I think Ushuaia could be resumed in 2 words by mountaineering nonbelievers : shitty weather. Of course there are some nice landscapes, and renting a car for a pair of days can give you a taste of the surrounding nature. For those who are not afraid by touristic attractions you can also enjoy yourself on a catamaran excursion or just shopping on the main road (another San Martin avenue).
I guess I was just about to leave the place with yet another bitter taste if I hadn't met this funny, crazy, impressive group of young french alpinists ! Their idea : going from north to south, following the Andes while doing as much summits as possible, going down either with skis or paragliding !
To do so, they started the trip in Colombia where they bought a 4x4. After 6 month of travel, the poor car looks like a retired Paris-Dakkar 4x4. I believe every piece of it has been either stolen or broken at some point !
As for the guys, they are exactly what I was hoping for : laid-back, not pretentious, fun and completely mountain addict ! Not surprisingly, the offer to jump on the bandwagon came naturally. I don't think i've been thinking too long about it :)
Once on the snow I could measure their amazing skills ! Of course they live almost in a ski resort in france, and most of them (if not all) live for and by the mountain. Still, seeing the technique in action remains astonishing ! I took as much advices as I could ... can't wait to work on it !
For the people interested in ski-alpinism, here is the post about the 2 days we spent together in the mountains : http://andesthologie.over-blog.com/article-co-godoy-1173-m-f-pass-45-et-co-martial-1264-m-pd-pass-45--39011387.html
Sunday 8 November 2009
Sunday 1 November 2009
Patagonian tourism
The girls have cooked up a nice and neat patagonian travelling program ! There it is :
The first day is painful (5h of freezing and heavy rain / melted snow fall). Hopefully the camping site is nice and we can eat in a kind of hut. The following days, we can enjoy different impressive views of glaciers and immense smooth rocky faces, with a nice weather.
Back to Puerto Natales where we spend a day (and a bouldering session with Ivan for me) before taking a bus to El Calafate, in Argentina. In the bus we meet a group of 3 french guys who are travelling since 6 month. We decide to rent a car together to go the next day to the Perito Moreno, a huge glacier.
Wake up at 6am to avoid the parc entrance fee (french style). We find 15cm of fresh snow when we arrive. Quite cool for snow battle but not so good for the view. Anyway, we can watch a huge piece of ice falling into the water while getting completely wet with snow balls.
The next day another bus take us to the alpinism Mecca, El Chalten. This town is amazing. Not the town itself (I'm actually older than the town !) but the surrounding landscape. You can even see the Fitz Roy while walking in it.
Beside the fleas, the hostel is a nice heterogeneous place. Antonio the polish andinist, dreams of immense glaciers (just came back from a 3 weeks solo trip on the Hielo Continental, one of the biggest ice field in the world), and other similar kind of adventure. Fakundo, an argentinian who looks like an indian escaped from a western movie and travel while selling all kind of handcraft stuff. An italian french-spanish-english speaking globetrotter with his son, who are working as cook in the local trek industry. The whole thing run by 3 argentinian guys from buenos aires and a funny english bulldog (with a tendency to fuck legs).
We stay there 4 or 5 days, enough for 2 amazing treks and few big parillas. The latest trek, below the Fitz Roy ("lago de los tres") is a must do !
A nice program that notheless leaves a tiny taste of excessive organisation and lack of wild / adventurous experiences (I want to get out of the well marked track !).
- The famous W trek in the park "Torres del Paine"
- Glacier Perito Moreno
- Trekking around El Chalten
The first day is painful (5h of freezing and heavy rain / melted snow fall). Hopefully the camping site is nice and we can eat in a kind of hut. The following days, we can enjoy different impressive views of glaciers and immense smooth rocky faces, with a nice weather.
Back to Puerto Natales where we spend a day (and a bouldering session with Ivan for me) before taking a bus to El Calafate, in Argentina. In the bus we meet a group of 3 french guys who are travelling since 6 month. We decide to rent a car together to go the next day to the Perito Moreno, a huge glacier.
Wake up at 6am to avoid the parc entrance fee (french style). We find 15cm of fresh snow when we arrive. Quite cool for snow battle but not so good for the view. Anyway, we can watch a huge piece of ice falling into the water while getting completely wet with snow balls.
The next day another bus take us to the alpinism Mecca, El Chalten. This town is amazing. Not the town itself (I'm actually older than the town !) but the surrounding landscape. You can even see the Fitz Roy while walking in it.
Beside the fleas, the hostel is a nice heterogeneous place. Antonio the polish andinist, dreams of immense glaciers (just came back from a 3 weeks solo trip on the Hielo Continental, one of the biggest ice field in the world), and other similar kind of adventure. Fakundo, an argentinian who looks like an indian escaped from a western movie and travel while selling all kind of handcraft stuff. An italian french-spanish-english speaking globetrotter with his son, who are working as cook in the local trek industry. The whole thing run by 3 argentinian guys from buenos aires and a funny english bulldog (with a tendency to fuck legs).
We stay there 4 or 5 days, enough for 2 amazing treks and few big parillas. The latest trek, below the Fitz Roy ("lago de los tres") is a must do !
A nice program that notheless leaves a tiny taste of excessive organisation and lack of wild / adventurous experiences (I want to get out of the well marked track !).
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