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As though the Inca Trek were not challenging enough. Sallkantay is the walk for the hardcore. But even that wasn’t enough. Sallkantay only gets you as far as Machu Picchu itself. No, if you really want to join the nutters, you go ABOVE the lost city of the Incas and walk to Huayna Picchu, which gives you spectacular views over Machu Picchu. While I was relaxing in the company of my children in the resplendent facilities of the Hostal Magico in Cusco, Paola walked this mad trek with Anne-Marie. Here are some photos – Paola may provide words when the muse strikes…

Some photos? 107 to be exact. Extract from conversation:

“Is that too many? I don’t think you put enough photos up.”

Today we are on day 92 of our 184 day trip. Landing in Mexico seems like a lifetime ago now, as I’m sure landing in the Isla del Sol in lake Titicaca will seem when we arrive in Gatwick on 3rd Jan 2012. But as the halfway point, a quick opportunity to reflect on how it’s gone so far.

Doctors aspire to this level of illegibility

Sometimes an iPad is plain inappropriate. Sitting in the dining room of our hostel in the Laguna Amarga in the Torre del Paine glacier park in Chile is one such time. In fact, anything with a microprocessor in it. Or indeed that connects to… Well, anything that connects. The view looks so stark, so untouched (though it has been), so pristine and so savagely natural that to defile it with technology feels abusive. And so, for the first time in decades, I started to write a journal. Not post a blog, but write with pen purloined from a British Airways 747 on paper stolen from my children’s notepads. It didn’t last long, of course. My fingers gave up after a (short) while, and here we are back on the inappropriate.

The local books are resplendent with pictures of the early explorers of this territory. Walking around the grasslands here, you can’t help but feel the spirit of those first explorers, and in those same pictures, the scenery in those days in the early 1900s does not look so different from how it looks today. Of course, even our rudimentary hostel is unimaginably luxurious next to their accomodation as they travelled through, but somehow still here in Chile the spirit of those early days seems to be present. That’s not to mention that much of the discovery of the large tracts of the Southern Patagonia Ice Field, which covers most of this park, was still ongoing in the last 20 years.

[album: https://oursouthamericablog.com/wp-content/plugins/dm-albums/dm-albums.php?currdir=/wp-content/uploads/dm-albums/Laguna Marga Hostel/]

I was looking forward to Chile for my own obscure reason. For some bizarre reason, the largest community of Palestinian exiles outside of the Middle East is all the way across in this most southern of South American countries. The community had started in the 1920s and 1930s, accelerating after 1948 when many mainly Christian Palestinians expelled by the creation and advance of Israel ended up here following the earlier exiles. Today, they number about 450,000. So it was only natural that when we went into Chile, I looked for and found a community of expats. In a sad indictment of my ineptitude, though, they happened to be Croatian expats.

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Our seventy two year old host, Juan, of Croatian parents like many of the homesteaders in this area, has made the most of not very much. He was incredibly proud of the bricks that were used to build his hostel, ensuring that he showed me the English ‘Andrews Glasgow’ (ahem) bricks by the furnace. The photos of the area in the most popular local book were taken by another immigrant, a Swiss photographer. And his stories of the many people in the area, none of whom seemed to have been more than 2 generations Chilean, only reinforced the impression of this place as frontier territory. (No less opportunistic was the fleecing to be had exchanging between any currencies here).

We drove across into Chile from Argentina at Cerro Castillo. It is great to drive across a border where you are one of only 2 cars making the crossing. There was a fun gravel drive between the Argentine and Chilean borders, and you can see with the emptiness of the landscape quite how contorted the very heated border discussions between the two countries must have been to try to define a natural line. After a brief fleecing with obscenely loaded currency exchange rates, we move on.

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We spend most of our time here driving around in our rented 4×4 Hyundai. Even among the steep hills and gravel roads of Chilean Patagonia, I don’t have the need to use it in 4×4 mode, so quite what 4x4s are doing in Chelsea is beyond me. The lakes, forests, mountains and glaciers make spectacular backdrops for driving through. The roads are crossed often by Guanacos (relatives of the llama) and Darwin’s Rheas (ostrich like birds). The boys have a great time repeatedly making up nonsensical “why did the ostrich cross the road?” jokes.

Our first sighting of the Torres

Torres on a clearer day

We are somewhat restricted from hiking the vast half million acres of this park as it would be more difficult than we would enjoy to take the youngest around, and the wind if fierce. The towers which lend their names to the place are three granite peaks, visible dramatically from most areas of the park. The scale of the place does mean that when you drive through it, you feel pretty solitary, seeing other cars no more than once every half hour or so. Solitary, that is, if you can block out the shouts of four children in the back.

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The most prominent feature of the weather while we are in Chile is the wind. The strength of it buffets the car repeatedly, and we have to be careful to only open one door at a time if we’re not to lose papers and books from the car. As we admire the view of the falls at Salto Grande, we all duck whenever the wind gets stronger so as not to get blown over, and Paola and I have to hold the two little ones in our arms so as not to lose them. But the view doesn’t disappoint. As the water canons down the falls, it exerts a strong gravitational pull, and leaves you no room for doubt about for the ferocious power of the water that gushes from the glaciers. We leave as the heavily set bikers who have come down in full leathers seem to be struggling with the now frequent gusts.

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If it’s not a glacier view, it’s a view of the Torres. If it’s not a view of the Torres, it’s a view of extremely fast rivers and falls. And the latter are so strong that they provide an excellent example of everything we studied as kids about rivers and erosion. As we pull into Cascadas Paine, I run down the bank to get close to the river, running so as to avoid the gaze of my youngest who would doubtless want to join me. Paola is not convinced that a man with my dexterity (or lack of) should be going down, let alone taking the two eldest boys as I did after I saw how achievable it was. They obviously bounced both down and up the bank in a fashion that left Dad breathless. However, at the bottom, we did get to see a close-up of how the river was eating away at the striated rock in the middle of the stream, and I just hope Omar remembers it in 5 years’ time when he sits his Geography GCSE.

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As I hope they all remember the impressively large Milodon Cave. This cave was cohabited by humans and milodons about a half dozen thousand years ago. The milodon, of which there was a 4 metre high life-size replica at the mouth of the cave, was a (thankfully for the humans) herbivorous mammal, also known as a giant sloth. With not too much imagination, you can easily picture a pre-historic scene of the inhabitants here (with or without a barely fur-clad Raquel Welch).

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Our last port of call before leaving Chile is a rather plush hotel at the Laguna Gris, the Hosteria Lago Grey. The children were incredibly well looked after by one of the best hotel barmen I’ve met, who found the perfect balance between being friendly and helpful, yet remaining unobtrusive. The four of them sat on barstools munching pistachio nuts (which he was peeling for them) is a sight I hope not to see replicated for at least another 15 years. The hotel sits overlooking a beach at the foot of the Grey glacier, and has a dramatic view over the beach to the lake and glacier. The lake is garnished by near flourescent blue icebergs floating like massive ice sculptures, with the backdrop of the glacier flowing down in a chicane between huge mountains. Sitting in the bar sipping cuba libre on the rocks was a suitable ending to the visit, feeling as it did that we had in our drink created a minuscule and somewhat ridiculous replica of the view ahead. Fitting in that here in Patagonia, you do realise how minuscule and ridiculously small you are next to the vastness of nature.

Landing in the tiny airport at Calafate from Buenos Aires, the most striking feature is the impossibly blue water that forms the lakes and rivers at the base of the various glaciers. A twenty minute drive sees us arriving at the Che Lagarto hostel in the town of Calafate. We check in with the obscenely helpful staff while the eldest boys hustle at the hostel’s pool table. While on the topic of over the top helpfulness, special mention must be made of Sebas who to the delight of the boys  is the spitting image of Shaggy from Scooby Doo, and more usefully for us, was able to sort out anything from hostels in other towns to hairdressers masquerading as barbers at no notice. Essential as my hair was starting to develop a comb-over. Aware of how much to do and how little time there is to procrastinate, we book a trip to our first glacier, Perito Moreno, for the following morning. It is supposed to be the most dramatic of the Patagonian glaciers.

And it is. Glaciers start to impress from quite a distance. As you approach from far away, you see an unimaginably wide river of ice, weaving between mountains. The scale of it is incomprehensible, that all of this mass is a slow moving and constantly replenishing block of ice several hundred metres deep…

We all boarded a boat that took us across the lake towards the face of the Perito Moreno glacier. You are aware going in that it wouldn’t take much of a block to come off it to send a wave that would probably tip us over. With the approach, the face of it just keeps getting bigger and bluer. It towers several metres above our boat, and several hundred metres below. We navigate backwards and forwards along the face of it, to give the official photographer an opportunity to take identically posed pictures of as many punters as possible, before coming back in to land.

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The Argentinians have built an impressive network of balconies facing the glacier that allow you to take in as much of it as you can as you descend opposite. Befitting a spectacle of this magnitude, our youngest slept through as the rest of us climbed down in the hope of seeing some ice calving off the glacier. Omar and Alvaro, our two eldest boys, were not disappointed.

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Perito Moreno is a rare glacier these days, in that it is still advancing while most others are in retreat. Our meeting with it was the first we had with a glacier, and was also probably the most impressive we were to see. We’ve been fortunate on this journey to have seen many scenes of nature beautiful beyond description. But to see this enormous flowing sheet of ice is not just to see beauty. It is to see a statement of nature’s sheer scale and power.

Which, of course, the aggregate consumption of mankind is helping send into retreat with global warming.

We stay in El Calafate twice – once either side of visiting Chalten. In our second visit, we dropped by the Glaciarium, a museum about man’s early attempts at flight. As if. This is a real visual treat of a museum dedicated to glaciers and related topics. The focus is on the vast ice sheets of Patagonia, and the various glaciers that these sheets feed, and which we have been and will continue to visit for a few days. In common with many of the museums we have seen on our travels near to big or endangered nature, the messaging is none too subtle, and the video that shows the earth self-destructing as a consequence of our insatiable consumption nearly has some of our kids in tears. It does, however, provoke them into asking the questions that leave you hoping things will not be as bad for them as the predictions based on current trends, and vowing to do something different to help. As we continue a few days later to the 16th of about 20 flights the six of us are having these six months…

El Calafate has the feel of a large alpine village in the summer. Except for the ever-present ice cream parlours. And what it lacks in a McDonalds (thankfully) it makes up for in a restaurant that has a decent sized play area for the kids in the back. It is an area that would be well worth a visit also without a young family, as the opportunities for hiking, climbing, cycling and a whole host of other pursuits had us drooling. Some may ungraciously say that we were grateful that the kids were here as an excuse not to do all those things. But that would be harsh. Paola was itching to put on her boots again.

We left Calafate as we came in, by airplane to Buenos Aires. Actually, it was supposed to be to Trelew, but an ugly volcanic ash cloud saw to it that we carried on in the plane out of Patagonia and back to Buenos Aires for a night.

 

We book-ended our visit to the Iguazu falls with a 24 hour delayed flight due to ash clouds at the start, and a missed flight due to incompetence at the end. But between these two events lay one of the most spectacular natural sights we have seen this trip. Up there with the glaciers of Patagonia, as like the glaciers, it brought together beauty, scale and raw natural brute force.

We stayed at the heavenly Hotel Jasy in Argentinian Iguazu. The rooms are like cabins, and ours was two levels, with a double bed for Paola and I on the top level overlooking the bigger room mezzanine style where the four children slept. Small but perfectly formed pool, and a short walk to the centre of the town. The children LOVED it.

This part of our trip was unashamedly about relaxing and slowing the pace with the four kids. Of the 6 days we were there, half of them involved nothing more than chilling out and swimming in the pool (with the exception of the ever-present schoolwork for the boys), and strolling into town for a meal. But the trips we took out… now there was something to expand your heart.

Our first sighting of the falls was the immense spray visible from the plane as we flew in from Buenos Aires. You see a large jungle area, and there like a steaming gash in the middle of it are the falls. You don’t fly in close enough to see the falls themselves, but you do very clearly see the spray rising up out of a break in the forests.

We drove first to the Brazilian side of the falls. Due to a variety of timing issues and delays, we had to see this side pretty quickly. Not an issue, as the best views are from Argentina. But we got our first true panoramic view of the falls from atop a viewing balcony. And it was a breathtaking sight.

While in Brazil, we took in a bird sanctuary with a huge array of different birds and a path for us to walk through amongst them. We got very familiar with a few, to the extent that one was clearly comfortable enough to deliver a fairly substantial payload on my shoulder and neck from close range. Alvaro was in seventh heaven with the toucans, macaws and parrots (and found an eighth in his ice cream later).

Having seen the falls from a distance in the plane, we were inexorably attracted to getting a closer bird’s eye view with a helicopter. As luck would have it, there was a helipad across the road from the aviary! And so we got a ride in a helicopter to ourselves – a benefit of a large family. The boys were bouncing in excitement. A dash below the rotors, with a quick stop for photos, and we were installed and taking off.

We had whizzed across the top of a forest canopy in our zip line experience in Costa Rica, and this helicopter trip did not match that for adrenalin. However, swooping across the top at speed and the tilt as we turn to home in on the falls provides a rush of its own. We flew directly above the falls at a relatively close range in loops (video to be added once I have a working laptop). It was an incredible way to appreciate how long and multi-layered these falls are. It had taken Paola and I 43 years before we got our first real helicopter ride. It took our youngest 3 years.

Having seen them from plane, helicopter and viewing balcony, we embarked a couple of days later at getting up close and personal. The captain of the boat that took us to our closest waterborne view had obviously done this before, as his understanding of the limits of personal space was more Italian than British, albeit applied to a waterfall.

Drenched doesn’t come close. We sprinted at full pelt at the face of our section of the falls, and then teased with repeated approaches and retreats, getting a soaking with each one. It was a game of chicken against the waterfall. Same adrenalin, more fun, and much, much wetter.

We continued along the maze of paths and bridges to see many different views of the various parts of these falls (there are 175 individual falls in this range) until the climax at Devil’s Throat. We approached via a network of stilted pathways, some over forest, others over water, until a long straight walk with the roar of water impatient to make its point at the end.

I’ve been to the Niagara falls, the biggest in the world. But they cannot match this for majesty. These falls are higher, and are made of layer upon layer, of curves and straights, and constrained a multitude of rainbows within this curved stretch which is shaped absolutely like the throat of an enormous beast. I would challenge anyone to write a description that comes close to the beauty and brutality of what we saw. Cameras were frustrating, as no shot was able to capture its drama even in picture form. This was one of those experiences where seeing it live is unlike anything you could feel by reading about it or countless albums. Regardless, here are some of our meagre attempts at canning beauty.

This was a place it was very difficult to leave. The same gravitational pull that thrusts the water down with such graceful violence kept Paola and I there transfixed and unable to pull away. Even the jostle of tourists looking for the perfect photo couldn’t spoil it (though it had a pretty good go at it). I yearned for silence walking back, just to try to take it all in – this needed digesting. But four children don’t give you that privilege.

I can fully understand how these falls came to rate amongst the seven natural wonders of the world. There is so little of this planet that we’ve seen, but to imagine six like these would already be beyond my comprehension. Fully sated, and yet teased by how little time we spent in from of the falls when we felt like we could just sit there for an eternity, we moved on.

To the fiasco of the two Iguazus…