27, 50 Shades of Blue

If a little tiny bit of you took pleasure last time in reading about the rain, and how it wasn’t always fun and games for us, then prepare for that little tiny part (or maybe big part?) to remain unsatisfied as we had nothing but blue skies, sunshine and the happiness that comes with finally having dry socks.

But before we could go and enjoy all that sunshine, we had to get back out from our campspot under the shady trees. This involved an extremely narrow, muddy, steep and root riddled climb back up away from the River Baker.

We’ve learnt a lot about the capabilities of our van throughout this journey and as you can clearly see we ignore these lessons almost daily. Having said that, with the rear tyres down to 15psi and a massive run-up we conquered this hill climb learning only that…. erm…. something.

And it was in this campspot we met Tim from Taiwan. He wandered over to our van in the dark asking if we could charge his phone since it was his only source of light and almost flat. He has cycled here from Santiago and was travelling in a… unique way. He doesn’t have a spoon because he lost it last week and sleeps on the ground because his hammock fell off his bike a few days ago. He has to make a fire every night to cook and carves spoons (ironically) to sell since he ran out of money. If there was ever anyone making us look over prepared, it was Tim.

And we saw a very pretty cow.

The beautiful and therefore aptly named river couldn’t stay pure forever. Not far downstream a meagre glacial river joined the mighty Rio Baker and the mixing of the two colours was quite the spectacle.

With the incredibly hot sunshine still beating down, we parked up for the night a whole 15km down from our previous night and washed our pants, repaired a couple of mechanical van niggles and sweated in this very fortunate heatwave as the sun slowly set.

But before it did, a German “Big Rig” joined us on this hilltop. These “motorhomes” are fantastic and finally we got to nosey around inside one. With a proper bathroom, double glazing, central heating, hot water and the ability to trample over any kind of terrain why would anyone buy a house? MAN is also a VW brand, so it is a pretty natural evolution from Westy Rick…. Like a Pokémon evolving……

It really is hard to fault this part of the world, well, when the sun is out. Like it still is, shining through the crystal clear waters of this gorgeous lake. Or it was crystal clear until Steve went swimming again.

Tarmac has long since given way to narrow loose gravel track winding through the forests. Kind of like a rally stage, and the faster you travel the smoother the washboard road surface feels so it’s hard not to keep pushing on. Despite the fact that our powertrain layout is the same as a Porsche 911, if only we were in a car we could really rally like… oh, there’s a Subaru Forester that’s been on its roof in the ditch. Someone’s abilities fell short. We managed to resist the strong urge to “recycle” some engine parts to carry as spares despite the absolute certainty that this poor car was written off.

Tortel is a small village nearing the end of the Carretera Austral built onto the hillsides at the water’s edge. There are no roads around the village, just walkways and water. Despite having to backtrack three hours to cross the border after visiting, we thought it a worthwhile excursion to make the most of this damn fine weather. We aren’t sure how long a road has even been out to this town, most likely less than 20 years and it hasn’t been enough time for the locals to start enjoying all these strangers walking around this previously water locked hamlet. It certainly had a distinct character, and we didn’t see any webbed hands but maybe that’s because they are out paddling the boats around?

This was also the mouth of the Rio Baker, another reason to make the shaky drive down here. We even got directed by a helpful sign to a lovely campspot in the sunshine right on the bank of our very own river. What a photo doesn’t tell you is that the wind was blowing so hard the hammock was rocking by itself. The wind must have scared the fish away too…

An endangered species! No wonder it’s endangered if it stands on the rally stage all day looing so tasty. South Andean Deer, somehow unable to hear a speeding Vanagon despite having stupid gigantic ears.

Ah yes, the Latin American work ethic. Yesterday we drove over a bridge with construction work ongoing but the workers could be seen down at the river below, drinking beer. Today we drove back over the same bridge with construction work still ongoing but the workers could be seen down at the river below, drinking beer.

Goodbye Rio Baker, you beautiful majestic beast!

Our ability to follow rules and behave as civilised beings has become weakened as the travel has progressed. We weren’t exactly well endowed in either of those aspects prior to setting off either. Heading East towards Argentina we have chosen to cross the border at a remote but scenic location after driving through the “Patagonia National Park” which is free to enter but $32 Canadian, or £19 per night to stay at the campgrounds. Ridiculous, so we sneak up a side track and boondock against the rules all by our lonesome. It was glorious!

The evening was spent figuring out our plan of attack for the border crossing was going to look like. Realising that we might be asked for the mandatory insurance that we most certainly did not have, we conducted a minor readjustment to our Mexican insurance paperwork. But don’t tell anyone.

This is a Guanaco. It’s a relative of the Llama and it’s pretty damn adorable. They lollop around chewing on grass and generally having a great time. The one below is happy.

The one below, however, is not happy. He’s mad and most certainly not adorable. He just got in a highly entertaining fight with another Guanaco and they were pretty upset with each other, and just like on Jerry Springer it all started with spitting. One managed to spit at least a tennis ball sized spray of green, snotty, slimy phlegm right at his rival, it was absolutely disgusting. They then proceeded to get all argy bargy and crash into each other a bunch of times until apparently one of them was the winner but we couldn’t tell which. They both just walked away with their mad faces on.

Nandu, a small Ostrich style flightless bird also roams these grassy plains providing great entertainment. And an Armadillo? 

Hitchhikers, we’ve seen hundreds in Chile but we haven’t picked any up. We like our freedom, the ability to stop for lunch, camp or take a whiz without having to worry about any strangers lurking about in the back of the van. Don’t get us wrong, we’ve given people we’ve met lifts, and helped every time someone is broken down, but just not stopped in response to a person with their thumb up, who it is worth mentioning are always backpackers on holiday. As we drive on by they sometimes have a look of disappointment on their face, we understand, but then this one guy, this douchebag, gives us an angry frown and a massive shrug. What!? You’re out here on holiday with your backpack trying to get a free lift because you didn’t want to pay to rent a car, or take a bus, or pedal a bicycle, or walk. Don’t you dare be mad at us for not wanting to give you a lift in our home, you git.

Anyway, rant over and passenger free, we decided to detour up to a lookout that is only accessible with a 4x4. Continuing to have learnt nothing, we proceeded past the helpful sign directing us in our 2wd to park up and walk and headed straight up the big steep rocky hill with the pedal to the metal. Take that, sensible advice, don’t tell us what we can and can’t do. We'll learn the hard way thank you very much.

The lookout was fantastic, but the clouds are making their way back.

As you can see, we’re high above the canopy of this forest. This tiny, tiny bonsai forest which Steve found highly entertaining and even went stomping through it pretending to be King Kong. It was a terrible impression but it made him happy so that’s ok.

Ok, time to the border crossing. No meat, dairy, fruit or veg allowed across the border so we take them from the fridge and “throw them away”. Tehehehe.

Crossing is simple, we’d been in Chile for 6 weeks which is our longest time in any one country and luckily hadn’t misplaced our passports. The official “searched” our van which consisted of lifting up one towel and glancing in one bag before we were waved on into Argentina, the last new country of our trip.

This new landscape is known as “Pampa”, semi barren nothingness of which we have hundreds of kilometres to travel through as we make the push towards the end of the road, the end of the continent and the most southerly point to which you can drive in the whole wide world. But there’s a couple of nice detours along the way towards the penguins. Not long now!

Didn’t that sound like the end of the blog? Well yes that’s because it was but internet is so sparse down here we’ve done too much since finishing the blog we’re adding a bunch on to really, really drag it out! So here we go some more, getting back to your chores will have to wait.

The gravel continues and it really does a number on what’s left of our tyres. But we count ourselves lucky, many travellers seem to suffer frequent punctures or blow outs. Our tyres seem exceptionally tough, a wise investment.

The gravel ends, the tarmac starts and we drive through a storm of biblical proportions. Heavy, heavy raining going on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on. Then lightening not far in the distance and thunder audible over the pounding of water on the windscreen and suddenly we’re driving through snow! Just for a few kilometres there was a good amount of disgusting slushy snow trying to drag us off the road despite the high ambient temperatures we’ve been enjoying. They’ll surely be more of this to come, time will tell…

After a restock on fuel and food we spent a night outside the least interesting town of all time. Honestly, it existed and that is about all there is to say. As we left in the morning we passed a police car perpendicular to the road set up like the police checkpoints we’re quite overly familiar with. Since we may or may not be lacking in some legal paperwork areas we hoped not to get pulled over and luckily for us, the Policewoman was dozing in the driver’s seat. Her eyes half opened as we whizzed past and we were happy to have avoided any conversation here, sweet dreams.

But. And this is a big but (and we cannot lie). Her job, which she was managing to do so effectively, was to inform passers-by that the road was shut. You see, 60km out of the boring town the tarmac ended and the carnage began. The storm the day before had soaked the section of the “road” made of mud and turned it into a giant slip n’ slide. The consistency of the mud was like grease and as we naively ploughed along we noticed the marks of a car that had departed into the ditch, a whole 3 second later the steering wheel becomes as useful as the Policewoman and we too made the slow and embarrassing slide down the cambered road and into the ditch. Scchhhllllllllluuuurrrrrrrrrpppppppppppppp. Ah; bugger.

But there was hope, for another ignorant traveller had attempted this road ill prepared and got stuck just a little further down the road where a passing bus was helping them out. So we grabbed our tow strap, slung it on the front and prayed to the gods of kindness that the bus driver might stop and help us out also. He did!!! Slipping, sliding and throwing mud in all directions the 4x4 bus managed to drag us initially along, and eventually out of the ditch. Yay! We gave him some beer and parked up waiting for this shitshow to dry up. Not the worst place to be forced to camp in the sunshine.

A day of bright sunshine and a clear night and then we took on the challenge. The carnage still apparent, we followed the firm tracks and made it through without stress. We also crossed 49° south of the equator, the Canadian border is 49° the other side, and so we were now further south than we started north.

We keep jabbering on about being in Patagonia but it hasn’t look at all like how you picture it, until now. Big sharp pointy peaks covered in ice.

There are two places for hiking in this region, this is El Chalten and it is free, the other is Torres Del Paine and is super expensive and best for really long hikes. We like this one for both of the reasons above, even though the Instagrammers are here and doing the EXACT SAME POSE every single frickin’ time.

Here is a fox we saw from the window. He’s very cute, but far away so Steve goes to sneak up and get some better photos.

 

Gently tip toeing over, taking a photo every few steps, Steve is all proud that the three foxes don’t seem to notice he is creeping up. This is turning out great. Click, click, click.

Until the fox stands up, looks Steve in the eye, turns around and goes back to sleep. Oh, I guess they just don’t give a crap? Well then might as well get really close.

You’re still here?

You humans bore me.

But then we make a horrible realisation, this is an Instagram Fox. Noooooooooo.

Now take another photo, this is my good side.

How about if I look thoughtfully into the distance? Will you put this one on Instagram for me? #FoxyFox

Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet?