The Border

We thanked Eduardo for the advice by staying at his place upon our return. Fully rested, our next mission was to cross the border back into Argentina and get to El Calafate.

The border was only about 60 kilometers away, and we hitched a ride to Chilean customs without much trouble. The border itself, to cross into Argentina was another eight kilometers on, following a dirt road of no man´s land between the two countries. There was little traffic so we walked it. Only four cars passed the whole two hour trek and our optimisim was dropping as we crossed the desert plains. Getting to El Calafate proved to be a little more difficult than we had predicted.

We got stuck on the border.

No one would give us a ride. Every vehicle that came through was either full with a family or a tourist bus whose driver wouldn´t even consider letting us on. At ten P.M. the border closed.

Martin, one of the National Guard members posted on the border, had come outside a couple of times to hang out with us over the course of the hours that we spent there. He thought we were crazy and loved the company, being stuck in the middle of nowhere for a month at a time. When the border closed he offered us the abandoned building next door to sleep for the night.

There were old matresses, a fire pit to cook on, and best of all, beer given to us from the Argentine National Guard to help pass the night. We were warm, full bellied, and out of the neverending Patagonian wind.













We wrote Martin and the guys a recomendation for the thier hospitality and got a ride on the first bus in the morning, convincing the driver to take us for half the price. It just so happened that it was the same bus that Scarlett and her new Argentine friend, Marina, were on. We became five and went on to El Calafate.

Chilean Patagonia

Puerto Natales sucks.

It is essentially the basecamp for those going to Parque Nacional Torres del Paine, which is the role it played for us as well. Parque Nacional Torres del Paine is considered by some the best park in all of South America. Because of this it is not only expensive, but full of tourists, especially during the high season of January and February. Things that are touristy and expensive are the antithesis of what we are looking for on our trip, so we decided to skip it and move on. Luckily, there was one person who wouldn´t let us give up on the Torres.

Eduardo was a tall, softspoken man with about 12 teeth. He owned a small, quiet hostel in the center of Puerto Natales and lived in the room behind the kitchen with his dog. When we told him that we were leaving without going to see the Torres, he would not have it. He took us downstairs to the map he had on his wall and showed us a trail that went along the border of the park, where we could see the Torres just as well, if not better, trek for free, and not run into anyone. We owe the adventure that we had the following couple of days to him.

Hitching out of Puerto Natales, Haukur forgot something back in town and we had to split up into two groups. It was then that Pétur and I were picked up by Cristian, the construction manager of the luxurious, and very expensive, new hotel right outside the park. He had been a guide in the area before and knew of the trail we were to take. If it wasn´t for him we would never have found the trail.

The trail started, to our dismay, on the other side of a river that was too deep to cross with our packs. Cristian left us on the riverfront at two abandoned police huts where we could sleep for the night and gave us some whiskey to keep us warm.

The river became a much smaller problem when we found an old, half flooded boat, though, after crossing things did not get any easier. Due to the previous week of rain the river had flooded and after a half-mile our trail was underwater. We checkd the map and found that in another mile the trail doubled towards the south and if we crossed over the mountains we could intercept it.

The mountains, we realized when we were halfway up, were covered in waist-high thorn bushes. Four hours later, atop a peak, with a full panoramic view of the magnificince of the Torres, our legs, our hope, and Pétur´s feet destroyed, we were about to give up when Haukur and I went to take a piss and realized that we were peeing on a trail. We picked up our packs and headed south into the forest.

To this day we have no idea if the trail we followed was the one on the map. As we walked we continued to lose it due to it´s infrequent use, and three hours into the woods it disappeared completely. To our right was a small lake, to our left a steep downgrade into a valley, and ahead nothing but thicket. We couldn´t even figure out where we were on the map. We were lost in the Chilean backcountry.

The icelanders wanted to go into the valley.
"If we just head south we have to end up somewhere, right?"
I was against this idea, knowing how easy it is to get lost in a forest. They don´t even have trees in Iceland and our navagating skills were obviously less than stellar. Much arguing ensued but we decided to set camp and stay by the lake for the night, and to return from whence we came in the morning.

The next day, we followed the trail back and found where it came out of the flooded area. There was a small refuge located twenty feet into the water. It was a dilapidated piece of shit. Upon inspection we found two small bedframes and an old wooden stove. The catch was the foot of freezing water that covered the floor. Discussion as to sleep in it or not turned into a nap next to the river. When I woke Haukur was gone. He returned, in his underwear, shoeless, his legs beat red. He had gone exploring, through the water, and found a house. Not the shanty that we had looked in earlier, but a legitamate house.

The house, we could see through the trees, was situated beyond 200 feet of glacier water. After twenty feet we couldn´t feel our legs. The door was shut, but we found it unlocked. Our one floor heaven was completely dry, having been built on stilts. It had an entrance roon, a full kitchen and a bedroom with two beds. Nothing worked but there were portable stoves and gas to spare. We cooked a proper dinner and passed the night in the warmth of candlelight.

The sky was cloudless. The stars came out, doubled by their reflection off the steel grey water. For one night we had our own private island.

Pétur

For those of you who went to high school with me, I could skip a lot of description by simply saying that Pétur is the Icelandic version of Conor Bracken. They look the same, have they same goofy sense of humor, and are both just as reckless as the other.

We talked to Pétur online right before leaving Rio Grande. After spending two days in Argentina, a strong Patagonian wind had blown away his cash and his debit card, leaving him just enough to get to Punta Arenas and wait for us to arrive. He was sleeping outside in the park in his sleeping bag. He didn´t think it was that bad. It was a mission.

¨What are you doing about food?¨
¨I bought a bag of nuts yesterday.¨

We found him as we walked into the center of Punta Arenas, dirty and in sandals. In fact, Pétur doesn´t have shoes. He came prepared for some backcountry trekking in Patagonia with nothing but two pairs of sandals.

This dirty male model is a semi-professional snowboarder, and defines the snowboarding type. He wears tank tops, loves to high five, and acts before he thinks.

Our team had become complete.

Desde Rio Grande Hasta Punta Arenas

The gods of hitchhiking smiled upon Haukur and I on the 19th of January.

We walked to the edge of town in Rio Grande and had a ride in less than 3 minutes. Some oilmen dropped us off by their plant about 16 kilometers from our destination in San Sebastian. From there we continued along the highway in the middle of Patagonian windswept fields for an hour an a half before we were picked up again, by more oilmen who took us to San Sebastian. There we had to go through Argentine customs, who didn´t have much faith in our hitchhiking skills so we lied and told them we would walk to the Chilean border. Their doubts were misplaced because within 5 minutes of finishing there Daniel, an Argentine telecom worker, pulled over and we joined him on the road. Turned out he was going along a quicker route than we had hoped so we stuck with him for most of the day.

Crossing into Chile was fairly painless and since we were Daniel we got a free ferry ride across the Straight of Magellan. The Straight is full of beauitul turquoise water and fierce winds. As we crossed we were followed by black and white dolphins and peguins that swam along the side of the boat.

We parted ways at an intersection and stuck our thumbs out once again hoping to make it to Punta Arenas. We had to wait a measly 10 minutes when a huge econoline van stopped for us. We were three people in a van that could fit twelve and we remained silent and enjoyed the landscape the rest of the way to Punta Arenas, arriving a day earlier than we had anticipated.

Rio Grande

Before our trip had began I asked Haukur if we could tell people that I was from Iceland as well. The reason being that every time we encounter new people they are exited to meet someone from Iceland and generally disappointed to meet another American. He loved the idea and even gave me my own Icelandic name, Kristofer Bjorn Robertsson.

Upon arriving in Rio Grande we were waiting outside a supermarket, trying to stay out of the wind and the rain, when a Chilean gaucho started chatting with us. He asked us our nationalities and I figured this would be the perfect time to try out my new Icelandic heritage. He didn´t seem to even know where Iceland was but told us about all the European countries he knew about from watching soccer on TV. He liked all the European countries, but his favorite of all... The United States of America. Those Americans, he said, were a clever bunch. Not clever enough I guess.

We passed 5 days in the home of our friends in Rio Grande comfortably. We spent a majority of the time washed in the yellow light of the kitchen lamp. Our cozy base of operations was thourghly enjoyed as we avoided the wind and the cold, which are just about the only two things that Rio Grande has to offer.

Spent our days inside, waking at two in the afternoon and doing our own various activities without responsibilites until around midnight when we would cook dinner and bullshit over empty liters of Quilmes.

We did go out and experience the night life that Rio Grande had to offer, which is just like night life in all the rest of Argentina, only shittier. I don´t understand what Argentines love about clubs. We spent a couple of hours drinking at the house and headed out to a party a couple of blocks away. Started chatting with the people at the party and enjoying ourselves, when at 5 am, the sun already fully in the sky, everyone decided it was time to go. We were not going home, which would be the logical thing to do at this time of the morning after drinking for six hours. No, it was time to go to the club! It should be noted here for all of you who know Haukur and his character, that I was against going to the club, but it was he who was all for it. 10 mintues after arriving he was complaing about how lame it was.

Thanks to the wonderful hospitality of our friends we got some good rest before we were back on the road in search of more adventure.

January 13th - 14th, 2009

We hitched a ride from Estancia Harberton with two tourists from England. One of them was the hottest 50 year old woman I have ever seen. Things got complicated with getting to Rio Grande and we had to spend another night in Ushuaia.

We didn´t want to spend the next couple days waiting for Helgi in Ushuaia, so we decided to go to the small town of Tolhuin the next day, which was halfway to Rio Grande. Tolhuin is a small town with nothing except a really great bakery, a bakery that has tucans and parrots. It´s in the middle of a tundran landscape, surrounded by dense green forests, but the bakery has tropical birds. Brilliant.

We were going to sleep by the lake but it was far and the weather was cold so we just walked around the town for a while looking for a place to pitch our tent. Tolhuin also has the largest collection of annoying stray dogs in the world that will not hesitate to bug the shit out of you if you walk through it´s gravel roads. Luckily we found an open field, walked into it where there was tree coverage and set up camp for the night. The grove we stayed in was full of moss that hung off the trees which we aptly named "tree beard" and made a great fire starter. We slept for free in our temporary homes and packed up the next morning to move on again.

January 12th, 2009

Waking up to the sun rising over the lake was as beautiful as we expected.

We arrived back at the property and decided to move on to another destination. Tierra del Fuego, outside of the few cities it has is covered with Sheep Estancias and the Harberton Estancia is the most famous of them all. Scarlett had another family connection with the people there so we decided to try our luck and headed east to the ranch with a driver from Salta who loved his home and to Haukur´s displeasure wanted to tell him all about it. Sometimes riding shotgun doesn´t have it´s benefits.

Estancia Harberton looks like a little piece of Ireland at the end of the world. Spotted with wooden cottages and farms, I was only missing a pair of overalls and I would have been right at home with my Leprechaun-like beard. Fortuneately Tommy, the owner of the place, did have overalls on, and hated tourists. He also didn´t give a shit that Scarlett was there and treated us with the same akward politeness that he did all the other tourists that flooded the Estancia everyday.

We were, however, allowed to stay on the property free of charge and hiked the two kilometers to our site.

The weather was good and there was no one else on the property save the occasional fox that scampered by and the pack of wild horses that would run through our campsite. We made some stew and enjoyed the long day by the campfire.

January 11th, 2009

The lake was beautiful. We wanted to sleep by it.

Haukur and I packed up our gear and headed slowly up to the lake again. We took our time and napped in the marsh.

Set up the tents in the woods around the lake.

The beavers had been creating dams and killing the trees in the area. There were small lakes turquoise lakes with dead trees growing out of them. Devastatingly beautiful.

Made a fire, music, and food. Stared at the coals until bed.

January 10th, 2009

It was time to get the fuck out of Ushuaia.

We packed up our things and found a cheap ride up to Valle de Lobos. Gato, the owner was a pretty big name in these parts, being the first Argentine to finish the Alaskan Iditarod dog sled race. Valle de Lobos is where he trains his 84 Alaskan sled dogs year round. Gato is a man. He wears overalls, chops wood and eats meat. He will crush your hand with his handshake and grows a beard that makes Sam Beam look like a pre-pubescent boy.

He allowed us to stay on and around his property free of charge so we set up in a small wooden, dirt floored refuge with a giant iron oven in the center.

Close to the refuge was a trail that led to the Laguna Esmeralda. We hit the trail around 1 pm. It was a short hike and after going through a forest we came to a marshy tundra landscape covered in a red colored moss that gave way under your feet like a memory foam mattress. Reaching a crest in the landscape we came upon the turquoise colored lake that seemed more fitting for a Caribbean landscape than the southern pole. The lake is made from fresh water runoff from the glacier in the surrounding mountains. Needless to say the water is frigid. That didn´t stop my little blonde icelander from swimming in it to the amusement of all the Argentines.














We cooked over fires and slept in the dirt. We passed the hours playing guitars, harmonicas, melodicas and mouth harps huddled over the flames. We did little and talked even less. The life is simple and and sweet.

Did you know you can clean pots with dirt?

January 9th, 2009

Woke up after the first night in my new tent to realize that I was not prepared for the cold here in the South. My feet were two enormous ice cubes. Scarlett and I had squeezed into my one person tent. We had enough space, but realized with the condensation from two people in a one person tent we woke up a bit wet, and would have to figure something out for the coming days. Breakfast was yogurt, and we headed to meet Haukur in town and figure out what to do in the coming days.

Finding a place for lunch that was somewhat affordable was a futile effort so we settled on a cafe on the main strip after 45 minutes of searching. Scarlett, having her father´s side of the family coming from Argentina, has friends all over the country and so the next day we were to take advantage of these connections and head to a new locale but first we had to stock up for some nights in the mountains.

Before the supermarket we checked out the one cool museum in Ushuaia, dedicated to the indigenous people of Tierra del Fuego, who are all but wiped out today. In the theory of the great human migration from Africa, over the Siberian land bridge, Tierra del Fuego was the absolute last place on earth to be populated. The province gets it´s name from Magellan when he traveled through here and saw the smoke rising from all the fires the indegenous people always kept burning. They lived naked in this brutal atmosphere and kept fires burning at all times, even in their canoes as they fished. They were an incredible people who had adapted to their environment here but were unfortunately killed off by the white man´s diseases when they came storming in, bringing Jesus with them.

Eating dinner on the street on the side of a supermarket was a new one for me, but we are living cheap. Cheap and happy.

La Adventura del Sur

I have been blessed this year with a 4 month summer vacation, the longest I´ve ever had, and I get to spend it completely free and homeless in South America. For me, the vacation has been split into two very different time periods. I spent the first two months boldueando around the north of Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay with some beautiful ladies. It was me and four other girls, two Americans and two Dutch. 24 hours a day, 7 days a week with 4 women is quite an experience, but one I was fortunate to have.

Now begins part two. The Southern Adventure, or what one could call the Southern Manventure. I am traveling with two crazy asshole from Iceland and our plan is to have no plan and do all of the wildest things that one can do with two free months in Patagonia.

On January 8th of the year two-thousand-and-nine I got on a plane in Buenos Aires headed for Ushuaia, the city at 'the end of the world.' Ushuaia is in fact the southernmost city in the world and they take full advantage of this fact to bring in tourists, and they do a good job of that. Walking through the city you see more adventure hungry youngsters and camera wielding tourists than locals. I arrived with Scarlett, for it just so happened that our paths coincided for the time being and we left Buenos Aires at 98 degrees and arrived in Ushuaia at a hearty summer´s day of 43 degrees. We arrived with tents and plans to sleep where ever we could. We hiked up above the town and pitched our tent at the only local campsite, which was at the local ski club, and set up for the night. For dinner we took our remaining peanut butter and jelly sandwiches (a delicacy an American can only appreciate after living in a country that hates peanut butter) and hiked to the top of the ski slope for a view of the town. Ushuaia is not the picturesque winter town that I had invisioned. It´s actually kind of a blight upon the beautiful landscape that surrounds it. It´s a small Argentine town, broken up in two parts, the center where everything is overpriced and full of gift shops, and the more run down residential part surrounding it. All of this is located on the Beagle Canal surrounded by snow covered peaks. A natural wonderland with a distinct landscape I have never seen before.

The temperature was dropping so we headed down to the tent, caught up with Haukur for a bit and decided to hit the sack early that night and be fresh for the next day. At 11:30 we packed up and got ready to get in our sleeping bags, the sun still going down over the horizon. The nights here don´t really get dark, there always seems to be a glow over the horizon and by the time 4 am comes around, the sun shows it´s face for the coming day.

Año Nuevo en Buenos Aires

This year New Year's Eve was spent in Buenos Aires. For the last two months I have been traveling around South America. I spent a month traveling through various locations in Brazil including Rio de Janeiro, Florianopolis, and Isla Grande. I returned through Uruguay and have spent the last couple of weeks moving through parts of Argentina, the wine country in Mendoza and a couple of days in the capital of Córdoba. Christmas was spent in Concordia in the province of Entre Rios with Horacio and his family. All of this has been an incredible experience and I will blog about them all, but getting time on a computer that I don't have to pay for is hard to come by, and honestly I don't want to spend my time sitting on the computer when I'm traveling. I will however get some stories up when time allows, and, having it all already written in my journal, I don't have to worry about forgetting the details.

On the 31st of December I woke slowly, it being nice being able to relax a bit on our return to Buenos Aires. My birthday present was a trip to the exclusive Aqua Vita Medical Spa where I was to have my first professional massage. Aqua Vita had the feel of the place in the end of Vanilla Sky where Tom Cruise finds out about LE, except with a blue hue. It was like a spaceship. All the furniture was white, with little blue ponds and aquariums everywhere and that silly ambiance music that only spas and New Age douchebags play. I was led into the back to my respective bathroom where I was to change out of my clothes and put on my robe. I stood there for a second and debated weather or not I was to wear underwear. Nobody gave me any guidelines, I was a scared fledgeling in a dangerous world of creams and women in white. I decided to just bear all and go naked under my robe. Turns out they gave us a little temporary underwear, which I thought was a shower cap, and we were not supposed to be naked. Well, the deed is done.

The first part was the steam room. I sat and sweat in the nude for about 10 minutes and let all of my pores cleanse themselves. I rinsed off afterwards and headed into my massage room. I was told to lay face down, and followed suit , my white cheeks exposed to the world. My masseuse was a four foot tall asian man. I remember one thought crossing my mind when I realized it would be a man who would be rubing his hands all over me. If I'm in a relaxed state, and someone is rubbing my body, who I cannot see because I'm facing down and my eyes are closed, but I know in my head is a man, and I get an erection, is that weird? I wondered, had that little asian man made other straight men hard with his hands? It's quite possible. I had a choice between the deep tissue or the relaxing massage and I'm glad I chose the relaxing one because it was vigourous nonetheless. There was a point were the little man got up on the bench, sat over my head and massaged my back. He was quite the professional. After about half an hour my turn was over, and it had passed without any penile incidents.

The body exfoliating scrub was next and afterwards I got a complete lotioning to top it all off. All in all this little asain man saw me naked on three separate occasions as I switched from room to room for each different part. The day was finished with a bowl of fruit and a glass of water with cucumber in it. One can never be too healthy.

After the massage I was like a big piece of Jello and all I could think about was sleep so I picked up some provisions from the supermarket and went back to the hostel to rest before the evenings activities. Having all of our friends either at home in their respective countries, or traveling around various others, the Dutch and I decided to head to Club Museum in San Telmo with our hostel. There was a deal where we got a dinner, drinks, entrance to the club, and a show for a pretty good price. The girls got dolled up, and of course looked ravishing, and we headed out as a big group of foreigners to the club, having to walk there because cabs and busses weren't running. Club Museum is a huge open club with a grand dance floor, about 30 disco balls hanging in the center, and three levels of couches and areas you could head to to get off the dance floor. There was a lot of potential, but unfortunately it was one of the weakest New Years I have had. The dinner was mediocre, they had a shitty band, and they didn't even fucking count down when 12 came around. I just didn't have the New Years feel. The one redeeming quality of the night was the Transvestite MC. There was a part after midnight when he went from table to table picking volunteers. He ended up at our huge table of foreigners talking to the Austrailian girl sitting to my right who did not know one word of Spanish. I tried to help her translate which drew attention to me and the Tranny picked me to go on stage. I arrived onstage with three others, a woman in here late 20's, a woman in her 50's who had had way to much surgery and still had the body of a 25 year old, and another American guy. After a series of questions we were broken up into pairs and I got stuck with the 50 year old, not knowing what we had to do. The other couple went up first and the Tranny told them that they were to preform a strip tease. Oh dear God. I think you know where this is going. Yes, our pair was next and I did a strip tease for a 50 year old woman in front of 300 people while the Tranny with a microphone was cheering me on. There is a video on Facebook for your viewing pleasure. Happy New Year.