon cheered up. The beer was cold, crisp and refreshing. We were still incredulous at the number of people arriving to eat at this place at 12.30am! At 1.00am there was suddenly a loud commotion in the sky as a huge firework display was let off in the centre of town. The bar had a TV on that showed thousands of revellers on the Plaza de Mayo with a stage and light show. We watched the firework display on the TV – it would rival Sydney at New Year. It seemed we’d got it wrong yet again. The reason these bars were closed was because they expected everyone to be in the centre of town. We don’t know exactly what we had missed but we had definitely missed some big event. Although we are still unsure how the hell you are supposed to know what is going on!

Feeling a bit disgruntled for the second night in a row we decided to head back to Gibraltar. We couldn’t pitch BA right at all so we were going to concede defeat and seek solace in the safety of the English pub.

When we arrived at 2am it was heaving and they were still serving food! A jacket potato with chilli and cheese and a cold pint of Quilmes was in order. The pool room was packed with Mike (Franky’s nemesis from Wednesday night) holding his position on the table. It’s winner stays on with a blackboard that you enter your name on for a game. Franky chalked himself up but the pub closed at 4am before we got around to his game so the grudge match was never played.

We headed home to bed still quite bemused that after 5 days here we understand BA less than we did when we arrived. We’re flying down South to El Calafate to check out Patagonia tomorrow so hopefully we’ll fare better down there.

Day 39

Friday 10^th December 2010

Today we went to Boca Juniors stadium called Estadio Alberto J. Armando or known locally as “La Bombonera”.

There are many stories why its called La Bombonera, one is that they were the first crowd to use drums called bom boms. Another is that it looks a chocolate box that was around at the time it was built but our favourite is the story that our guide told us ( a River Plate fan and fierce local rival of Boca). He told us that back in the early 1900’s when horse and carts were still commonly used, the bin men used a bin that looks similar to the stadium to collect all of the manure. Basically their local rivals call it “the horseshit box”. Football rivalry remains the same the world over.

All of the teams in Argentina are social clubs, not football clubs. This means that on site they have, basketball courts, they teach Judo, Taekwondo, you can go and play table tennis plus loads more. You pay your subs which are $95 pesos per month (about £15) and that allows you access to all the things at the stadium including the home games!! They closed membership in 2002 and it is now impossible to join unless you know someone who works there.

The original jersey colour was pink, but this was quickly abandoned for thin black-and-white vertical stripes. Legend has it that in 1906, Boca played another team that used this strip to decide who would get to keep it. Boca lost, and decided to adopt the colors of the flag of the first boat to sail into the port at La Boca. This proved to be the 4146 ton freighter "Drottning Sophia", a Swedish vessel sailing from Copenhagen. 

As a result, the yellow and blue of the Swedish flag were adopted as the new team colours. The first version had a yellow diagonal band, which was later changed to a horizontal stripe. What they didn’t know was that the colours had faded in the sun, so the first kit was really pale blue and yellow, as you can see nowadays the colours represent the Swedish flag more accurately.




One Diego Maradona began his playing career at Boca way back in 1981, he’s obviously a legend here and theres Maradona stuff everywhere.

I was surprised to find that nobody here thinks he’s a short arsed, drug taking cheater, no matter how many disgruntled Argentinean folk I asked. Although we all seem to agree that he is a shit coach. Here's me showing the owner of the local shop outside the stadium exactly why he is a disgrace to his nation.



Despite this they all still love him, so much so that back in 2006 when the club celebrated its centenary they told Maradona that the box he was currently paying for was now his, free of charge, for life. Cheating pays!
 

Maradona's box is the one with the yellow bench and occupies the centre of the stadium

There is also a society which dedicates all of its activities to supporting the team known as la número 12 or la doce (player number doce or 12, meaning "the 12th player").

The naming of “La 12″ (the twelfth player), by which Boca Juniors' fans became known, dates back to the year 1925, during the European tour they made that year. At that time, the team was accompanied by a Boca fan called Victoriano Caffarena, who belonged to a wealthy family and funded part of the tour. During that tour he helped the team in everything establishing a strong relationship with the players, so they named him “Player No. 12″. When they returned back to Argentina, Caffarena was as well known as the players themselves. Nowadays, this nickname is used primarily to name their group of supporters, known as “La 12″

La 12 is also used as the name for Boca's mob (fans that fight for the team). They are very well organised and have even developed their own clothing range. Below is a top they call "The Ninja", its used when fighting rival mobs so that when the police come you can zip it up and nobody knows who you are.

When Boca score a goal all the fans famously run to the fences and climb them, cheering and singing so I thought i'd have a go!

The dressing rooms are very basic, the idea is that you are not a star in the dressing room, you are only a star on the pitch.

They do have a physio table though and seeing as Suz had pulled her "hammy" in the warm up I gave it a rub.

and then she interviewed me about my qualifications in physiotherapy only to discover I was a fraud (the laughter stopped moments after this photo).

After being outed as a fraud by my wife, she chose to no longer receive treatment from me and jumped on the medical buggy to seek further assistance.

I went to the Museum to seek out some advice, there were none of the well known fraudsters of Boca to speak to ( Tevez, Veron, Maradona) but I did stumble upon Riquleme, who told me to disguise myself as a pimp and I would get away with it, luckily they sold some well pimpin' stuff in the club shop.

(has anyone noticed that this clap trap story ties in well with the pictures?)

I found a pimpin hat which did the trick nicely, I was almost unrecognisable and now free to contiune the tour without any hassle or fraudster chants!



Enough of that rubbish, I had to get the photos in some how...... Anyway we found that the worlds greatest football team had played against Boca i'm not sure about the score but I imagine Utd won.

I am aware that this has been a bit of a random post, but nothing was more random than a life size statue of Che Guevara in the club shop, what the hell is that about??

After all that it was time for a well deserved Frank Nap, I do look a bit like someone might steal the covers.

Feeling suitably refreshed we headed out into town to a French restaurant that had been recommended in the guide, it was just down the street and was empty when we arrived. All of the tables had reserved signs on them, so where were they all?? It was 20:15. We managed to get a table and was informed that the kitchen doesn’t open until 20:30, we cant figure this city out at all! The food was amazing!!

We had a selection of pate's to start and then I had the Beef Bourguignon and Suz went for the Lamb. The idea was to eat early ish and then hit the town for a monster of a Friday night out in Buenos Aires. The reality was we stuffed ourselves so full of French Food and wine we could barely walk let alone dance, we rolled back up the street to the hostel and called it a night, tomorrow will be the big one instead!

NB: for some unknown reason these have posted in the wrong order so don't miss day 40 below!!!