Bahia Exploradores!

On something of a lark, I decided to make a detour from the not so beaten track of the Carreterra Austral and head west, to a place called Bahia Exploradores. The map showed a road in construction heading towards the sea, and the Campo de Hielo Norte, and Laguna San Rafael. I decided to give it a try and see what I could see. I feel that I was rewarded mightily for my curiousity.
Along the rainy and cloudy route I was given great views of glaciers, waterfalls, and forest. For whatever reason, I was keeping my eyes out for a horn of a cow. Ever since Futaleufu, where I drank mate from a horn, I had wanted my own. My quest was answered when I spotted a carcass by the roadside. Feeling very man versus wild, I used a stick to drag the skull out of a bog. It´s brains were leaking out of it´s eye socket and it stank something fierce, but before I knew exactly what was happening, there was a horn in my hand. I washed it thoroughly in another bog across the road, wrapped it in a plastic bag and attached it to my heap of goods on top of my backpack. I had got it.
I rode on towards the west, charged by this experience. I continued to admire the glaciers and mountains, and even the rain that was beginning to fall harder. After 52km, I came across a small cabin that served as a center for glacier viewing and trekking. I asked where the road led, what I could see from the end, and where I could camp for the night. I pressed on another ten kilometers to the end of the road, and then headed back to the Sendero Interpretivo, where after drinking mate and walking up to see the glacier (this is where I dropped my camera, and could not longer see the screen. Pictures from here on are taken blind), I was invited to stay the night inside. Mauricio, Tabatha and another young guy whose name I forget served me bread; Tabatha and I walked to the river to fetch a chunk of ice that had floated from the glacier. Along with two other Chilean travelers, we drank rum with ice from the glacier and cooked dinner. It was great company.
The next day I walked on the glacier. Yep, I walked on the glacier, Ventisquero Exploradores. It was incredible. They outfitted me with crampons, gaiters and a small backpack, and a group of six of us went hiking for six hours or so. It took about an hour and a half to reach the clean, white part of the ice where the amazing blue and turquoise caverns and crevasses are. I was given great latitude to peer into these cascades of ice-water, drop rocks into deep holes in the ice, try my hand at climbing with axes. It was a great experience.
The ice in general was much dirtier than I imagined, as the rocks tend to rise to the top and the ice goes to the bottom. There were many incredible rocks, ones that seemed to be fused together out of several different ones by the immense pressures of so much ice. I felt very fortunate for this experience.
I was a bit worried about getting back to Puerto Rio Tranquilo, as I wanted badly to get back this same day. After many hours hiking I was hungry, and only had pasta for dinner. I stuck out my thumb, and after twenty minutes the first pickup truck that came by took me 52km back to Puerto Rio Tranquilo, where I camped for free by the lakeside and went to eat dinner at the nearest restaurant. Yeah! I was back.

Puerto Rio Tranquilo and the Capillas de Marmol

I left Villa Cerro Castillo with a bit of a hangover. The return to ripio (the dirt and rock road) was tough going for the first ten kilometers, and I was tempted to walk my bike up parts of the hill. But I stubbornly persisted for sixty kilometers, and by the next afternoon I was in Puerto Rio Tranquilo, a mellow town on the shore of Lago General Carrerra. This is an enormous, rich blue-green lake that extends into both Chile and Argentina, but is called by a different name in Argentina. I stayed only on the Chilean side of things, and as it was the afternoon and I met up with another cyclist in town, the two of us together paid 25,000 pesos (about 20 bucks each) to visit the Capillas de Marmol, marble rock formations I had been told in Coyhaique were spectacular. They are. For about an hour, we puttered around through tunnels, into caves and into a bay where the capillas sit. There are pictures of these wonders all over the internet, and hopefully mine will appear on flickr. It was grand, and writing about it here without having the pictures to really demonstrate the emotion generated by being in their presence is difficult. I sat contentedly in the boat gazing at these giant lumps of marble floating thirty feet from the shore. The more luxurious way to visit the Capillas is to rent a kayak and a guide, and maybe someday I will have this opportunity. On the ride back, I sat in the front of the boat, feeling the spray from the water against my face, bouncing along with the growing waves of the late afternoon.

Coyhaique to Villa Cerro Castillo

I departed Coyhaique and the awesome Kooch Hostel (Kooch is the name of the local indigenous gods) on a Saturday, and I had been given word that there was a festival in the next town, Villa Cerro Castillo. I determined to make the 100km trip in one day, and as it was entirely paved this proved to be no problem. For much of it, I was not very excited by the landscapes. That, and the long ascent up Paso Ingerio Ibanez, was making for an unexciting day. But the last twenty kilometers were astounding. Along with the two Chilean guys I caught up to, I entered this canyon that had cool rock features and colors on both sides of the road. I was beginning to be pleased.
And soon thereafter, the canyon opened up into an amazingly vast valley, and I could see Cerro Castillo and several other mountains. I was kind of blown away, because I hadn´t quite put together the ´cerro´(mountain) part of Villa Cerro Castillo, and wasn´t really expecting the rocky, glaciared brilliance that I was now so near. A long, twisting descent (Villa Cerro Castillo Bomb!) that made me long for a mini-bike, my yellow glasses and a helmet cam, brought me into the midst of the villa, where, true to the gossip, there was something of a festival going on.
In town, I bought myself a beer, watched some gambling game kind of like bocce, took some photos, and ended up making friends with some hoodlums from Coyhaique. I desregarded the ´Viva los Chargers´shirt one of them was wearing, and proceeded to drink red wine from a leather bag or bote, white wine from a melon, and visit the aunt of Robinson to drink mate in her ante-room. Eventually, I passed out in Robinson´s tent, and, as they were all ¨camping¨without any sleeping bags or other gear, Alvaro joined me after he partied for a few more hours. It was cute and awesome.

I´m in El Chalten!

It´s not a very catchy title, I know, but I´m faced with two weeks of this awesome life to recap, and I am going to have to approach it episodically. Consider this as an introduction, and something of a recap. Amidst all the great experiences I have had, the overriding feat is that I rode to the end of the Carreterra Austral! Through many beautiful sparsely populated places and small towns, crossing two lakes on ferries, smashing some singletrack touring, hiking around another lake, I have come to arrive in Argentina´s frontier town of El Chalten. Among all the Gore-Texed gringos with trekking poles and leather boots there are some serious ice-climbers here, as we are very close to Mount Fitz-Roy and Cerro Torre, two very impressive peaks. This is known as Argentina´s capital of trekking, and I just got back from a four day hike in the rain and cold at the bottom of those peaks. I could not really see the tops of these biggest mountains, but breathing the air, sleeping near glaciars, hiking through the rain while most everybody else was in town was a pleasant and rugged experience. I´m back to the free camping on the outskirts of town, spending my money instead on bife de chorizo, empanadas, cookies and ice cream. I´ve got to bulk up for the next leg of my trip to El Calafate and the Perito Moreno glaciar, which are a few days away by bike. If the weather clears, I may throw in another hike of a couple days to try to see the mountains again. This is marvelous.

Notes: I just waited about thirty minutes to load a few photos of the cloud-shrouded mountains, and me, elated, free of the bicycle on a hike around Lago del Desierto, and found no progress. So, I will count on Flickr later to push through some pictures. Also, as will be recounted in another post, I dropped my camera a couple of times, and while it still takes pictures, the screen is irreparably damaged, and I cannot see exactly what I am taking a picture of until I find a computer. So, some of these pictures may not be impressive. I will be cherry picking, to be sure. (In case there was any doubt, this is still marvelous).