Justine and Dylan’s Travel Blog

Just to finish off, here’s a (heavily abbreviated) list of some of the highlights of our honeymoon…

• Watching the mists swirl in the wind and finally, in the end, reveal Machu Picchu (Peru) early in the morning of our last day of the Inca Trail
• Having the hike to Condoriri (one of the peaks in the Cordillera Real, near La Paz) base camp all to ourselves and watching the spectacular Andean landscape change as the snow laid down overnight melted throughout the day
• Watching red flamingos go about there business at the red coloured (and aptly named) Laguna Colorado (Bolivian Altiplano)
• Catching a glimpse into the crater from the rim of Vulcan Lascar (near San Pedro de Atacama, Chile) at 5480m and looking up to get an incredible view along a chain of other vulcanoes stretching off into the distance
• Having the stunningly varied hike around Refugio Frey and Refugio Lynch (near Bariloche, Argentina) all to ourselves on a beautiful sunny Xmas day
• Watching the sun rise over a cloudless Cerro Fitz Roy (anyone who’s been to Los Glaciaros NP in Patagonia can attest to how hard it is to catch a glimpse of the peak through ever-present clouds, let alone catch it on a cloudless morning)
• Walking into the natural amphitheatre formed by the peaks at the end of the (wind-swept) French Valley, having passed cascades, sliding waterfalls, crystal-clear streams, beautiful forests and dramatic (and regularly calving) hanging glaciers (Torres del Paine NP, Chile)
• Glacier walking at the base of Cerro Torre (Los Glaciaros NP, Argentina) on a beautiful sunny day
• Watching a deep red sunset envelop Manhattan, and in particular the Empire State building, from the top of the Rockefeller centre (New York)
• Waking up to find snow falling on the balcony of our guesthouse in Lower Pisang and walking through a stunning winter wonderland for most of the morning (Annapurna Circuit, Nepal)
• Early morning ascent up to the Thorung-La (pass), the highest point (5416m) of the Annapurna Circuit (Nepal) and and afternoon descent into Muktinath, on a perfect (and very bright!) day. Actually, the whole week from Manang to Marpha was pretty hard to beat. Spoilt for choice of highlights, I had to pick one
• Watching our plans for a walk up Bessho-san disappear under two inches of snow (laid down in about half an hour!). Very scenic though (near Fukuoka, Japan)
• Walking through a snow covered gorge with crystal-clear streams and waterfalls called Sandan-kyo (near Hiroshima, Japan) on a beautiful sunny day
• Staying at a secluded and ancient monastery (with sleeping quarters just out the back of one of the temples!) on Emei Shan in China (although had mixed feelings about being woken up by the chanting monks at 4am )
• Watching the sun rise over the rice paddies and karst limestone peaks in Chaolong (near Yangshuo, China)
• Lazing about on a picture-perfect beach on Koh Samui (Thailand)
• And last but not least: sharing all these highlights (except for one or two of the sunrises perhaps, a bit too early for some ) with Justine, who every day makes me feel like I’m the luckiest man alive

And, of course, just as important, our food highlights:

• Asado (barbeque) lamb in El Calafate, Argentina
• Some salmon dish prepared by our friends in Vancouver, Canada
• Cup Cakes in New York (somewhere close to the Library)
• Cold Stone Creamery (icecream) in Times Square, New York
• Some pork dish prepared by our friends in Groningen, Holland
• Sushi in Kyoto, Japan
• Okonomiyaki in Hiroshima, Japan
• Hida beef in Takayama, Japan (apparently similar to, but less established than Kobe beef)
• Steak in Hong Kong (after 4 weeks of trekking in Nepal )
• Some fish dish in one of the restaurants in the Muslim quarter (Xian, China)
• Most of the food around the Sichuan province… spicy! (Chengdu, China)

And finally, yes, I’m working on posting the photos… house- and job-hunting just might have to come first unfortunately

Before I forget and they become completely out of date…

• stands everywhere along the Inca Trail selling beer (called chicha, locally brewed along the track). Just what you need at the start of a casual walk up several thousand steps up a 4200m hill…
• a religious ceremony in Copacabana in Bolivia involving the local clergy blessing people’s… cars. Not just cars of course… cars decorated with flowers and covered in champagne with the hood open (so the engine could be blessed too)… who needs road-side assistance really
• dried Llama foetuses for sale at what is known as the Witches Market in La Paz. Not sure what they’re used for. Not something I figured I needed to at some point in time…
• soccer pitch at 5040m above sea level at a pass we drove over in the Altiplano in Bolivia. I was almost out of breath just sitting on the bus, would be interesting to see how long the people last that get together for their weekly runs on that soccer pitch…
• a rocket launch style count down from 10 to 0 as the Perito Moreno glacier (in Argentina) came into view… from our bus. It was a big glacier, but we weren’t exactly heading for outer space.
• wearing our goosedown winter jackets in mid-summer in Ushuaia. Apparently they were having a good spell of weather when we were there.
• celebrating New Years Eve in daylight (admittedly fading somewhat, but still) in southern Argentina. Could definitely make out the fireworks, but had the event been one hour earlier, there would’ve been some disappointed customers…
• British phone booths (you know, the red ones that everyone takes photos of in London) in… Buenos Aires. Apparently the Brits occupied the place for a bit at some stage (not sure when that was with the whole Spanish occupation, but anyway) and built some infrastructure as the Brits tended to do during their colonising days.

Anyway, not that many for two and a half months around South America. I guess they just don’t have as much originality as the Japanese when it comes to these things…

Alright, have been promising this for a little while, but they’re now all up (as always on www.dylanav.com). And by “all”, I mean approx. 1900 highlights (out of approx 7000 photos so far). Hmmm. Sorry about that. I haven’t brought the number down any further because we’ve just seen a lot of stuff lately.

Note: I haven’t done ANY editing of the photos (so yes, I know there is room for improvement with quite a few of them), but I plan to at some stage pick a couple of dozen really good ones, do the usual postprocessing (levels, cropping, etc) and put them up somewhere separate. Maybe in June

Some of the (scenic) highlights of the trip so far:

→ Machu Picchu and the Inca Trail, Peru: Day 1, Day 2 (incl. Dead Woman’s Pass), Day 3 (incl. Second Pass), Day4 (incl. Sun Gate, Machu Picchu and Wayna Picchu)

→ Walking through the snow to Condoriri base camp, Cordillera Real, Bolivia

→ Looking out over the Salar de Uyuni (Uyuni salt flats) from Isla de Pescatores, Bolivia

→ Flamengoes at Laguna Colorada, Altiplano, Bolivia

→ Climbing Vulcan Lascar to 5480m, Chile

→ Refugio Frey circuit walk (incl Refugio Lynch and Cordon Catedral), Nahuel Huapi NP, Argentina

→ Laguna de los Tres, Los Glaciares NP, Patagonia, Argentina: Take #1 (incl. hail coming in horizontally and Piedras Blancas) and Take #2 (incl. almost perfect weather and Laguna Sucia)

→ Watching the sun rise over Cerro Fitz Roy on a perfectly clear day, Los Glaciares NP, Patagonia, Argentina

→ Glacier walking on Glaciar Grande at the base of Cerro Torre, Los Glaciares NP, Patagonia, Argentina

→ Valle des Frances, Torres del Paine NP, Patagonia, Chile: Take #1 (incl. hanging bridge near Campamento Italiano) and Take #2 (incl. perfect weather around the amphitheatre near Campamento Britannico)

→ Los Cuernos and Las Torres, Torres del Paine NP, Patagonia, Chile

→ Watching the sun set over Manhattan from the Rockefeller Center, New York, U.S.

Off to Japan, Nepal, China and Thailand next week. Should be good for a few more highlights

Just finishing off a few days here in Buenos Aires.

Temperature: hot ´n humid (Vancouver in winter, where we´ll be in about 24 hours, should be interesting…).

Sights: cool city, mix of French architecture, British infrastructure (including red phone boxes… what the…?), Italian eateries and Spanish everything else.

Highlights: just walking around, a Tango show and our hotel (remember aforementioned flashpacking? Have to say we could not have picked a better time to choose a hotel with airco… aahhhh )

Other than that, well, it´s just another big city. Two full days here and I´m more ready to move on from here than I was in Patagonia after four weeks.

PS still haven´t found suitable hardware for photos, will sort out over coming week in Vancouver. Even though Granty probably still uses an Apple as an excuse for a computer, I´m hopefull it will let me edit and post some photos…

So we started our final tour of Patagonia by visiting the Glaciares National Park for a second time. We´d done a little bit of it previously, but this time we did a full loop around the best parts of the park, with a bit of glacier walking thrown in at the end.

Well, I´m glad we went back. The weather was better, the parts we hadn´t seen previously were just as good as the ones we had and the glaciar walking (on Glaciar Grande at the base of Cerro Torre) was awesome.

The best part though was once again the weather. The first time I did the Laguna de los Tres walk there were low-hanging clouds and hail coming in horizontally on the way up. Needless to say we didn´t get the best views. It cleared up somewhat later in the day but by that stage we´d come back down and missed the views that Cerro Fitz Roy is famous for.

This time however, we were just plain lucky to be there during what the mountaineers in the area (and probably everywhere I guess) call a “window”. This is a (sometimes small) period of time during which the weather is good enough (mainly no wind) to go climbing up a sheer wall of granite (and you thought I was crazy). January had not had a window until the 15th of Jan… which happened to be the day after we arrived. It lasted the whole time we were there and then some (by the end of Torres del Paine a week later the weather was still glorious, absolutely amazing). As soon as I get technology at this end working I´ll show off some more with some photos

Anyway, apart from the usual sights (our walk was a loop from El Chalten to Laguna Capri, Laguna de los Tres, Lagunas Madre y Hija, Lago Torre, Cerro Torre and back out to El Chalten) we also did some glaciar walking, which was pretty cool. All that´s needed are some gloves and crampons on your shoes and you can walk straight onto it. Having guides and great weather (windstill!) probably made things easier, but still. The glacier we did was Glaciar Grande at the foot of Cerro Torre. This had the nice side effect of actually being able to walk several kms (not all on the glaciar) closer to the base of Cerro Torre for even better views of what would have to be one of the coolest peaks I know. Some ice climbing (only a few meters) after lunch as part of the glacier walking topped off a great day, which in turn topped off an amazing couple of days around Los Glaciares.

Well, all done walking around Patagonia. A combined 97 kms of walking in 6 days in Los Glaciares NP and 136kms of walking in 6 days in Torres del Paine NP (80 kms in the last 3 days… phew!). Fortunately there were a few rest days in there somewhere :)

Now we have a few days off here in El Calafate before we go to Buenos Aires, after which we move onto our “social part” of the trip, visiting friends in Vancouver, London and Holland. Looking forward to it. Might have to have a few cold ones though at this end in preparation.

Also moving into a room of our own tonight for the first time in a little while so looking forward to some spreading out and sleeping (in). Should also be able to sift through some more photos and post some more previews over the next few days.

Just thought I´d mention another highlight of our stay in Ushuaia: our B&B. As it turned out quite appropriately, named Tango B&B.

When booking it a while ago, as with most bookings, it was simply a matter of budget and bookability over the internet, cross-referenced with a few reviews from other travellers. Tango B&B looked like a great option based on these things so I booked it, figuring the Tango part was just a hobby of the owners or a funky name.

Turns out the owners take it a step further than that: the second night we (and the other guests) were invited to their “Tango night”. This consisted of him playing a whole bunch of Tango´s on his piano accordeon as part of a “history of Tango”, followed by some simple Tango lessons for beginners, all over a few glasses of nice red wine of course. Very cool. He did an awesome job on the piano accordeon (turns out he´d been playing for over 50 years, or since he was 5 or so, followed by a professional career as a player and composer) and the dance lessons were good fun too (although more laughs than serious dancing, especially after Justine had a couple of glasses of wine )

If ever in Ushuaia (hey, you never know), I can highly recommend it!

Or so you´re reminded on just about any street corner, billboard, t-shirt, mug, souvenir and other otherwise blank surface. If it doesn´t say End of World or Fin del Mundo, then invariably it will be something like “Southern-most <insert product trying to sell to tourists>”. I´m thinking one last spot they could remind tourists is on toilet paper, perhaps with a slogan like “Ushuaia: the arse-end of the world”.

Anyway, with a climate to match (wearing winter jackets in summer is always interesting), you have to admit you do feel like you´re running out of mainland a little bit. With a harbour full of boats about to head off to Antarctica and a chain of mountains inland with snow on them at what I would guess be about 400m altitude (remember how it´s summer), it does give you the impression you´re in an interesting location.

We did a quick day trip to Tierra del Fuego National Park, which was nice, but a little overrated and had a few too many billboards (with “southern most… or end of…” bits). I´m guessing most places are going to struggle to impress me now I´ve been to Patagonia though.

Anyway, the highlight was probably us checking into a B&B for a few days and having a few the sleep-ins to help us recover from our recent hikes (think: our own bathroom, a double bed, a heater, powerpoints everywhere… all the mod cons we´d come to miss a little bit while camping or staying in hostels).

Unfortunately, the End of the World was also the end of our stay on the Dragoman truck after 7 weeks (all the way from Cusco to Ushuaia). We´ll defn miss all the friends we made on the truck and the whole “always something happening” atmosphere. Fortunately we´ve still got a few more adventures to look forward to, so I imagine we´ll cope. Over a few glasses of red wine. And perhaps a nice steak. Hmmm… steak.

Well, it´s a glacier. A pretty cool one too (no pun intended). And it´s big. Very big. And they had some great wooden platforms where you could get fairly up close (but not too close, apparently ice launched at the crowds when the glacier calved had killed 30-odd people until they restricted access in the late sixties… wonder whether the last 29 hadn´t wished they thought of that idea a bit sooner) and get some great views.

Unfortunately the day we visited it was raining and a bus tour had been organised for us to visit it, which managed to stretch a 4hr activity (1.5hr drive there, 1hr of looking, 1.5hr drive back) out to 9 looooong hrs, including viewing platforms, scenic “treks” (200m), boat rides and photo stops. Live and learn. Although having a 10 second countdown up to the glacier first coming into view inflicted on us almost made up for it due to the “OMG I can´t believe someone thought of this” factor. I guess some days you´re just meant to feel like a tourist.

Happy New Year everyone! Sorry we didn´t do the sms´s, no coverage here on my (dodgy) international SIM card (even though we were supposed to). I guess/hope travel blogs these days are also an accepted form of wishing people well?

Anyway, apart from the usual eating and drinking (fairly standard operating procedure), I have to admit El Calafate (where we are now) did have one little twist: at midnight the sun hadn´t actually set yet fully (it was definitely dusk though, but still). A little odd, but pretty cool. Also a good reminder that we´re getting pretty far south now and well into summer. If only the weather would focus on the summer bit more than the far south bit  

So, looking back I have to admit 2007 was pretty good. Not often you´re lucky enough to get married and go travelling for a few months. 2008 has some expectations to live up to I´m thinking . Anyway, off to Torres del Paine National Park tomorrow, so if the weather co-operates, I´m thinking 2008 might get off to not too bad a start either…