Picked up at 5:30 a.m. (or just after). Mini-bus runaround town collecting people from an assortment of accommodations before meeting a larger bus at a pre-arranged spot & we were on our way out of El Calafate across Patagonian steppe country like before when we travelled to El Chaltén on Monday: desolate but beautiful with the yellows, greens, browns, greys & occasional reds of the low bushes.
Spent some of the time, whilst gazing out at the landscape, making final mental adjustments to what we had in our packs ready for tomorrow's trek through the Torres del Paine National Park. Managed to convince My Friend to shed a kilo of stuff out of his pack as it sure seemed to me to weigh a ton! We feel ready for our 4-day trek particularly having done the walking at El Chaltén which gave us a chance to fine-tune what we needed.
Oh my goodness, we have just gone through the Argentinian border of Rio Turbo. It has taken an hour & involved a detour off the main road onto a dirt one & then a long wait in a very long queue to have two gendarmes go through a process that was laughable: gendarme no.1 entered passport details into a not-very-state-of-the-art computer, then passed the passport to his colleague whereupon they both stopped to peer down the passenger list using a ruler (like they do at the polling booths back home - so one shouldn't laugh I suppose) & then the passport was passed back to the 1st colleague who entered something more into the computer. There were three queues of 30 people or more deep; the silence broken only by the shuffle of exasperated feet in the long lines.
And we have the Chilean border to go through yet in 6 kms - & that is likely to be worse as the luggage has to come off the bus & be inspected.
Chile border: piece of cake! Pleasant, civilised, efficient. Sniffer dogs dealt with any illegal entry of foodstuffs.
I see that in Chile, there is another female president (as there is in both Argentina & Brazil): Michelle Bachelet. Seems like the women do better in politics in South America than they do at home...
Now 88 kms further into Puerto Natales. Should be there by 1:00 p.m. as scheduled. Looks like the bus companies allow plenty of leeway for the borders.
Puerto Natales is the capital of the province of Ultima Esperanza (in Chile Patagonia). It is on the Señoret Channel surrounded by beautiful glaciers & fjords.
Information at the bus estacion rings Patrizia for us to let her know we have arrived &, after a confusion of messages (why am I not surprised?), we are collected & we meet for the first time face-to-face. Patrizia announces: "We are good friends". Bueno to that.
She tells My Friend she likes how I have arranged her tour in reverse; "That it eees better" ... [sure! And definitely without any co-operation from Patrizia!!].
We go off after sorting out our vouchers, My Friend & I, to get some provisions from the supermarket & fruit from the fruteria who is a lovely man. We get 2 big empanadas for lunch & a coffee. And we are on our way - almost: but tw o'clock departure becomes 3. It is now raining lightly.
OK. To continue. We are at Hotel Lago Grey having successfully completed our marathon 2-prong journey here today. We are enjoying our complimentary welcome drinks - a Pisco Sour for My Friend & a Calafate Sour for me & looking out on Glacier Grey: the most amazing view with the setting sun draping across the mountains running down into the glacier.
Have ordered 2 more drinks: have to say, we need them.
The fellow who had picked us up earlier from the bus station, had managed to wipe out half the side of his vehicle by the time he picked us up (no doubt why he was late!). Despite this mishap, it did not appear to have any sobering effect on him & Eduardo managed to continue to drive like a rally driver (I was grateful My Friend had managed to retrieve my jammed seatbelt from the depths of the back seat when Ed was filling up with petrol before leaving Puerto Natales - this petrol-filling exercise adding to the already delayed departure ...)
I attempted to engage Ed in fitful bursts of very poor Spanish in order to 1) slow him down (a failure) & 2) to keep him awake (as he seemed at stages to be drifting off even at high speed (My Friend in fact HAD fallen asleep in the front seat - perhaps to avoid an impending doom?).
I noticed the road we were meant to take (via the celebrated cave where there is evidence that a famous huge terrestrial sloth, milodón (Mylodon darwinii) lived here up to 13,500 years ago) was closed (cerrado!); so we have to take the longer route into the national park.
We turned off the paved carretera (road) back near the border at Cerro Castillo where we had come through earlier - about midday. From here, the road was gravel & this seemed to make our Ed more alert; nevertheless, he lost control of the car on one bend doing a major zig followed by a major zag. Even though My Friend was in the front & I was in the back, I think we were 'on the same page' at this stage, if we hadn't been before... He was certainly awake now! And certainly our de-briefing over our pisco sours suggested we were.
By now we were thinking if we get in alive ...
But, THE POSITIVES WERE: because the alternative/shorter route was cerrado (closed), we had the longer but so much more picturesque drive AND Eduardo stopped at all the miradors (viewpoints - remember?) like Lago (Lake) Sarmiento so blue due to pH 9 & views over Lago Nordernskjöld & the waterfall at Salto Grande.
WOW! how spectacular was this drive! Seriously spectacular. WOW! Saw lots of guanacos too. These are a member of the camel family of mammals & are preyed upon by the pumas in the park.
We still tipped our Mr Ed because 1) we were grateful to be alive & 2) he went to the trouble of stopping as often as we wanted so it was like a private tour. We wondered though if he'd ever get back in one piece to spend it.
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