BIKING BARILOCHE: While Bariloche is a beautiful town surrounded by lakes and snow capped mountains, it will forever be remembered by us as the place where we nearly got famous. We had spent the previous day cycling around and exploring Lago (Lake) Nahuel Huapi and some of treks which lead up to the amazing breathtaking views of the area and ended up the following day in nearby Isla del Mar with mountain bikes. As we were admiring the lake side view prior to our entry into the national park, we chatted to a friendly local / TV presenter using our best Spanglish. Our friendly local seemed to be frustrated at not being able to convey a request to us properly. Following the assistance of another friendly local turned interpreter, we understood that we were originally being asked to appear on an Argentinean sports TV programme. Clearly we must have looked impressive with our mountain bikes but unfortunately our TV presenter friend informed us that the interview wouldn’t really work with an interpreter and we were therefore gently let down. Oh well, nearly famous! We still had a good day on our mountain bikes in what may well have been Kirsty’s last mountain bike ride. It turns out that Kirsty now considers that cycling around and over tree roots and rocks isn’t really that easy after all and future such activities will be left to Rodney.
RED MEAT AND VINO: Argentina and Chile are the homes of good, cheap and delicious red wine and steak. Picture this: Dinner with a cheap bottle of red wine of the Malbec variety (our new favourite), which feels like it should have cost a lot more and certainly would have had it been on sale in New Zealand. A massive portion of juicy, tender steak – often up to 700 grams in size. And no, 700 grams is not too much meat to eat in one sitting. We did learn the hard way to be careful exactly how a rare steak is asked for – on one occasion something was definitely lost in translation and we were served with steak so rare that it was potentially still mooing. The Argentineans and Chileans are on to a good thing and this is potentially a concept to bring home; after all, who would refuse a dinner of nice steak and red wine?
BIG ICE: Following a fantastic 5 days trekking in the beautifully mountainous and extremely windy El Chalten, we spent a day just out of El Calafate at the Puerto Morino Glacier pretending to be ice explorers. This glacier is massive and utterly impressive to look at; its 60 metre jagged iced peaks break off and land continuously in a thunderous roar that makes everyone pause to spot the action. On top of this, the glacier is 30kms long and 5 kms wide and is actually growing. While the weather on the day was decidedly Patagonian – windy, cold, with icy rain and sleet – we still had a great time strapping crampons to our boots, enjoying the feeling of not slipping on an icy surface and admired what we saw. Our guide was one of the many passionate Argentinean rugby fans who we have met and was very excited about the possibility of staying with us during the rugby world cup and watching the All Blacks play the Pumas in the finals. Our very wet day ended nicely after our departure from the ice – we were rewarded with a nice fire and a glass of scotch to warm us up. Nice.
TREKKING TORRES DEL PAINE: After deciding that we couldn’t afford / nor wanted to spend the dollars to go on a guided expedition of Torres del Paine, we decided to go it alone and along with a couple of American friends we met in Bariloche, hired the necessary tents and loaded up our backpacks to complete the circuit and W loop of the national park. The scenery would definitely rival that of our Nepal trekking – we spent 6 days walking in forests, alongside granite towers, lakes, glaciers and surrounded by snow capped mountains. We were treated to a complete variety of weather as well – during our trek we saw everything from snow, sleet, sun, wind to rain. While nothing that could hamper our spirits too much, the 25km a day average walking contributing to a total of over 150kms, was definitely hard work.
BUSY BUENOS AIRES: This is a city that never sleeps. Even when we were simply wandering around, there would be all sorts of things to look at – people , markets, amazing graffiti art and musicians and tango dancers busking on the street. The locals in Buenos Aires have a real love of music and we saw a lot of live music including a big drum show called Time Bomb. To get a real feel of local culture we went along to a Boca Juniors v Quimes football game. The atmosphere was absolutely electric with drumming, singing and chanting. It became reasonably obvious fairly quickly that the opposing fans did not like each other. While it may be a good idea to separate the fans, it wasn’t such a great idea to have the opposition Quimes fans seated directly above all the Boca fans; in no time at all we had all sorts of arsenal aimed at us (fortunately we were under cover), ranging from plastic bottles to balloons full of urine. We were also locked in the stadium for a full 45 minutes after the game finished, allowing the Quimes fans to leave peacefully.
We personally sampled the Argentinean love of tango with a tango lesson. While we are both agreed that we had lots of fun but were pretty dismal as tango dancers, the cause of our dancing difficulty is currently a matter for dispute. According to Kirsty, the main problem was that Rodney kept on standing on her feet and she was forced to make quite an effort to avoid his feet. According to Rodney and possibly the tango teacher, the fact that Kirsty was not really allowing Rodney to lead was causing quite a few problems. After our lesson we decided that we should watch a show to see how the professionals dance. Something may have been lost in translation because the show we went to had no dancers but was in fact a tango music show. While initially confused, we were soon really pleased to be there as the music was top quality and the singer was apparently a top Argentinean actress.
While cyclists commuting around New Zealand may have their fair show of difficulties with motor vehicle drivers, Buenos Aires cyclists probably have it worse. In short, the drivers here are crazy!!! We were told about a Crictal Mass bike protest aimed at improving safety for cyclists and decided we had to be a part of it. We rented bright orange retro styled bikes and met with 800 plus other cyclists and literally blocked a whole major road and motor way as the mass cycled down it. We received lots of support along the way and all in all, it was a neat thing to be part of and certainly a cause which we support.
THE MIGHTY FU: We spent an action packed week camping on the Futaleufu River (Chile) as part of a trip with a company called Bio Bio. The camp itself is in isolated agricultural surroundings right on the river and nestled between snow capped mountains. We didn’t have too much spare time as we rafted, kayacked, duckied (inflatable kayak), fished, biked, ran and went horse riding during our stay. The big water grade 4 and 5 rapids are some of the most highly regarded in the world and definitely kept the adrenalin going at all times! While the days may have been busy, the evenings were a great wind down with a sauna, outdoor hot tub, good wine and even better food. Definitely a great way to finish off the year!
We are now in Santiago, Chile doing some last minute missions as we prepare for our return to New Zealand. We’d like to thank everyone for their support over the last year and to everyone we met on our way around the world thank you for helping make it an AWESOME adventure. Hope everyone has a Merry Christmas and to everyone in NZ, see you all soon!!!!
FYI all photos from Chile and Argentina are now on flickr. If you want to check them out go to http://www.flickr.com/photos/rodneykirsty/sets/
Chao,
Love Rodney and Kirsty.
Loveley show at Buenos Aires is the Time bomb, near the abasto. I enojy it so mucho, the band is incredible and people love. The last day at the city in the hotel downtown buenos aires recommend that show and it was amazing.
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