Our short encounter with ARGENTINA- El Calafate and El Chalten

The crossing into Argentina was fairly smooth, and after 7 hours we arrived in the town of el calafate. The accommodation prices meant that we had to suck it up and go for dorm rooms in a hostel- something we had managed to avoid so far. It wasnt the worst place by far but we were not used to being woken up by people entering and leaving the room late at night or early in the morning.

The tourists that visit Patagonia seem to be mainly either hardcore hikers with their tents and powdered mashed potato, or older people, most likely retired and able to spend money on nice hotels, tours and being fully kitted out with the best hiking attire, including hiking poles which are not actually needed for the short hikes their tours take them on. All the shops and restaurants were similar to UK prices if not higher, which meant we mainly resorted to cooking pasta with slight variations of vegetables at the hostel, which got boring fairly quickly. On the plus side, the wine was still extremely cheap- £1.50 a bottle. Shaaame.

Crazy birds doing crazy neck stretches 

Walking by the lake in El Calafate

Very Important Pup

The main place to visit in el calafate is the perrito morener glacier- about an hours drive from the town. We had seen glaciers before in New Zealand and glimpsed one in Chile, and from what we had seen they were just a big block of grey ice in the distance, so our expectations were not high. 

This glacier was definitely not the same. If you want your mind blown by a massive icy beast this is definitely the place to come. 

They said there would be ice, we paid to see ice....where is it?

Ah that might be it

The glacier and Jonno's hair, both competing for the title of Most Jagged and Unruly

Even the clouds are showing off

Metal walkways let you walk around the glacier, which is actually growing in size compared to all the others we have seen that are shrinking. It is 5km wide, and 74 metres tall. And as you watch it, you can hear the ice groaning and cracking, even seeing parts of it crumble and crash into the water. Seriously nature, you have done well here. We were also entertained by some of the other tourists and their attempts to get the perfect shot or video- one older lady wouldn't let her husband get a cereal bar out of her bag as she was so fixated on getting a video of the glacier breaking. We saw the same couple a few more times over the next few days, and were concerned that he was wasting away after the abuse we witnessed.

Ice ice baby

Videos of the ice breaking- we were not the only ones who were impressed! We hope Jerry got it too!

We also visited a museum of the history of Patagonia, starting from the dinosaurs who lived in the area including the Mylodon and Giganotosaurus, to the first civilisations and how they survived in the harsh and bleak area. At the beginning we were basically given a photocopied textbook of all the information, then had to sit and study it in front of a replica dinosaur.

Wouldn't trust this with a china tea set

We knew from our research that Argentina wasn't going to be a cheap place, but it was only when we had a free afternoon and sat down to plan out route that we realised that our original plan might drain our bank accounts more than we hoped. In the last few years, the economy has been very unstable and the prices of things have been massively inflated. We had wanted to travel back up the continent on the Argentina side, and visiting San Carlos De bariloche, Mendoza, Puerto madryn and Buenos Aires. However, after looking at the bus options, we discovered that each bus journey was going to be around £100 each (totaling around £1,000 for us both for the whole country), for what are apparently awful buses and would involve multiple journeys of 24 hours or more. We also checked flights, but the government puts a tourist tax on these and were also expensive. We spoke to people who had hitchhiked through the country, but we didn't feel this was something we wanted to do. After a frustrating few hours of trying to work a way around it, we came to the reluctant decision that maybe it was better for us to miss out the majority of Argentina for this trip, and to come back when either the exchange rate is more in our favour or when we can do it as a nice holiday rather than trying to work it on a backpacker budget. 

We checked flights and it was far cheaper for us to backtrack to Chile and then take a flight back up to Bolivia, so this is what we decided on. Before then, we could get the bus a little further to El Chalten and spend a few days here, making the most of our short time in Argentina.

Overlooking El Chalten

El Chalten was a 3 hour bus ride away, and is in a national park, which meant that the main activity was hiking.  Amazingly, they didn't charge an entry fee to the area, and also the hikes all started from the town, meaning we didn't have to stick to bus timetables to decide when we started our hikes. Again, we stayed in a dorm room in a hostel, which was overrun by earwig looking bugs, Jonno found one in his coffee and I found one in my bra as I was about to put it on. 

Seeing as we arrived at 11am, we decided to try 2 of the short easy hikes that day- one to a waterfall and the other to some viewpoints with some great views. As we had finished the second hike, I turned the corner and saw people taking pictures of something. Before I knew it an armadillo was heading straight for me- it bumped into my foot, hesitated apologetically for a second and then waddled away before I had a chance to introduce myself.

AHMAGAWD

Please stay and chat!

We had 2 days left and 2 hikes we wanted to do- an 18km 6 hour one to Laguna des Torres and a 20km 8 hour one to Laguna de Los Tres. We decided to start with the shorter one, and even though it was forecast for rain in the middle of the day, there was no clouds in the sky when we started, just a strong wind. After about 5km, we started feeling a few drops of rain but still there were hardly any clouds. By the time we had reached the Lagoon, the weather was do horrific we were struggling to stand upright and had to hide behind a rock with a guy who had been waiting an hour for the weather to improve. The clouds were so thick we couldn't really see the lagoon much. Defeated, we started heading back towards the town, and the further away from the lagoon we got the better the weather, and it was perfect sunshine for the last few kilometres. 

Looks allright..

...Okay maybe a little grey...

#Nofilter, a sight worth a 9km hike

The next day we decided to tackle the long hike. The first 9km were not so bad, until the last kilometre to get to the viewpoint of the Laguna de Los tres, which was a steep scramble up rocks but the views were pretty rewarding at the top.

Hello lagoon

To get back to Punto arenas for our flight to Bolivia, we had to go back the same route, bear hunt style. El chalten to el calafate, same hostel in el calafate, then back to Puerto Natales then back to Punto arenas. We stayed at the same lovely Airbnb for the 24 hours we had in Punto arenas, where the son of the family offered to take us and their other guest on a tour of the city.

Even though we only spent 9 days in Argentina, it seemed like a country worth exploring and we will definitely be planning a return trip to see more in the future! 

Vang Vieng

Sleepy eyed, we emerged from the bus at 5am onto a deserted road in Vang Vieng. After a check of the map, we discovered that the main guest house area was only a 15 minute walk away. So despite the tuk tuk driver's protests, us, the Italian couple and another guy from Holland began walking along the dark road, Jonno with his phone in hand to be the map reader. A few meters down the road and I heard some angry mutterings behind me. I turned around to find Jonno trying to pick up his phone from the floor- it had come out of its case and fallen on the road, causing the screen to smash. If he wasn't so tired I would have moved out of the way quickly in case he turned into a rampaging bull, but instead he just tried to brush off the loose bits of broken glass to try and see the rest of the map. We arrived at the road where the guest houses began, tried one but it was full, tried another but they wanted to charge us extra for an early check in, and then tried a third which, like goldilocks also discovered, was just right. We hopped into bed and got a few hours more sleep before trying to work out the extent of the damage of Jonno's poor phone.

It turned out that part from the screen everything else was working okay, but with the chance of finding somewhere to repair the screen being very slim, it looked like new phone purchase was in order, Not only that, but part of my screen had also stopped responding a few days before, so in fact we needed two new phones. A bit of a pain but at least we have been under budget for most days and we were sure to find some cheap phones in Southeast Asia. 

Poor phone!

The town of Vang Vieng is most well known for something called Tubing, which is effectively going down a river with beautiful scenery in a rubber ring. However, it was not this aspect that has attracted so many tourists and travellers, but the fact that all along the river were bars and pubs, with very cheap drinks and often giving out free shots. Added onto that the bars had constructed swings and platforms that the wasted tourists could jump from into the river, plus a very strong current, and it’s no wonder that in 2011 alone 27 people died while tubing. The government decided in 2012 that this many tourists dying might not be a very good thing, and so ordered the bars to close down except for a couple who then were supposed to have lots of restrictions put upon them. This has meant that far less people now visit, and the town is left with lots of bars that are pretty much deserted.

 A good article on the effect of the tubing on Vang Vieng:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/apr/07/vang-vieng-laos-party-town

However, never fear, because another group of people have shown a great interest in Vang Vieng. A Korean company decided to do a programme/advert in Vang Vieng, to which the Koreans responded by flocking there in huge numbers, often in matching t-shirts or wearing life jackets and extreme sports wear while walking down the high street in town. So the town now has a new purpose. 

We weren’t quite sure what our reason for going was, more out of curiosity than anything else probably, as to what this strange mix of deserted bars with big groups of Koreans walking past would be like. So when we felt a bit more rested, we went out to explore.

It was pretty much as described, and we spent a while wandering the streets, stopping every couple of hours for a fruit shake as the weather was pretty hot. One cafe we found played a constant roll of 'Friends', to which the cafe over the road saw that this was good for business so they too began playing 'Friends'. Nothing like being surrounded by traditional culture.

In the evening we found a pizza restaurant and decided to treat ourselves to some western food. Alongside the menu came another page of writing, describing all sorts of drugs they could slip into food or drink for you, including the happy pizza which was a special kind of mushroom pizza. Behind us a group of guys were laughing hysterically, I have no idea why.

We had heard that Vang Vieng was also good for seeing caves and waterfalls, not that we hadn’t seen many of these already but it gave us something to do. Apparently there was one where you could rent a tube as the cave was filled with water, and float through it. This sounded a bit different, so we thought we would give it a go. We rented another horrendous semi-automatic bike for a day and set off with a written set of directions from a travel website.

The directions said the cave would be about 15 km out of town and there would be a sign for the 'water cave', but 45 minutes in and there was still no sign to be seen. We assumed we missed the sign so turned back, but we arrived back in town again and had seen no sign on the way back either. We tried asking a few of the locals but they spoke no English and shook their head when we said 'water cave'- it did not say what it might be called in Lao and we hadn't looked it up. So we decided to head back towards the hotel to find some Wi-Fi to look it up, and once we had the Lao name for the water cave we set off again. After what was about 15km and still no sign we stopped and asked another local who pointed us in the direction- it was around the place we had turned around earlier. 

Along the way we saw another sign for a cave, which we thought we might as well check out. After parking up, the signs lead us across a tiny wobbly bridge over the river and down some more path. We had to go past one of the tubing bars which was still open which was basically deserted but with loud dance music playing anyway, and soon after we came to the entrance. We paid an entrance ticket, were handed 2 torches and pointed in the direction of up. After a 20 minute climb we reached the cave, which seemed to have nobody else in it. The climb down into the cave was steep and slippery, and it was almost completely dark except for our torch lights and the faint light of the cave entrance in the distance. The centre of the cave had a large pool of water in it, and while leaping between rocks sticking out of the water we almost expected to find a Horcrux or at least Dumbledore down there. 

We climbed back up, found the bike again and carried on until we finally spotted a tiny sign with 'water cave' written on it, and turned into the dirt road to get there. Unfortunately, it being the rainy season, this wasn’t as easy as it should have been to drive down this road and again we were faced with huge muddy puddles that spanned across the whole path and we slipped and slid through them, feeling very unsteady on an already unreliable bike.

We got to what looked like an entrance booth on a bridge, and assuming it was the entrance to the cave just across the bridge, we parked the bike and paid the 2 pounds to get in. We were not sure what to do with my bag and where to get the tube from but we guessed it would be just around the corner. After crossing the bridge and walking a bit further, we realised that we had just paid for the bridge crossing and nothing else. We carried on a bit further and came to a small village with a signpost for some caves. Not being too sure which one was the water cave, we asked a rugged looking guy who had been following us for about 5 minutes. Expecting him to point to a direction, he beckoned us and started walking, so we followed. We followed him through a village, through some rice paddies and down some more paths, where we passed a few water) pipes draining out into the ground and he exclaimed 'waterfall!' and found this extremely funny. After another few minutes we reached a big sign for the water cave. This was obviously a popular spot for the Korean tourists, as there were swarms of them here. We asked where the entrance for the water cave was, and were told that unfortunately the water cave had too much water so was closed at the moment. If we wanted to we could visit a different cave where you could wade through some water. This didn't really sound as appealing, so we turned around and started back towards the bike. The rugged man began following us now, asking for some payment for bringing us here, even though he knew it was closed and could have told us this in the first place. So we picked up the pace, and walked as quickly as we could back through the fields and back to the bike. Not a great success considering we had spent half of the day searching for a place that wasn't accessible anyway. 

The other destination on our list for the day was a place called 'blue lagoon'. Apparently it was a beautiful place to chill out and swim, which sounded pretty good to us as we were now hot and tired. To get there, we had to drive all the way back through town, and then follow a path there. We managed to get back to town okay, and eventually found the direction to the lagoon. We had to cross a bridge first, which was a wooden structure which had two raised planks on each side and a lower plank in the middle. Before you got on the bridge a split second decision needed to be made as to which path to take- the raised planks were narrower so you had to keep the bike in a perfectly straight line. The lower one was wider but put you at risk of oncoming traffic as it was right in the middle. Jonno chose the centre one, which was fine until he thought he saw a vehicle coming towards us, and tried to swerve to the side. Unfortunately this didn't go as smoothly as intended, the bike wheel did not manage the step up side on, and the bike came sliding the floor, bringing us down with it. Luckily we were only on a wooden bridge, so only came out with a few bruises and the bike wasn't that damaged, but it did shake us up for a bit. But we didn’t have much time and had to continue to the lagoon. Another issue- we were a bit low on fuel, but it seemed like it would be enough to get us there and back as we didn’t think it would be too far.

The path was a lot longer than expected and the conditions deteriorated fairly rapidly, turning into another deadly slippery mud slide where we had to try and weave around to find the best parts of the road which was generally pretty bad anyway. We finally reached the lagoon entrance, and had either come at the wrong time of year or it had been falsely advertised- it seemed more of an oversized brown puddle. Nevertheless, we had struggled a lot to get here so we just wanted to chill for a bit. This was another popular spot for the Koreans, and a gaggle of them were crowded around one part, where a tree branch was hanging over the water and some of them were taking turns to tentatively jump off it into the water, while the others make a loud 'oooooooo' sound. 

What the Blue Lagoon apparently was supposed to look like...

....VS what it was actually like

Koreans jumping from trees

There were some huts by the side of the water, we claimed one for our own and I went to test out the water. I slid down the muddy bank into the swirling brown liquid, and soon realised if I didn't keep swimming against the current then I would be carried off with it. Our entrance ticket also allowed us access to the on-site cave, so we thought we might as well heck it out. After another sweaty climb we reached it, and it turned out to be a fairly disappointing one- a big hole in a rock.

Standard cave

We then looked at the time and realized that 1) The area would be closing in about 5 minutes, and 2) It would be getting dark in about half an hour and we had the horrendous road to tackle again, and we didn’t need the added difficulty of doing it in darkness. So we hurried back down the rocks and hopped back on the bike. Our fuel gauge was now on empty, and there was nowhere that looked even remotely like it would sell fuel down the dirt tracks, so this added another element of stress that we might run out at any minute and have to wheel the bike 12km to the nearest road.

I can safely say this was definitely not one of my favourite bike experiences, and even though Jonno had mentioned a few days prior that the idea of dirt biking appealed to him, he was pretty stressed too. The few times I looked to the sides I could see some amazing scenery and a beautiful sunset, but there was no time to stop and appreciate it and we were definitely not in the right frame of mind for looking at scenery. We just wanted to make it back. Then the fuel gauge went below the ‘E’ and I was convinced the bike would sputter to a halt at any minute, but miraculously it made it through and we reached the road and breathed a huge sigh of relief. Another two minutes down the road and we were back at the scooter rental place, hoping they wouldn’t notice that the wing mirror was slightly out of place from where we came off (luckily they didn’t).

The following day we had planned to give the tubing a try, even though we were not going to be getting wasted at the bars along the river we thought a gentle drift down the river would be quite nice. We walked into town and went to find the tube rental area. We discovered that the price of the tube rental was more than we initially expected (about 5 pounds per tube with a 10 pound deposit) and we would have to pay extra to rent a waterproof bag. They were selling mini waterproof bags over the road for a lot cheaper so we decided to buy one of those and leave the rest of the things at the guest house. As I went upstairs to put the things in the room, Jonno stayed in the reception area and started talking to the Italian couple that we had met on the bus about what they had been doing in Vang Vieng. I came back down and joined in the conversation, and soon we had settled into chairs next to them and made ourselves a coffee from the free machine. They had been travelling for almost a year, and worked for a while in Australia, which we wanted a bit more information on. They brought down their bags from their room to check out, and we were amazed at how little they had with them- the size of their main luggage was about the same size of our smaller backpacks. We asked them their secret, and basically it was just that they didn’t have anything! Any warm clothes they used in Australia they gave away, and left themselves with basically 3 changes of clothes. After seeing that it can be done, we did try to be ruthless and throw some things in our luggage out, but still have not achieved anything near that small!

After a few more hours of chatting, we were all ready for lunch and seeing as it was probably too late to start tubing, we decided just to stay with the Italian couple and have lunch with them. We have spoken to a few people since who went tubing, apparently it was good for getting extremely drunk but the bars tried to keep people there so they would miss the 6pm deadline to return the tubes and have to lose their deposit. Also we were told that it was pretty scary at times as the current was so strong and people narrowly missed colliding with rocks, so we probably chose the safer option! So even though the government have tried to put restrictions in place it was obviously still a problem. We spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing, and booked our next bus to Vientiane for the next morning. We were not that taken with Vang Vieng really, mostly because we are neither Korean nor the kind of people that go out and get wasted every night, so it was time to move on. 

(Apologies for the lack of photos, the ones on my phone did not get saved on the laptop before it was sent home and we didn't get chance to take many photos while negotiating the muddy tracks on the bike)