Suzi's hen party and wedding

More catching up!  Suzi's hen party in Bude in September 2012 saw me taking on my first ever surf lesson - which was excellent, even if I couldn't stand up on the board.  Of course, we all had to dress up in the evening and make complete fools of ourselves, or it wouldn't have been a true hen party!

Suzi & Ben's wedding took place a few weeks later in Lancashire.  The frocks were posher, but it was just as much fun, complete with dressing up box for the evening party.

Lake Constance

Catching up with past trips!  While the rest of the UK celebrated the Queen's Jubilee in June 2012, we took the opportunity for a long weekend at Lake Constance on the German/Swiss border.  Robin, Tim, Claire, Suzi, Ben and I met up with Claire's friends Krista and Hans Jurgen, who live close by and were generous hosts, lending us bikes and showing us some of the sights. 

Snow, glorious snow!

 

 This year's ski trip saw us in Morzine, the gateway to the Porte du Soleil ski domain which spans a huge area of the French and Swiss Alps.  Its main attraction for us was the proximity to Geneva airport - a 75 minute transfer - and a flexible hotel that didn't demand a Saturday to Saturday booking. This meant that Robin, Tim and I could fit in 7 full days skiing, while Claire joined us on Monday night for 5 of those days.

The French Alps have had their best snow for 40 years and there was plenty of the white stuff to greet us in Morzine, though the temperatures in the village were pretty springlike on our first day and after a great morning's ski - with the lovely Ed from Simply Morzine showing us round the Morzine and Les Gets slopes - the snow was quite heavy and cut up during the afternoon.  Fortunately the clouds gathered and the temperature dropped overnight and we woke to 10 centimetres of fresh snow and another great days skiing on the local slopes.  The temperatures hovered around freezing for the rest of the week, keeping the piste in great condition, and we were treated to another light dump of snow on Thursday morning.  With clear blue skies the rest of the time, giving great views of Mont Blanc and the surounding mountain ranges, we couldn't have asked for better conditions.

As well as skiing most of the Morzine/Les Gets slopes, we ventured up the Super Morzine lift to Avoriaz on three days, which gave us more fantastic skiing both in the trees and above the tree line.  On our last day we crossed over into Switzerland and had some excellent skiing on beautifully groomed pistes - so well groomed that we mistook a black run for a blue!

Thanks to Simply Morzine for arranging hotel, transfers, ski passes, hire gear (at Felix Ski) and three days of hosting round the different ski areas and excellent recommendations for lunch.  Big thanks to Michelle and Franck, the delightful and helpful owners of Hotel la Chaumiere.  Final thanks to Tom at BASS for three afternoons of ski lessons designed to perfect my parallel turns, which left me visualising squished tangerine smoothies all the way down the slopes!

Journey's end - Palermo and Colonia

Back in Buenos Aires and this time we stay in Palermo, a little outside the centre, but the area I’d choose to live.  We spend a chilled morning walking the tree-shaded streets, window shopping in the local designer boutiques, admiring the grafitti – I’m sure I saw Banksy –  stopping for a coffee every now and then and checking out the best parillas for steak and malbec later that evening, when Robin chomps his way through the biggest bife de chorizo ever seen.

In the afternoon we check out the botanical gardens, Japanese Gardens and the Parque Tres de Febrero – all of which get rave reviews in the guide books.  Hmmm.  I guess they were written when the city council could afford to employ gardeners.  But at least we get out of the park and into another nice café before the heavens open.

On the last day of our holiday, we can’t resist collecting a few more stamps in our passports – including 3 at the end of the world, I net 12 stamps this trip!  We take the fast ferry across the river to Colonia del Sacramento in Uruguay.  The Rio de la Plata is 60km wide.  It’s like the sea.  Travelling from Argentina, you can’t see the other side. Coming back, on the other hand, you can see the skyscrapers of Buenos Aires, and a great sunset.  But it is definitely a river.  To start with, it doesn’t smell like the sea.  Nor does it taste salty.  Weird.

Colonia couldn’t be more different to Buenos Aires.  It’s a tiny gem untouched by time and dating back to 1680.  Since then it has been fought over by the Spanish and Portuguese and the architecture of both countries can be seen the single-storey buildings of the historic quarter.  The history lesson continues into the 20^th Century, as the streets of Colonia are full of old cars.  Not the type of old car that’s seen all over Argentina – they are from the 60s and 70s, largely held together with gaffa tape but still going strong.  No, these are pre-war models and I’m not sure if any of them still have engines.  Some have plants growing out of them. Others have tables inside them.  Or fish.  They make great roadside ads for the restaurants and museums they are parked outside.  

We are back in Palermo for supper, hanging out with the locals at a streetside table, drinking in the atmosphere and enjoying a final evening in the balmy night air.  It’s minus 2 back in London, but we’re not thinking about that.

The land of fire, where forest meets the sea

Tierra del Fuego, the land of fire, got its name back in 1520 when the Portuguese explorer, Magellan, sailed through the straits that now bear his name and saw small fires all over the islands that surround it.  The fires were an integral part of life for the Yamana Indians who survived for 6000 years in this area.  They were the main inhabitants of Ushuaia as late as the end of the 19^th Century, but were soon decimated by diseases once European missionaries and seafarers arrived in numbers.

They were a strange bunch.  Darwin thought they could be the missing link.  And given how cold it at the end of the world, I’m surprised they lasted as long as they did. They were advanced enough to have fire and to use guanaco leather as a windbreak around that fire, but they never made the mental leap to wrap the leather around themselves in a jackety, trousery way. They were quite content to smear seal fat over their bodies for protection.  Nor did they fashion bowls or cooking pots, just speared sealions with a bone arrow on a stick and stuck them straight on the fire.  Hey ho.

Today there are no signs of the Yamana’s fire, just green, grassy mounds formed from dumped mussel shells that made up the second part of their diet.  We see several of these as we take a leisurely raft trip down the Lapataia river and then walk through the slow growing lenga and evergreen guindo forests of Tierra del Fuego national park onto the beaches of Lapataia Bay.  It is undoubtedly attractive, this land where the forest meets the sea, though it lacks the drama of the higher Andes peaks we have seen elsewhere.  In fact there are very few peaks here.  The entire area was covered in 1000m of ice during the last ice age leaving the mountains below this height with rounded tops and just a few above this height with jagged peaks..

The end of the world attracts its share of eccentrics, including the man who built a house on one of the small islands in Lapataia Bay, declared independence, pronounced himself  First Minister and now earns a living selling postcards, passport stamps and other tourist trinkets at the “post office at the end of the world” – though you can get your “end of the world” passport stamp for free in the information centre.  

There are couple of eccentric bars in town too.  We loved Almacen Ramos Generales, a café, bar, restaurant and museum rolled into one, with fantastic submarinos – hot chocolate, where you dropped your own chocolate cubes into frothy milk and stirred for a delicious drink.  And it was only place I saw a penguin, though admittedly a meringue and chocolate version, which went very well with the hot chocolate.

The lack of penguins was a major disappointment. Our boat trip on the Beagle Channel gave us a close up view of the southern sealions and imperial comorants native to these parts, but no penguins..  There is an island further down the channel that’s home to a colony of Magellan Penguins, we just chose the wrong boat.  And if you don’t look too closely at the pictures, the black and white cormorants could be mistaken for penguins…..  And we did have a close up view of Les Eclaireurs lighthouse.  I guess you can’t have it all.

And so our trip to the end of the world drew to a close.  We treated ourselves to our most expensive meal in Argentina at one of its best restaurants, Kaupe – king crab, scallops and sea bass like you’ve never seen in England and lemon ice cream with hot champagne sauce – and flew back to Buenos Aires. 

To the end of the world!

Ushuaia is billed as the southernmost city in the world, and that’s where we are heading.  El fin del mondo.  But first we have to get there.  By bus.  It takes a day and half.  The end of the world is a long, long way away.

It’s a funny thing about Argentina – and indeed the small bit of Chile that we visit. Apart from the Andes, which are very steep and dramatic, much of the land is almost completely flat. We seem to have flown over thousands of miles of flatness and now we are driving through hundreds more miles of flatness – and it’s not very interesting.  The land is beigey-grey.  The plants are beigey-grey.  The sheep are beigey-grey.  But the guanacos are browny-grey. We don’t see many guanacos. Thank God for Kindles and iPads.

 Our epic journey involves two buses, an overnight stop in Punta Arenas where we find a very jolly fish restaurant – La Luna – a third bus which eventually takes us on a boat across the “mystical”, hmmm, Strait of Magellan to the island of Tierra del Fuego and then across the border back into Argentina and onto Rio Grande, which boasts the biggest brown trout in the world.  But we don’t stop there.  We board a mini-bus which, two hours later, disgorges us on the seafront in Ushuaia in a square dedicated to Las Malvinas.  We are just 484 miles from the Falkland Islands and Argentina’s claim is clear. Las Malvinas are included in the Province of Tierra del Fuego, and the UK has illegally occupied the islands since 1833. But no-one seems to hold this against us.

This isn’t the only contentious border in these parts. Chile/Argentina is clearly divided by the Andes peaks right down the country, then suddenly a slip of the hand and the border blips out to the east, Chile does a quick land grab for the final few miles of mainland and half of Tierra del Fuego as well as all the little islands scattered down the west coast.  The two countries still squabble over several of these islands and they had to get the Pope to sort it out a few years ago.  He sided with Chile, but I doubt that it’s sorted for ever.  You can’t reach the Argentine section of Tierra del Fuego by road unless you go through Chile.  Which could be why it’s the most relaxed border we encounter.  No checks for illegal fruit here. Everyone on the bus gives their passports to the bus conductor, who takes them in to be cloned – sorry, stamped - at both border controls and we’re through.  

And then there’s Antarctica.  Silly me.  I thought it was protected by international treaty and no-one owned it.  Try telling that to Argentina. With Antarctica only being 600 or so miles away they naturally claim a slice of it, and once again include Argentine Antarctic Territory in the Province of Tierra del Fuego.

So what is it like, this city at the end of the world?  I often find that places I have pictured in my mind based on their romantic name are nothing like the expectation.  The town itself is an eclectic mix – part naval base, part cruise liner port (mainly heading to Antarctica) and because of that, part tacky tourist town; there is not one, but three casinos here.  But the steepness of the streets tumbling down to the sea rival those of San Francisco, and some of the buildings are brightly coloured and attractive, though just as many are ugly concrete.  My real problem is that it doesn’t feel like the end of the world.  I look out to sea and can see land. We are actually looking over the Beagle Channel and there are several islands between here and Cape Horn and open sea.  That’s where the drama is to be had.  Where the Pacific meets the Atlantic and the cruise liners brave waves 20m high to cross Drake’s Passage to Antarctica.

Here in Ushuaia it is high summer; it is a little chilly, but all is calm.  And there are lupins. And a rugby club. And a golf course, with 8 holes.  Who’d have thought of that?

John Wayne eat your heart out - Torres del Paine by horse

So here’s the problem.  We want to take the trail to the base of the Torres del Paine, but after our earlier torres trek in El Chalten, I know my limit and after 9.5 hours walking,  I definitely reached it there.  My guidebook classed that trek as moderate to difficult.  This one is classed plain difficult.  I’m worried.  Will my knee hold out?  Will my spirits hold up?    I know that I could do this trek, but I want to enjoy it, so when we are offered the chance to go part of the way on horses it seems the perfect solution.  It’s easy to persuade Robin that this is the best course of action, I just have to pay for both horses! 

Our hotel has a coral full of sure-footed horses just waiting to ferry us up the first section of the mountain. At this point I should mention that neither Robin nor I can ride a horse.  But with basic instructions – hold the reins in one hand, keep the other free, preferably resting on your leg (no idea why), pull left to go left, right to go right, back to stop – we are off.  My horse is called Gato and obeys my every command – particularly when our guide makes encouraging noises to him..  Robin’s is called Forsilla and is very greedy, so ignores most of his commands and stops to eat whenever she can. But they have obviously done this trek before and cross fast flowing rivers, climb steep hills, cross narrow passes with sheer edges falling straight down to the rushing river below (I can’t look down at this stage), without putting a foot wrong.  Bueno, Gato, bueno!

After an hour and a half, at the top of the first hill, we have to leave the horses and carry on by foot.  After our very hot walk in El Chalten, we are relieved to have some cloud cover today. The first section of our walk takes us through lenga forests, keeping us cool despite the uphill climb.  The forest is quite beautiful and very old.  Lenga trees are very slow growing -only a centimetre a year – and many are covered in a long hairy lichen that grows at just a millimetre a year, and only in unpolluted air.  After a week walking in the mountains, my lungs feel soooo clean in this clean air, I swear their capacity has doubled.  Coming out of the forest, we cross the stony scree – but this walk is nowhere near as hard as the one at El Chalten.  Either I am immensely fitter or the horses have done their job, and I’m still in good shape for the toughest section of the trail.

We are also blessed that the day isn’t too windy – we are told that some days you have to crouch on the ground if the wind gets too much.  The downside is that the summit of the torres is obscured by cloud.  But it still makes for a beautiful and dramatic sight and we enjoy our picnic here before heading back down, knowing it’s just 2 hours walking to get backto our horses and enjoy wonderful views over rivers, gorges and lakes. I am at one with my horse.  I feel like John Wayne.  We may be walking down the mountain, but I know I could swish the reins from side to side and Gato would gallop into the sunset.