Las pampas!

 

Today we travelled north of Buenos Aires on the Pan American highway for about 80 miles (we could have continued north and eventually end in Alaska, which would have taken a while but sounds cool!), out of the city in into the province of Buenos Aires - think Washington DC and Virginia - its a very similar status,  except the citizens of Buenos Aires city can vote for representatives, while people in DC cannot….

But I digress….  We were going to a horse farm in the pampas! When we drove from Puerto Natales to El Calafate, I mistakenly thought that we were driving through the pampas.  We were not, we were going through a large desert.  The pampas around Buenos Aires are very fertile land that, until the European arrived were covered with thick grasses - think the US prairie, minus the bisons.   This extremely rich soil was divided and given to Spanish farmers who became very rich and build all the fancy house in Buenos Aires.  Even today, the richest people are the landowners.  It is now covered with wheat, soy, cattle farms and horse farm.  There were no native trees, all the trees you see around Buenos Aires were imported.  

Of course, that involved displacing and killing whoever was there fist, and very few of the native population remains (about 1% of the total populations).  The ones that were not killed worked on the large estates and developed the gauchos culture.  Horses were new to them, but the developed a unique and very personal relationship with them, as well as a unique way of training them called “horse whispering”, more about that later.

We arrived at a beautiful estancia, run by a very large family:  the parents started it as a horse breeding farm, then added some guest rooms, and activities for visitors and a polo club.  They had 9 children (!!!!), 5 of whose run the farm and the polo club now.  

Today, the gaucho culture is no longer just the native people (for one thing, there are not enough of them left), but all the people who raise, run and breed horses.  So they put on a typical gaucho show for us, with races, games - including getting a very small ring on a stick on a horse a full gallop, which seems almost impossible to do, and yet, they did it.

The most impressive part of it though was the “horse whisperer”.  The native really took to the horses, and just related to them in a unique way -  they believed in a gentle approach (no bit in the moth for instance), and get the horse to do amazing things.  Here are just a couple of pictures, but they don’t really show how the horse and the gaucho related to each other.   It was amazing.

We had the typical asado meal - Argentinians eat a lot of meat!!!, accompanied by two very good guitar players and singers, playing Argentinian tune - including an old favorite of mine - my French friends will remember “je reviens” par Hughes Auffrey…

Then came back to the city early enough for a walk around the Recoleta neighborhood.  There is a very large craft fair every week end in the park and I strolled around.  There were lots of people, locals and tourists, some were just sitting in the park enjoying the beautiful weather, some strolling under the magnificent gum trees (I do love a huge grand tree!).  It was very enjoyable.  As I said, Buenos Aires is just a lovely city, and it feels very safe.  It is also really clean!  We are in a fancy neighborhood, and this is a city of 15 million people, so I’m sure it’s not that nice everywhere, but the large center is just great.  

The concierge at the hotel recommended that I go to the “El Ateneo” book store, which I thought was an odd recommendation - but, Buenos Aires is in fact famous for how many book stores it has and that one is just amazing!  It’s all in Spanish, so I did not buy anything, but it is well worth seing.

We had our good bye reception this evening.  One member of our group wrote a song about our trip, and performed it, which was lovely.

We fly home tomorrow afternoon, so I’ll have some time to walk around some more in the morning.   

Place holder for October 30th

 We make it to Buesnos aires.

Up close and personal with the Perito Moreno glacier

 

The Perito Moreno glacier is the highlight of Glacier National park.  It is the one that is easiest to reach (you can drive to it rather than take a boat or go mountaineering), in part because you can get very close to the face, in part because they have built a series of walkway and platforms that make it easily accessible.  But the main reason, at least until recently, is that it was a stable glacier:  It did not grow nor shrink for over 100 years.  So building the infrastructure around it made sense.   It did have a tendency to block off one of the channels out and then break though it's own front wall which means that regularly (every few years or so), it would create massive floods all the way down to El Calafate, with the level of the lake going up by as much as 60 feet.   There are now strong regulations about building along the lake for this reason, although it looks like these are no longer necessary:  Sadly, this "stable" glacier is now receding.....  like all glaciers.   The Patagonia icefield holds the 3rd biggest amount of ice in the world (after Antarctica and Greenland), so this is a big concern.

 But it means that you can really get a good view of the face of the glacier, and listen to its roar as the ice cracks and falls into the lake.  

Very hard to take a picture of that - or you’d have to do what some of the tourists there were doing:  setup a tripod and just sit for an hour or two.   We did not have the time for that, but I did catch a smallish splash.

We had the ultimate “lunch with a view” at the well name Glacier Restaurant.  

More pictures of glacier at end of blog.

It takes about 1 1/2 hour to drive from El Calafate to the glacier.  Along the way, we got nice views of the valleys were vast ranches were built in the 1800’s and 1900’s.  The Argentinian government enticed people to move there by given them good leases on large pieces of land, in an effort to prevent Chile from taking over the entire region.  The border is still somewhat disputed:  It’s either defines by were the water flows (water that flows to the Pacific is in CHile, water that flows to the Atlantic is Argentina), but there has been at least one instance of a settler rerouting a stream to change the border….  So now it is defined by the high peaks, but what’s in between is still a bit fuzzy…..

There were nice views of the lake and of the floating icebergs that go down its length.

 I saw a few of the Patagonian parakeets flying around from the bus, but failed to take their picture…. But I did catch this hare-  those were introduced by the Europeans and are everywhere, but I like them anyway.   

Place holder for October 28th

 

Argentina!

We got up early today- we get up early everyday, because there is so much to see- but today was even earlier, so that we could get on the bus before 7:00am, and make it to the border between Chile and Argentina just at it opens at 8:00am. 

The trick is to arrive early enough that there is not a line of buses waiting ahead of you, because that can take a long time - first, you have to exit Chile - that's one line to go through, then you drive a few miles to enter Argentina - another line to get passpsorts stamped at the smallest border crossing I've seen....  But we did manage to be the first bus in line, so that did not take too long (although another big tour bus tried to sneak in front of our line, but our guide was like a pitbull! and would not let that happen1).  

It's good that went quickly because, even though we are about 80 miles straight north of Natales, Chile, you first have to go east across a vast desert, and then come back west - across same desert, which more than doubles the distance.   And the roads are not great.   Once we crossed on the other side of the hill in the East of Natales, we entered a very dry region, with monotonous hills covered with low bushes and grass. 

There are sheep and cows here and there, and once in a while a nice house, but the ranches are huge because the vegetation is so sparse that you need lots of acreage to feed the animal.  There is the odd guanaco and rias here and there but  little else to see, other than beautiful cloud formations.  

About halfway , we stopped at a town called Esperanza for coffee.  There is only desert around it and "town" is a big word for it.... I guess Esperanza is a good name for it because you'd need a lot of hope to  live there.....

As we got near our destination of El calafate (named after the ubiquitous berries), we could see lake Argentina in the distance:  it is the largest lake in Argentina, at about 400 miles long, reaching depth of 3000 feet. Still, the landscape was completely bare.  And then, you enter the charming town, and get near the lake and it all changes.  

 The town, which we just drove through (hopfully, i'l have some time to see it the day after tomorrow) looks really nice, the lake and the large marshy bay in front of it is really pretty, there is a wonderful walkway that goes the entire length of the bay, pretty little house everywhere...  it's delightfull.  Looking at the town from the back of the bay, you can still see the desertic hills behind it, making it even more stricking.   

 We arrived at the hotel around 3pm, having stopped at the edge of town for a leisurly lunch, and the group was going to go on to the glacier museum (the whole reason to be in El calafate is to go to the glaciers- but that's for tomorrow).  But we all know that I only go to museums when it rains, and the weather was glorious.  Plus, We had spend enough time on the bus and that beautiful walkway was calling my name!   So I took a 10km walk along the marshes to that lake, enjoying the sights, the many birds (which will have to be identified at a later time), the horses, the windersurfer, the views!

 It was great!  I was a bit puzzled by these people who seemed to be bicycling back from the island in the middle of the lake, in the water.....

In the distance, on on side of the lake, you can get a glimpse of the Andes.   The clouds that stream from there were very interesting.

 There were many lapwings in the marshes and, just as in Natales, they got very agitated when I so much as looked at them!  these are ground nesting birds, and I was so happy to be able to catch this sights of the chicks coming out of hiding!  no wonder mommy gets so upsets, particularly when you see all the birds of prey flying around too.... 

Lupins are just starting to bloom.  In about a week, the trail I was on will be covered with them!

 This is. Our hotel, as see from the back of the marsh.

And here is the view from our window near sunset.

Here are more birds, flowers and sights..... which i will organize when we get home….