Big Ice - Perito Moreno glacier

We take two flights and most of the day to travel south, to El Calafate in Patagonia.  At this point in the journey, I expected to break out the jumpers and long sleeve t-shirts lurking at the bottom of my bag.  But no.  At 6.30pm, it’s sunny and warm with not a breath of wind.  Could it be that I’ve over-packed?  Again!

El Calafate is the gateway to Los Glaciares national park and is named after the bushes that grow in abundance all over Patagonia.  Their berries both look and taste like a cross between blackcurrants and blueberries. If you eat them, it is said, you will return to Patagonia.  So we do, straight from the bush and in a scoop of delicious ice cream. The local tourist board is probably behind this saying as the town owes its existence to tourism and is growing fast to cope with increasing visitor numbers. But it is still tiny in comparison with the other cities we have visited, and has more in common with an attractive ski resort – though as it has the compulsory casino, it must be an Argentine city. 

We are up early the following morning to vist the Perito Moreno glacier, part of the southern Patagonian ice cap, the 4^th largest frozen  area in the world after both Polar regions and Greenland.  Surprisingly it is not high in the mountains.  This is a temperate glacier region, and the foot of the glacier is not far above sea level, surrounded by forests.  The reason there is so much ice here is down to geography. The moist air from the Pacific falls as snow over the Andes – as much as 800m a year – and compresses down into a dense mass of ice, which moves slowly down the mountain.  In Perito Moreno’s case, the movement is not so slow.  In summer, the inner part of the glacier can move by 3m a day, while the outer part moves more slowly at around 25cm a day.  The constant movement at different speeds, coupled with the melting of the glacier as it reaches lower levels causes the cracking and calving.

But while most glaciers are shrinking, Perito Moreno is growing.  It is actually classified as stable, as the ice calves off at one end in pretty much the same ratio that it renews itself at the other. And it is a truly breathtaking sight.

It measures 4,500m across and soars 50 or 60m above the turquoise blue lake it spreads into. It is HUGE, though it not the largest in the park, just the most accessible. At the moment it splits the lake in two, as the ice has reached land to form a dam.  This happens every few years and causes the depth of the lake to rise on one side of the glacier.  Eventually, the pressure of the water finds a path into ice in the narrow channel and sets of an explosive series of calving to open the channel, until the glacier advances once more.  I’m sure we saw the start of this happening, and will check over the coming weeks to see if the channel opens once more.

We spend over 2 hours on the viewing platforms taking photographs and videos, Within the first 10 minutes we see two huge chunks of ice – possibly the size of a bus - calve off the face of the glacier and fall spectacularly into the aptly named Iceberg Alley, with an explosion of sound.  You can hear the ice creaking and the sound of water running inside it, and find yourself staring at fissures in the face of the ice, convincing yourself that they are indeed getting wider and longer and that this section is the one to fall next.  Cameras set to video, we watch and wait.  And wait.  And watch.  And in anticipation of the next great fall, set the video running and overlay our very own David Attenborough commentary.  But do we capture the calving on film?  Of course not.  A watched glacier never calves.  Though we do see two more awesome falls on the other face of the glacier later in the day when my camera is stowed in my bag.

But the spectacle of calving is just part of the story.  There is the sheer scale of this vast expanse of glacial ice; the immense peaks and troughs of its surface; and its incredible blueness, an optical illusion due to the compactness of the ice so light takes longer to reflect.  To find out more, we put crampons on our feet and hike the ice for an hour and a half.  The ice has its own landscape of peaks and valleys, streams and gushing waterfalls, blue ice holes and caves.  It is a magical experience.  And as it draws to an end, our guide has a final surprise – a liquid picnic of scotch on the rocks, with freshly gathered glacial ice, naturally.

Clouds, colours, cacti and llamas – another slice of life in the Andes

Despite its lush green setting, just a few miles from Salta the road winds up into the high Andes once more.  This part of the country is near the borders of both Chile and Bolivia and it feels less European, more South American - not least because there are many ethnic indians, whereas elsewhere the local population is predominantly European. 

A two day trip from Salta allows us to explore a fair part of this landscape, starting with a Safari to the Clouds.  The clouds in question could well have been formed by the dust thrown up by the dirt roads, but we were following the route of the 4^th highest railway in the world.  The train used to be a vital link with Chile, but runs only for tourists now, but only during the Argentine winter and then only twice a week, and if conditions are right.  Our 4x4 tour proved far more reliable criss crossing the rail tracks on a road that rose far more quickly into the mountains.  Whoever built the railway decided it was too expensive to use the third rail needed for steep inclines, but I can’t see how the extra miles of track needed to keep to the prescribed gradient, not to mention the hours it added to the journey, were  ever cost effective. It crosses 29 bridges, 12 viaducts and goes 21 tunnels as well as two switchbacks designed to reduce the gradient. And there’s the added hazard of regular rock falls onto the track.  I’m sure trainspotters of the world love it. 

Our road journey takes us to the highest point of our trip, way over 4000m and most of the first day is above 3500m.  This time we take precautions and do what the locals do - drink plenty of coca mate (tea) before setting out and buy a bag of coca leaves to chew on the journey.  This seems to work as we don’t experience any shortness of breath – though it may be because the air is more humid than in Mendoza’s mountains and there is no wind.

After crossing the first high pass the landscape changes again as we enter the Altiplano – mile upon mile of dry, almost desert plain well over 3500m above sea level surrounded by distant snow-capped peaks.  Life up here is harsh, but we pass small settlements of families farming crops and llamas.  We stop for lunch at the most godforsaken place we have encountered – San Antonio de los Cobres.  There are no farms here, the two main employers are the army and the borax mining company. There is also a station on the train to the clouds route, but I’m sure it can’t be the final stop.  If it was, the little old ladies selling knitted llamas would have a field day.  I don’t need a llama, but I buy four to give them some pesos.  That’s how bad it is here. 

We continue crossing the Altiplano on a dirt road in parts washed out by summer rains passing a small herd of shy vicuna, to reach to Grandes Salines, which shimmer in the distance like a far-off sea.  They may be Argentina’s largest salt flats, but this is tiny in comparison with those in Bolivia, which may well be the size of Wales.  Nonetheless the reflection from the expanse of white is intense and despite slathering on the factor 50, my shoulders burn in 15 minutes.  But it is fun walking on the white crust and seeing the blue water channels where the salt has been commercially excavated.  Some of it may even end up in my grinder at home.

The Andes run down the spine of South America, so it should be no surprise that its composition changes from time to time.  But here it seems to change from minute to minute as we drive by hard rocky outcrops, soft sandstone carved into Tolkienesque elvin armies by the wind, and hills of multiple colours created by the rich mineral deposits.

We stop overnight in Purmamarca, a typical Andean village of low-rise adobe buildings spreading out from the town square, overlooked by a white-washed church.  From 8am to 8pm the town square is a riot of colour with stall after stall selling ponchos, shawls, jumpers and hats – or the chance to have your photograph taken with a very cute llama.  But we are here to see colours of a different kind – the seven-coloured mountain that stands behind the town.  Our hotel is at the base of the hill and the rooms, a delightful series of terracotta adobe hobbit houses, blends into the terracotta slopes.  The colourful mountain is at its best under the morning sun.  After feasting on llama and enjoying another evening of Pena music, we are up early to view the mountain.  It is an amazing site, with stripes of blue, green, ochre, red, pink, purple and tan signalling the mineral rich earth here.

Purmamarca sits at one end of the Quebrado de Humahuaca, an outstandingly beautiful gorge that is now a world heritage site.  We continue our journey along the valley floor, stopping at several towns along the gorge.  Tilcara, with views along the valley for miles in both directions, has been a key stronghold since pre-Incan times and played an important role during the revolutionary battles against Spain, when the Argentinean forces combined the fighting skills they had learned from the Spanish with their knowledge of the mountain terrain to form an effective guerrilla force.

The excavations of the pre-Incan village at Tilcara give a fascinating glimpse of life over 800 years ago.  The houses, used mainly for sleeping, were built of dry-walled stone with the roof supported by cactus trunks – which are surprisingly similar to wood.  The buildings had no windows as the gaps between the stone provided ventilation in summer.  In winter the walls were hung with leather to keep the cold winds out, and in the depths of winter, young llamas acted as hot water bottles.  Not so much a three dog night as a three llama night.   Llamas were vital to these communities, providing meat, leather, wool as well as being family pets.  And very delicious they are too.

Continuing along the valley, we cross the Tropic of Capricorn - apparently this means it is very hot here - but that was pretty obvious.

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At the end of the valley Humahuaca is a larger version of Purmamarca. The town square here boasts a colonial church and town hall – the latter containing a life-size clockwork priest who appears at midday to bless the assembled throng.  Sadly we don’t arrive until 3 so miss the performance, but he will no doubt be working overtime next month when the town celebrates Carnival – a 9-day bacchanal, followed by a population explosion 9 months later. 

  

Salta: Mummies and Music

We fly  north west over mile after mile of arid land until suddenly the ground beneath us turns green, with tree covered hills rolling down into vivid green pastures, and land in Salta.

Surrounded by hills, Salta has its own microclimate, producing far more rain, particularly now, in the summer months, than anywhere around it.  Architecturally, the Spanish colonial influence is more obvious here, due no doubt to the city’s proximity to the silver mines of present day Bolivia much treasured by Spain.  The main square is surrounded by a pretty pink cathedral, a low white cabildo (town hall) with typically arched windows and a number of other colonial buildings, one of which houses the fascinating “mummy museum”.  Elsewhere the decorative façade of the San Francisco church is dwarfed by a huge bell tower and many smaller colonial buildings now house shops, bars and hotels – including our own, the delightful Hotel del Virrey, full of colonial charm.

Salta is famous for two things – the best empanadas in Argentina, and the Pena (pronounced pen-ya) – the folk music and dance of the gaucho.  We sample them both – several times.

In both Mendoza and Salta there are whole streets devoted to eating and drinking.  Belcarce in Salta is also the place to see the best Pena shows. Stern-looking, but very cute, gauchos in wide-brimmed hats and wide-legged trousers tucked into their boots compete with each other, drumming furiously on cow-hide covered drums before breaking into wild dances, the footwork as fast and thrilling as that of the flamenco.  They show a romantic side in formal dances wooing skirt-swishing, handkerchief waving ladies – presumably after long, lonely months on the plains.  The pena folksongs are easy on the ear but, like the tango in Buenos Aires, tinged with melancholy.

The mummy museum – or museum of archaeology of the high mountains – is my favourite in Salta.  The mummies in question are three perfectly preserved Inca children who were found buried at the top of a mountain at over 6000m.  The video footage of the archeological team carefully unwrapping the cloak covering one of the children’s faces is riveting.  Every feature is preserved, even the lock of hair falling over one closed eye.  Child sacrifices were rare – and they were thought to be with their ancestors rather than dead – and used only after the death of an Incan ruler to cement the vast empire under the new Inca.  Carefully selected children – usually high born – were brought to Cusco from all corners of the Incan world.  These children would have walked many hundred, if not thousands of miles through present day Bolivia, crossing Lake Titicaca and the high Altiplano of Peru before descending to Cusco.  Here they were “married” to children from other communities in a splendid ceremony, before walking back home, where they were again feted before being marched up the mountain, given drink or drugs and sealed into their tomb still alive..  In the high mountain air it is unlikely they would wake, and the facial expressions on the mummified bodies look very peaceful.

We also stumble across Pajcha, a tiny private museum devoted to the art and craft of ethnic America – essentially the communities of Andean Peru, Bolivia and Argentina.  It is largely a collection made by one woman over 35 years and seeks to show the influence of the various cultures on each other – including the spread of the Incan empire and the Spanish – and how the distinctive art and craft styles live on today.  We are given a personal tour by Diego, the infectuously enthusiastic director. Amongst the beautiful silver jewellery and intricate weaving, he points out the strangest exhibit, and clearly his own research: photographs taken from 3 churches – 1 in Peru, 1 in Bolivia and 1 in Argentina showing paintings of “angels with firearms”.  The “angels” have coloured wings, are dressed in Spanish dress of the day and are priming guns – whether to fire on the devil or recalcitrant converts, no-one knows - not even the equally colourful, Diego.

Summer in the city

 Summer time, and the living in Mendoza is definitely easy.  Its buildings are not the most attractive in the world – the old ones were destroyed by earthquakes. But life is lived on the streets, not in the buildings. The heat of the day is offset by thousands of trees that shade every street and restful square in the city centre, watered by irrigation canals that separate road and pavement.  And a huge park, almost as big as the city centre, provides a landscaped, leafy recreation area.

After dark, when it is very slightly cooler than the day, the squares are full of families at play, entertained by impromptu theatre and music performances or just chatting with friends. They are happy and relaxed and so am I.

It is light until 9pm and in summer, the warmth of the day relaxes into long, balmy nights. This is a European city in South America, but a very different one to Buenos Aires.  Though it was established several centuries ago, the 19^th and early 20^th century immigrants from Spain and, especially, Italy have made this city their own.

In the heat of Mendoza, I begin to understand the rhythm of Argentinean life; it revolves around food.  A light breakfast -  usually a sweet croissant and coffee anytime up to 10.30.  Lunch around 1 or 2pm followed by the afternoon siesta, with shops reopening at 4 or 5pm.  Around 6 or 7pm another snack is called for, coffee and cake, or Italian ice-cream, or a glass of wine and antipasto. No self-respecting Mendozan would dine before 10pm, and by 11, restaurants and bars, their tables spilling out onto the streets are full. Along with the town’s wonderful ice-cream bars they do a roaring trade until the early hours of the morning – or maybe later.  By 2am, my northern European time clock has given up, and I head for bed.      

Mendoza Mountains Part 2 - In the steps of the Liberator

Mendoza is just 6 hours by road from Santiago, the capital of Chile, and we considered making the full journey and spending a few days across the border.  But then we found out that the buses often spent another 6 hours at the checkpoint while the border guards checked every article brought into the country, and decided against it.

Instead we followed Route 7 to Paso de Los Libertadores, the border with Chile, and turn back. Our route traces that of General Juan San Martin at the head of the Andean army that liberated first Argentina, then Chile and finally Peru from Spanish rule. While they did it on foot or on the back of a mule, we are in the relative comfort of an air-conditioned mini-bus.  

The journey is spectacular.  The carefully cultivated vineyards soon give way to the barren, slopes Mendoza’s own mountain range before climbing into the Andes through the Uspallata Valley and skirting Mount Aconcagua, at 6,962m the highest peak outside the Himalayas.  Of course, it is shrouded in cloud when we pass by. 

Our first stop is the reservoir that provides all of Mendoza’s water and much of its electricity. It is surrounded by desert mountain scrub, a clear sign that without the Andes snow, life would be impossible here.  And there are real fears about the effect of global warming.  Each year there is less snow, which means less water.  The Mendoza River is in full flood at the this time of year, but the channel of rushing water, chocolate brown with mineral sediment carried down from the mountain, covers barely a quarter of the river bed. But the locals have developed ingenious irrigation systems and the few towns and villages we pass on the road to the border announce themselves with rows of trees and green fields standing out against the arid landscape.

General San Martin’s army was not the first to pass this way.  The Inca civilisation spread through the Andes from Cusco, hundreds if not thousands of miles north.  One of their favoured spots was the hot thermal springs along the route.  Legend has it that the bridge across the river here, Puente del Inca, was formed by a line of Inca warriors stretching out to form a bridge for their ailing leader to reach the healing springs.  In reality the remarkable bridge is calcified water, created by the minerals in the springs.  There is no public access to the springs – this ended in the 60s, when the spa hotel there was swept away by an avalanche.  Judging by the roadside stalls, they are now mainly used to calcify old trainers to sell to passing tourists. 

The lorry drivers who regularly use the route are a superstitious bunch, leaving offerings at makeshift roadside memorials that commemorate unofficial “saints”.  The signature red shrine of Gaucho Gil is one of the most popular, but he is unlikely to be canonised. A Robin Hood figure, robbing from the rich to give to the poor, he was eventually sentenced to hang, proclaiming from the gallows his new mission to save the lives of those travelling the roads.  Another shrine to a woman who died in the mountains but whose baby lived by suckling at his dead mother’s breast is bizarrely marked by piles of plastic water bottles.

We manage the journey safely without their blessings, but instead of going through the tunnel to Chile, take a narrow, hair-curling dirt track to climb the 800m in 2 kilometres to the top of the pass where a statue of Christ marks the border between the two countries.  At over 3,800m and in dry, windy conditions the air is thin and scrabbling over the scree to get to the best viewpoints leaves you short of breath.  But once again we fared better than the Andean army, who were forced to eat onions and garlic to ward off altitude sickness.  It took them 22 days to reach Santiago.  I’m betting they won their freedom by breathing on the Spanish forces they met there.

Wine and Mountains in Mendoza - part 1

We are up early to fly to Mendoza – just under 2 hours flying time from BA.  It’s a clear day and we fly over vast areas of cultivated land, all of it flat – which makes the sudden appearance of the snow-capped Andes all the more dramatic.

Mendoza is even hotter than BA, but it is the dry heat of a city in a desert, which has only 6cm of rain a year.  Yet it is the main wine producing region of Argentina. How is this miracle performed?  We hire a guide, and in an attempt not to drink too much of the wine opt for a bicycle tour of the vineyards.

We visit two boutique wineries in the Lujan de Cuyo area a few miles out of town.  And in the baking heat with virtually no rain, we want to know how they can grow anything here.  The answer is simple.  The melt water from the Andes is harvested as carefully as any crop and used not only to irrigate the vineyards, but to provide drinking water and 60% of the city’s electricity.

The combination of the Malbec grape, for which the region is famous, and the hot sun produces a wine that is rich, fruity and heavy.  The first sample we taste, at Filosphos bodega is almost port-like in its intensity.  We cycle on to our second bodega, Clos de Chacras, which is a new winery with an old history.  The pretty pink adobe building with thick concrete vats forming the cellars was built in 1921 but fell into disuse until the granddaughter of the original owner brought it back to life.  The bodega combines new technology for sorting and crushing the grapes with distinctly old technology of fermenting in concrete underground vats. 

The team here are eager to show off their bodega and the 3 wines they produce, not all pure malbec.  We are obviously tourists rather than buyers, but nonetheless have a lengthy conversation with them on where and how the grapes are grown, how they are watered – 37 drops per plant – shaded from the sun etc, etc.  It’s clear that the taste of the wine is largely determined on the vine.  A far cry from the days when Mendoza’s table wine was so ropey it was watered down with water before drinking.   No need to water it down now. A juicy Argentine steak would be the perfect accompaniment, but we are thankful for the cheese and biscuit to soak up the alcohol during our tasting.  The cycle back was only slightly wobblier than before!

Hola de Buenos Aires

So here we are in sunny Buenos Aires – 13 hours and 30^oC away from the gloomy days of an English winter – at the start of a 3 week tour of Argentina.

Robin and I arrive at 8.30am after an overnight flight and it’s already hot, hot, hot.  To make the most of our time in the capital, we have arranged for a guided tour of the city and thank goodness our lovely guide, Veronica, turns up in an air-conditioned car.

By lunchtime she has whisked us around BA’s most iconic sites and filled us in on the country’s recent political history and current state of affairs. 

First stop is Recoleta cemetery – an extraordinary city of the dead, where street after street of marble clad mausoleums extend many feet below the ground to house members of the city’s grandest families in the same luxury in death as they expected in life.  It’s not a coincidence that the cemetery is sited in BA’s most expensive neighbourhood. Such splendour doesn’t come cheap – one mausoleum sold for US$80,000 recently, and there’s an annual service charge on top to keep the marble polished and the cobwebs away.  We peer in through one open door and marvel at the ornate altar and the gilded mosaic ceiling.   While another open door reveals two rows of coffins stacked at least five high, with room for five more on top.

Eva "Evita" Peron, the former president’s wife immortalised by Andrew Lloyd Webber, has the honour of the most visited tomb, though it is by no means the grandest.  And she was only laid to rest here 30 years after her death, and after her embalmed body had been snatched by rival political groups, mutilated and smuggled out of the country to Italy, before being returned to her exiled husband in Spain.  Even after his return to Argentina, it was many years before Evita’s remains returned to their final resting place.