We are either travelling to fast or I am too lazy to keep the journal up to date! Anyway, after having arrived in Bariloche yesterday it is high time to write a few lines. (Is anybody reading, by the way? I might stop writing much and just upload a few images in the future, so let me know if you are interested in reading this journal.)

So Puerto Natales first. It was a great pleasure to hang out in this slightly boring town which certainly still has some of the frontier town feeling to it, which already fascinated Bruce Chatwin. The town, however, is undeniably rather touristy now after a significant increase of the number of tourists flocking in to get into the National Park Torres del Paine during the last decade. We had a good time strolling around, hanging out in cafes, reading, and ‘preparing’ for the boat trip ahead. The view from the waterfront is actually truly impressive.

The first thing we got to see from the Navimag ship (the Magellanes) was actually Gitana, the cute ship dog which (as so many dogs before!? Do we smell???) decided to accompany us for a while while walking around at the water front. She was wearing her collar with her mobile phone number on it while freely strolling around in Puerto Natales, probably enjoying some real trees for a while and catching up with the local dog gossip in town.

While still in Puerto Natales on Thursday we came across a few other travelers which we had met before who would also be on the boat, so we were looking forward to catch up with them. We boarded on Thursday evening at 9pm, spent the evening chatting with our new and old fellow travelers before turning in. The next morning we left port at 6. The weather was not too bad, cloudy and very windy. The windmeter was showing wind speeds typically around 40 – 70 knots, with peaks going up to above 100 knots (equaling about 180 km/h)! The latter are hurricane wind speeds, i.e. your facial features start flopping around uncontrollably… Quite impressive, given that we were continuously in the fjords. We were pleasantly surprised to find that the crew and our ‘guides’ were truly going out of their way to make us comfortable, there were several breefings and educational talks given during the trip every day. We got informed about the route, the fauna, the indigenous population and so on, both in Spanish and English. I had expected merely a ferry ride without any frills. So together with the sumptuous meals we felt almost pressed into a tight schedule given that we had to take nap in between all these events from time to time.
On the first day the ship made a small side trip to the Glaciar Amalia, which was a great sight, unfortunately in rather mediocre weather. When not napping, eating, or being educated we spent a lot of time chatting with other travelers or watching the sea and the fjords most comfortably from the bridge which we could enter almost any time. Brooding over the sea charts, chatting with the captain or the first mate, having a look at the GPS, checking the course and radar screen, what is the current wind speed? Not that it really mattered since the autopilot would steer the 120m long ship without any risk through the fjords… A typical days activity would approximately look like this: get up, breakfast, nap, chat, watch dolphins/seals/sea otters/birds outside, educational talk, nap, educational talk 2, lunch, nap, chat, watch documentary, hang out on the bridge, nap, chat, lunch, chat, drink Pisco Sour in the bar, turn in.

On the second day we had an excursion to Puerto Eden scheduled, the only stop en route. Gitana (the ship dog) got really excited to get ashore for a while! So when we arrived there in the morning, we could see a flock of  tiny boats and floats coming towards the ship. “The Indians are coming to fetch us in their canoes.”, I said, tongue in cheek. And indeed they were! So we got onto one of the nutshells to be shipped over to the settlement. Puerto Eden is a truly remote little village of less than 200 inhabitants boasting the last seven surviving full-blood Kaweskar indios. No streets and entirely dependent on the Navimag ferry which delivers all there is to have to the village. It was pouring with rain and so the locals sensibly stayed inside their huts and houses to watch the crazy tourists through their window wandering around getting drenched. The place actually has a hostel, a supermarket, and even an internet hook up (via satellite, I suppose)!

Then we had the “best Bingo of Patagonia” on the last night, which was truly hilarious! After the Bingo, the pub turned into a disco and the whole scene into something like a high school party con booze-up. The atmosphere was very funny indeed and we kept dancing until the pub closed officially at 2am. After this I ended up having very elaborate and interesting (but probably not very intelligent – given the alcohol) conversations with a few fellow travelers I had not been connecting with before (Christin, Collin, and Juan – it was great meeting you!). I turned in at 4 just to get up again next morning at 7 to be fed the last breakfast aboard before stumbling out into rainy Puerto Montt. What a great journey, I had almost forgotten how to organize my day without continuous announcements of educational talks, meals etc. Together with Anna, who we had met already a while before in El Chalten, we went to find some accommodation in town and then a little later we headed for lunch. Stumbling into the next best seafood restaurant we happened to have the best seafood I have had in South America yet! Copious amounts of yummy shellfish, sea snails and raw fish marinated in lemon and vinegar. After this lunch we did not even really wanted to eat anything that day anymore…

The next day (Tuesday/yesterday) Volker and I said good-bye to Anna and caught the morning bus back to Argentina, to Bariloche. The border formalities took about two hours. What a silly game! The difference in the way people interact in Chile and Argentina is truly striking. Although everyone was really friendly in Chile, they seem much more closed up and shy. The Argentineans on the other side seem always to be in for a chat and happen to be almost always really funny and open. Quite impressive. The first person we came across, the guy running the kiosk at the Argentinean border post immediately asked us where we were from and what we were doing… And all the people we came across running the hostels in Bariloche were overwhelmingly charming and helpful, even when their place was actually already booked out. To me, returning to Argentina is almost a little bit like coming home! That said, I am looking forward to getting back to Buenos Aires for a while, in a week or so! Where am I going to spend Christmas and New Years Eve?! No idea yet. Any recomendations?

A few more pictures can be found here.

Back to Puerto Natales. I truly did sleep well during the three hour bus ride yesterday afternoon back to town! Maybe this was due to the beer I had for lunch, or the fact we had to get up at 4:20 am that day to catch the sunrise on the mountains, or just due to the strenuous eight days of hiking the Circuito Entero all around the fabulous mountains. The nap was a little surprising since the ancient ramshackle bus went at a tremendous speed of about 120 km/h along the bumpy dirt track, everything shaking and rattling, about to fall apart...

The mountains had greeted us with mixed weather, but all in all not too bad. Mainly cloudy or sunny, just occasionally snow and hail, wind and drizzle on and off on most days... And yes - the weather is changeable in Patagonia! But in fact we have been really lucky, the day we had designed to be our 'rest day' without any walking turned out to be the only really horrible day weather-wise. So we stayed in the hut nearby the camp site playing chess and watching other travelers arriving drenched. The landscape of the park is truly beautiful and very varied. Lush valleys, alpine forests, fairy-tale lakes, massive glaciers, serrated mountain scapes. Some 'interesting' swamps to cross, lenghty snow fields to scale on the 'pass day', mainly good camp sites. So many beautiful big and small impressions and encounters. I reckon a few pictures say more than I can.

At the moment we are enjoying some lazy time in sleepy Puerto Natales before boarding our ship bound for Puerto Montt on Thursday night. It is a pleasure to have clean clothes again! And fresh food - not just the noodle / porridge / soup variety...

Some more pictures of this week can be found  here .

Also have a look on Volkers great pics  here  which give a good impression of 'daily life' during the trek.

Make sure you have read the previous journal entry!

So we spent a lazy day in the big and cozy lounge of the youth hostel of El Chalten. Watching the day-trekkers setting out into the rain and storm just to get to see nothing of the mountains. No time to get bored, though. Many other travelers to discuss matters of previous and future trips with, talk about life, and the weather, of course. It just continued to rain all day and the storm occasionally picked up. The weather forecast was certainly the most discussed topic. It was traveling by Word of mouth from the other end of the village where the ranger station was situated. Although the official weather forecast was predicting terrible weather for the rest of the week, the local ranges were talking about a "pocket" of nice weather which would typically evolve from the current weather pattern. So there was hope. Others would report, that the local trekking agency refused to take customers for tomorrows ice-climbing excursions because of the weather. Not promising, hence. Other rumors had it that the local climbers were getting ready for the next day… When we turned in the weather was still as bad as ever and we did not expect much. Since we would take the 6pm bus back to El Calafate, we would probably have to live with not having seen anything...

At about half past five I happened to open one eye sleepily to see Volker in the bunk bed next to mine waving his hand and pointing out of the window. I was quite tired and felt I could not be bothered - about to turn around and continue sleeping. But Volker kept waving his hand intensly, so I decided to open the second eye and take a look out of the window. A spectacular sunrise was setting the clouds ablaze! No rain and blue skies! So we decided to get up and hit the tracks at about six for an early start. The remaining clouds slowly dissolved while we were walking all the way back to camp Poincenot where we had spent the night in the tent. Cerro Fitz Roy was still covered in clouds, so we decided to first continue to the Glaciar Piedras Blancas, a spectacular ice fall on one of the flanks of the Fitz Roy mountain. After this two-hour excursion, I went up for an hour on the snow-covered slopes toward the Laguna de los Tres, a lookout directly in front of the mountain. Volker had to skip this additional side-trip as he had a little trouble with his knee. The views were spectacular, the clouds had disappeared entirely, and there was almost no wind anymore. After the laguna we took the traverse toward Cerro Torre. On the path we met most of the other travelers we had been talking to the days before. Near Cerro Torre we unfortunately did not have enough time to walk up to the ultimate lookout on the moraine, since we wanted to take a shower before getting on the bus. But the views from the viewpoints farther away were very impressive nevertheless.

What a great day! We were really lucky the weather had changed to dramatically overnight. Hard to believe I had been walking around in just a T-shirt for most of the day where we had been battling against the snow and storm a couple of days before... It sure was a long day, about 10 hours of walking with only a few short brakes, about 35 kilometers, but with constant spectacular views! Dozing off during the four-hour bus ride across the pistes of Patagonia to El Calafate after some beer was a great reward.

The three pictures below show the Glaciar Piedras Blancas, the Cerro Fitz Roy with my sunburned face in front, and the Cerro Torre.

Who said the weather was terrible in Tierra del Fuego?! Clouds, wind, freezing cold?!? Haven´t seen any. Well, not so much at least. The last three days were really spectacular - blue skies and sunshine all day. Just when we really needed it - walking around in the gorgeous National Park near Ushuaia! And yes, we are really sunburned now... Not too badly, though (don't worry mum!). The landscape is really beautiful; meadows, lakes, hills, snow-capped mountains, streams and lagoons shape a perfect ensemble. The Beagle Canal dotted with many little islands... The night temperatures were a little chilly, way below 0 degrees. But thanks to our good tent and sleeping bags - no problem.

After this first little test-walk we had a great dinner last night in Ushuaia with a decent 'bife de chorizo', a nice huge slab of tender meat. The meat hereabouts is really great, other food (chicken, fish, sweets, salad) is edible, nicely cooked vegetables - never heared of any! I think Argentina is a vegetarians hell... Well, you would survive I suppose. There are potatoes.

There are two things typical - dulce de leche and mate. Dulce de leche is a great invention for the sweet tooth - caramelized condensed milk! Yummy. And yes, since yesterday we are also proud owners of our own mate straws. Nothing to stop us assimilating now. Many Argentinians would not leave home without their mate cup, straw, and a thermos with hot water so they can enjoy their beloved mate wherever they go.

I will upload a few pictures a soon as I get hold of a computer with USB port... In a couple of hours we will fly out toward El Calafate in the Patagonian Andes. But since we will be staying on camping grounds, it may well be uploading is going to take a while. Somewhere in the wilderness the internet availability is bound to decrease... (I hope!!)

Just to make sure you all understand that traveling is actually not just easy holidays! ;-) The language course is actually quite exhausting and besides the homework there is not so much time left - and please keep in mind that the nightlife in Buenos Aires is very strenuous, too! The biggest trouble is to find a restaurant that will serve you any food before 9.30 pm. Seriously! You might be able to get a toast or maybe a pizza, but any decent food - no way.  So I still work on adjusting my daily schedule and I am trying to adopt to the local habits. Then, if you go to a Milonga (a Tango place), the dancing is not bound to start any time before midnight, really. Not that I would be really up to dancing Tango, but some of the folks I go out with occasionally are. But it is good fun to watch, too. At least I tried a few steps during the introductory lessen before the actual milonga - poor chica who had to dance with me.

Quick update on the last weekend. We went in a group of five for a weekend to Uruguay, to Montevideo and Colonia. Luckily Steffi struck up a conversation with a lovely 'local' girl, Laura, who took us for a tour on Saturday and showed us much of Montevideo. This way we really got to see a lot. At night we went out and stayed up until about 5.30 am dancing, at least some of us including me. (You see, life as a traveler is hard!) The next day we went by bus to Colonia and later on the express ferry back 'home' to Buenos Aires. I really enjoyed that weekend, although it was rather exhausting too.

This weekend will be more geared towards practicalities. I have to get my (brand-new!) backpack repaired, one of the zippers broke when checking in at the airport in Berlin and I have to get it replaced. Then I will have to buy two tickets for Volker and me for the bus ride to Puerto Madryn near the Peninsula Valdes for the next weekend. Volker is coming over and we will go traveling together for some weeks.

So far, I do not really feel like I am traveling. Well, in fact I am not traveling. I am staying with my lovely host family, going to school every day and spend my spare time repeating Spanish lessons or exploring Buenos Aires. But I am quite pleased that my Spanish is improving rapidly. And spending time in this truly great city is a pleasure. I am impressed with how friendly and relaxed the people hereabouts are - this is quite a difference to all the other really big cities I have been to before. And Buenos Aires is a crazy city, literally. They say, that this city ranks first regarding the number of psycho-analysts per inhabitants... I am not surprised.

Time for an update. I have been really busy lately, no time to write even a few lines. But if I do not do it now, it will be much later. As mentioned, Buenos Aires is a fab place. I have been attending Spanish classes since last week, so there was little time left to explore the city.

I have been meeting heaps of people, among them Ian, a Canadian, who works as expedition leader on tours to Antarctica. One night I went out together with him and a few more people who work on his expedition ship. Who knows, they might employ me as expedition photographer?! Probably not, but hey, who knows. If I could lecture on geophysics, I would have gotten an asignement straight away. I might try and catch up with him in Ushuaia, as his ship has already left Buenos Aires on Tuesday.

The Spanish school is really great, the teachers are all highly motivated and very friendly, most of them about my age. And where else would you be greeted by your teachers with besos every morning?! Last week I took six hours of lessons, four in a mini-group (three people), and two individual. This was actually too intensive! So I changed the schedule to just four hours of group classes a day. At least now I can do something besides attending class (e.g. writing this). The other students are a great mix of people, we go out frequently together for all sorts of activities. Last weekend we went to a very professional Tango Show in the Centro Cultural Borges, which was truly impressive (see a few pictures in the photos section).

On Sunday we contrasted this experience with a visit to the football stadion. We went to see the match Boca vs River Plate (the two major clubs of Buenos Aires), which was a real experience. Unfortunately I was afraid to take my bulky camera, but I still hope to get a few pictures from Elise, an other student. The atmosphere was truly exciting, heaps of shouting and singing - already an hour before the game started! When the teams finally entered the stadion, you would believe the whole place would explode!! For 90 minutes nobody would stay on their seats... And it certainly did improve my Spanish ("burro", "hijo de puta" etc.). They were in fact almost celebrating carnival - drums, trumpets, all sorts of instruments and banners... They actually had to clean up the field >before< the game had started to remove all the litter. And later on, during the break, again, of course. Especially the Boca fans were incredible. They just did not stop singing and shouting, not even long after the game had ended. The actual match was a little boring, actually.

Then there are so many art exhibitions on all the time. Have been to a few, yesterday to one with drawings and prints by Dalí, earlier the contemporary Latin American Art. Yesterday we went with the whole school to a photography exhibition, which was partly interesting (photographs of painted bodies - cuerpos pintados). If I can muster enough energy, I will later go to an other photography exhibition of young photographers from Buenos Aires. It just means I will have to cross this crazy city twice... But tonight is an other music/tango show and for the weekend I will go on a short trip to Colonia and Montevideo in Uruguay together with four or five of other students. My plan is to do the Spanish classes for at least one more week, maybe two.

(All pictures by Elise, the Melbournian chica in the middle of the group picture in the stadion.)