Fire and Ice

Update: 20

As a suggestion of something to do in Ushuaia, Tam mentioned that she'd read we could go to a place to watch beavers build dams, which neither of us has ever seen and would, in all likelihood, be quite interesting.

"What is a beaver?" asked Maria, one of the two Spanish girls we'd befriended.

"It's a mammal that builds dams," Tam said.

"What is a dam?" she continued.

"Um, it's a kind of wall that stops a river to keep water in a place," Tam explained with a lot of hand movement.

"Oh! A dique!" exclaimed Maria as the penny dropped.

And that is how we came to have a conversation about beavers and dikes with two Spanish girls in Tierra del Fuego over pasta and salad.

***

Back in El Calafate and after a night of opulence in the Design Suits, we returned to the world of shared bathrooms, shared kitchens and make-your-own-bed kind of residences to which we've become accustomed.

This particular place had two rooms off a shared dining area. All told, we still liked it: it was clean and warm. As we entered the communal area being led to our room by a woman with the most excruciating whine for a voice, we smiled at the two people speaking an indeterminable foreign language at the table. The bloke speaking looked Asian and I just assumed the unrecognisable sounds he was making were from an eastern language that I'd never heard before.

It was late and raining outside, so Tam and I cracked a bottle of red (as you do when it's good and £1) and sat down to join them. Turns out, Cho, who is Korean, was speaking English. This is his explanation:

"I have a rerationship sree yearsh wi' girr in Pirippeensh. I rearn Engrish here. Den I come to Brazir. One week no undershtanding Portuguesh sho I go to Chi-ree por ressonsh. Now I mix wordsh prom everysing. Aaaah. I'm so conpused! I go crazy!"

Basically, he'd learned English in the Philippines with his girlfriend then he'd come to Brazil and, confused with Portuguese, went to Chile for Spanish lessons. He now confuses himself by mixing words from all three. Ls become Rs, any S sound takes SH (I think this is the Portuguese influence) and Fs become Ps and Ps become Fs.

I don't write this to be mean - Cho himself laughed at his desperate situation (Spanish is king here. English comes in handy, but Korean is of little use outside of embassies) and, anyway, I can't speak Korean but what followed was a farce.

Cho agreed to join us for dinner and as we headed out, he was accosted by Siren-voice the landlady. I think she was asking him to pay for the night, but he didn't understand her and in his Portuspanglish tried to tell her that he was coming back after dinner. Like everyone else he meets, she had no idea what he was saying so she raised her voice (as if speaking louder would help). At this stage bats were circling above us. He then, in frustration, threw in some Korean words. I'm not sure how this was resolved, but we went for food.

All three of us ordered the same thing (steak, obviously) and nothing else. Tam and I were served steaks; Cho, a salad.

***

Tam and I spent the next day at Perito Moreno glacier, a sixty metre high, five kilometre wide wall of ice stretching back about fourteen kilometres. (I make that out to be 4.2million cubic kms of water held in place by a few degrees Celcius), a truly imposing sight.

Cho didn't join us because he'd arranged to go on a two day glacier trek leaving the following morning and wanted to spend that day shopping. When we returned that evening, he'd been conned by a shifty salesman into buying the kind of sub-zero clothing Sir Ranulph Fiennes might use while camping in the Arctic.

I received an email from him a few days later saying he's in Santiago on his way to Easter Island.  I'm not sure how that worked, but it didn't surprise us and I think when he gets to the most remote island on the planet, he might recheck his Spanish-Korean dictionary for the word "glacier". At least he won't be cold.

***

We weren't in a hurry to leave Argentina but a trip to Patagonia would be incomplete without a visit to Torres del Paine National Park in Chile so, like good little backpackers, we took the five hour trip down to Puerto Natales.

Chile has the unfortunate privilege of being Argentina's neighbour. It's still nice, but you can't help thinking that you should really be back in Argentina.

Puerto Natales is not a pretty place. It has a kind of rundown, ageing, small British seaside town feel about it. All the shops seem like tearooms that were perhaps fashionably decorated in the late fifties. Chile is also incredibly expensive by South American standards and this really upped our average cost per day. That said, everyone we met was exceptionally friendly and very kind, but we weren't keen to spend too long there.

As we weren't going trekking, we booked a day tour to the famous park and were picked up the following morning by what turned out to be a kind of A-Team van filled with six old women (one of whom was wearing a wig like a permed Busby) and a young Spaniard who smoked like there was a war on. At this stage, we hadn't thought that we might be on the wrong tour.

Our seats were right at the back as the old ladies couldn't get that far into the van, so every twenty minutes or so, when we stopped for photos (and the Spaniard for a smoke), we'd have to lumber over the seats to get out in time to get back in. While inside the van, we couldn't help feeling that it was better suited to making rocket launchers out of old washing machine parts than a sight seeing vehicle. The windows were so low we had to lie on our sides and look up to see anything. The wind was stronger than anything we'd ever experienced - at one stage reaching speeds of up to 90km/h - so being outside wasn't much fun either. 

Lunchtime came and this is when it started to hit home that we were out of place. We all climbed out and marched into the hotel at Glacier Grey (except for the Spaniard who needed a smoke) when the tour guide came over to us and asked if we'd mind sitting outside as we were not included in the lunch party. So Tam and I sat outside in a blizzard eating cheese rolls and having our faces sandblasted while the rest of our tour group sat in a restaurant eating a three course meal and quaffing wine.

It was with great relief that we returned to Puerto Natales that night and booked our tickets back to Argentina.

I have no doubt that on a good day with pleasant weather and comfortable shoes Torres del Paine is a place of spectacular beauty (even through the rain and clouds we could see that), but on this particular day, in this particular situation, it was a bit more Paine that Torres.

***

We're now in Ushuaia in Tierra del Fuego at the southern tip of the continent. The weather here is a bit like London in that it's changeable, the sun being out doesn't mean you can wear a t-shirt, there's a lot of grey about and the rain is that annoying stuff that sort of floats around and comes up under your umbrella instead of just falling straight down. But, like London, just as you start to curse it, a beautiful day with a long golden sunset happens.

We hired a car yesterday and drove north to try and find a remote beach we'd heard about. Due to a road that had fallen away and become a river of mud we turned back and through an unprecedented windfall of good luck, found ourselves spending the night in our own cabin with a log fire and an endless supply of wood and a sofa facing a giant window overlooking the beautiful and isolated Lago Fagnano lapping the shore only a few metres away from us. 

There's still some anti-Falkland sentiment here, I suppose due to it's proximity to the disputed islands. Monuments to the casualties of the 1982 war are big and have inscriptions like "Malvinas - we will return". There are also signs stating that "Las Islas Malvinas son Argentinos". (The Malvinas are Argentine).

Just made me wonder why the Falklanders aren't banging down the door to join Argentina and why Argentina would bother with the Falklands when this country is so good already...

We've been in Ushuaia longer than we normally stay in one place, but we're killing a bit of time here while we wait to meet the first of our friends coming to visit us in Puerto Madryn. I say killing time - but this involves staying in a clean, warm and cosy hostel with free wireless internet and a view over the harbour, a kitchen complete with a cast iron griddle for cooking steak and a butcher across the road who sells 300g of prime Argie rump for 5 pesos. That's a dollar fifty.

***

So, next week we meet Dan and Rachel. Until then, take it easy.