Tag Archives: Landscape

Tierra del Fuego – 2: Cowardice (or common sense?) strikes

Leave a Reply

18th March 2018

The next day saw us beside the Pia Glacier. Well, we had to take the captain’s word for it, as you couldn’t really see anything through the mists and rain, which was followed by sleet and then snow. So we spent the morning, apart from watching an interesting presentation about the five tribes of the Patagonian region (now almost entirely wiped out by a combination of thoughtlessness, disease and genocide), debating whether it was going to be worth taking the proposed expedition to see this alleged glacier. Perhaps the rain would ease, and we’d have a clear run?

It didn’t.

So we decided that discretion was the better part of valour and that the lure of a G&T outweighed that of a close-up of a glacier we’d be lucky to even see, let alone appreciate (besides which, we have other glaciers on our Patagonian itinerary, so making avoiding great discomfort to see this one a defensible choice). We got things about 50% right, in that it continued to rain and snow and be misty for almost all of the time. But it did actually clear for about 30 minutes, and the beauty of the scene became apparent. We took the opportunity to get some photos and video:

Pia Glacier

Above is the overall scene from the ship,  and this is a closer view of the glacier itself.

Pia Glacier

and here you can see some of the hardy folks from the ship on the shore by the glacier. For a few brief moments, the scene was a thing of beauty, before the weather closed in again.

A post shared by Steve Walker (@spwalker2016) on

Were we right to elect to stay in the warmth and comfort of the ship? There’s no knowing, but I hope that we will have better weather for when we see the Perito Morena Glacier in a few days’ time. As ever, stay tuned for that, and to see whether we actually make it to land at Cape Horn itself.

Mmmmmm…..Condor

4 Replies

15th March 2018

If the title of this post rings a bell, then you’re getting on a bit, just like me.

The condor is the iconic bird of the Andes (anyone remember a superb set of programmes on the Beeb several decades ago entitled “Flight of the Condor” and describing the geography of the Andes? No? Ah, well. They were great). On several occasions we were privileged to catch sight of one or two of these huge birds soaring magnificently above. So, when we were offered the chance to do a half-day excursion including a short hike with a chance of getting a better view, we could scarce believe our luck.

So it was we set out from the Singular Hotel in Puerto Natales, heading for Sofia Lake, about half an hour’s drive away. The driver pulled off the road on to a patch of grass at the start of the hike, and it was at that point that our guide, a really nice chap called Nicolas, explained that although the hike was just 420 metres, that was the vertical ascent we would have to climb, pointing as he did so at a couple of solitary trees at the top of a cliff:

It would be fair comment to say that my heart sank at this point, since I hadn’t climbed more than a flight of stairs for quite a while. So I accepted the offer of a loaned pair of walking poles with as much good grace as I could muster, and off we went.

Up. And up. And up.

Nicolas was very good and genuinely seemed to enjoy answering questions about the local flora and fauna. Jane told me later that her (very intelligent) questions may have sounded like a thirst for information, but were actually a tactic to give me a bit of a rest. So we learned a lot, particularly about plants and allied life forms on the way up. For example, some of the (mainly lenga, or beech) trees had a fungus growing on them which Nicolas called “Indian Bread” – edible but unrewarding without lots of seasoning, apparently.

It was also a good demonstration of the cleanliness of the air that there was lichen everywhere – old man’s beard and Spanish moss bedecked plants and trees all along our route (well, until we cleared the tree line, anyway):

And my legs and lungs were granted the occasional breather by the odd occasional photo opportunity as some great views crept into, well, view:

To cut a long and pantful story short, we eventually made it to the top. And immediately reaped the rewards, as the views were fantastic.

(Standing by one of those two solitary trees, it was just possible to make out the white speck of the minibus which brought us.)

But, even better, before too long a couple of condors and a juvenile came to check us out, and so we got a chance to see them flying at quite close quarters.

Surprisingly, young condors take a long time to learn to fly – around a year – as they are very heavy (a full-grown condor can weigh in at 14kg, and has a wingspan of nearly 4m, which makes me glad to know that they very, very rarely bother to pay attention to living creatures, but, unless food is exceedingly scarce, are strictly carrion eaters).

It was a real pleasure to see these iconic creatures a little closer to so that we could appreciate their mastery of the air!

Torres del Paine – scenery by the bucketload

Leave a Reply

14th March 2018

First, a word about the weather. We were based very near Puerto Natales, a small town which is about as far south of the equator as my home town in Surrey is north of it. However, there’s no gulf stream to temper the weather, so it’s pretty extreme, with temperatures varying from -15°C in Winter through to over 20°C in Summer, and strong winds driving very changeable conditions. By the end of the day, I have to say I was pretty pissed off with the ceaseless gale-force winds. But they did mean that the grey, misty, wet weather, such as we saw at the start of the day

Patagonia Autumn Weather

was eventually blown away and replaced by sunnier and less rainy conditions. But the wind didn’t let up for an instant.

Puerto Natales is a great place to use as a base for exploring a major tourist attraction, but also a significant conservation effort – the Torres del Paine National Park, a “paradise of 227,298 hectares and exceptional geography of imposing massifs, virgin forests and turquoise lakes.”

At this point, I think a word is in order about the roads. I would rate driving in the national park as something best left to experts, as the roads don’t have a tarmac surface – they are rough, rutted and pot-holed. Apart from possibily damaging tyres and/or suspension by driving yourself around, you’ll end up having to wipe the windows clean very frequently to get the mud off them.

“Torres” means towers, and Paine is the name of the principal river that is fed by the run off from the snow and ice that is a permanent feature of the towering rocks. “Paine”, by the way, is an aboriginal word meaning “blue”, and you’ll see how appropriate that is later on in this post.

However, this central massif is not the only attraction of the area. En route to the southern park entrance (yes, you have to pay to get in), you can visit the Mylodon Cave, a “natural monument” which is geologically very interesting, spanning 20,000 years of eolution of rock formations and native animals.

The animal that the caves are named after is, you guessed it, the Mylodon, a species of giant, ground-based sloth which went extinct some 5,000 years ago. At a viewpoint in the cave, the organisers obligingly have placed a life-sized model:

Mylodon life-size model
The cave is a substantial hole gouged out by glacial and water activity.

Inside the Mylodon Cave

Once having entered the Park, our next stop was the Grey Lake (so-called because of the colour of the sediment it carries), which debouches from the Grey Glacier.

The first hurdle on the walk to the shore of the lake is a suspension bridge, which is quite fun, albeit slightly alarming, to cross.

A post shared by Steve Walker (@spwalker2016) on

And then it’s a short walk to the shore of the lake. We were in luck, as near the shore there was an actual, real and beautifully blue iceberg which had broken off from the glacier.

Glacier in the Grey Lake

Glacier in the Grey Lake

From there, we moved on to the main course of the feast. Well, lunch, actually, but its situation, by the shores of Lake Pehoe (pronounced “pay-o-way”, meaning “hidden” in the aboriginal language), gave us the first taste of the magnificence of the central massif, the Torres del Paine.

Torres del Paine

The blue colour of the water is what lends the name “Paine” to the region. You were paying attention earlier, weren’t you?

The rest of the day was spent being blown away by the magnificent views in other parts of the national park and blown away by the ceaseless winds, which was quite wearisome by the end of the day. Unsurprisingly many of the views featured the central massif from various angles

Scenery in Torres del Paine National Park

but also of other areas. A friend of mine, Sue Foster, remarked once, about a visit she paid to the highlands of Scotland, that it was a “Wild And Lonely Place”. Sue invented the WALP Factor and so many areas of the national park are definitely WALP Factor 8!

A wild and lonely place

As well as dead wildlife such as the Mylodon mentioned earlier, there was a good selection of local fauna which were very much alive:

Guanaco

Guanaco – this one a young one standing sentinel to look out for predators such as puma or fox,

Rhea

Rhea (this is a rhea view of one),

Eagles (this is a black-chested eagle), and

Souther Crested Caracara

a Southern Crested Caracara (there are other varieties).

All in all the Torres del Paine is an excellent place to visit. I have friends who have hiked around the central massif, a process which takes several days, and so I suppose we only scratched the surface of what’s available. But we were lucky with the weather and it was a day well spent.