Ushuaia Trek

For simplicity's sake I am going to pretty much transcribe my moleskin notes, with some minor changes, for you here so that you can catch up with what's been going down so far. This means that this entry will be both poorly written and unfunny. Please bear with me. Now the set up is thus: I am waiting alone in the Rio Gallegos bus station to catch my 36 hour bus ride to Cordoba so that I can hop on a plane to Chicago and hopefully charm my way into Northwestern. Without further ado I present idiot ramblings:

Sitting in the bus terminal if Rio Gallegos again. A lot has changed since my first night here. We left Bariloche with the intention of heading all the way south to Ushuaia and then working our way back north. And that's what we did . . . kind of.

We did make it all the way down to Ushuaia and did a few days of sitting around before getting our act together enough to begin our trek, Paso del Oveja. It was supposed to be a three day trek through the high valley behind Ushuaia. We opted to add on a trip to Glacier Vinciguerra on the first day. The Glacier and lake below it were beautiful. I think that was my first real glacier experience, that I can remember anyway. Unfortunately, it rained most of the first day and even though we dropped our packs in the bushes before we made our final ascent to the glacier, everything we had was wet. After the glacier we had to make a decision as to whether to try the harrowing pass over the next ridge and down to Laguna Encantada where we thought we would camp or to try and go back the way we came. Now, I should tell you the trail up was very muddy and slippery on our way up. And after all this rain it was very apparent that trying to go back down would be some sort of mucky mayhem I was not interested in. So after some initial hesitation and waffling on my part, we decided to go up and over.

The pass was without a trail and really consisted of us spreading out and looking for footprints or other signs of human life. Eventually we made it down into the forest although we were all already soaked. We continued towards the lake but when we came to the edge of the protection of the trees, Cyndi and I said NO. Doug dropped his pack and went ahead to check out the campsites at the lake. His report was dismal and we decided to continue down towards the path we would need to take tomorrow to continue the trek. Along the way we decided to camp on the side of the trail, not really kosher but it was a necessity.

We were all soaking wet and freezing so someone had the brilliant idea to try and start a small fire. We were not in an official park area so there was no clear direction as to the legality of this action. Cyndi was put in charge of fire making. Her skills up until this point were untested . . . except for a failed venture at the camp ground in Puerto Madryn. This time, she was a little too good at her job and she got a tad overzealous with the fuel. The fire she had manages to start in a dry patch under a large fallen tree got too big for its small space and began to catch the log above it. It was quickly decided that as nice as the fire had been for the first few minutes, we needed to put it out. We dumped out most of our water putting out the fire and had to roll the tree over to assure Cyndi that she would not be responsible for some sort of major forest fire incident. In retrospect, I'm not sure what we were thinking but at least we know Cyndi has some mad skills when it comes to starting fires is wet conditions.

While Cyndi was managing el fuego, Doug and I were preparing dinner. We ate hamburger patties, bread, cucumber, cilantro, and tomato with mustard and salsa de golf (a ketchup mayo combination that ends up tasting a little like thousand islands). Although, not in any hamburger like style, more piecemeal. It tasted amazing, probably not because of the actual quality but more because we were starving. It rained all through dinner and we decided that due to the weather and the untested quality of Cyndi’s new second hand sleeping bag the night would be better spent sharing a tent the three of us. We then delegated Cyndi’s tent as the stuff tent and began to make preparations for bed.

All wet clothes had to be removed prior to entering the sleeping tent so the protocol for entry became something like this: crouch down in entry way of tent, strip to underwear (maybe long, maybe not), fall over at least one to two times, try to scrape off mud and twigs accumulating on your butt, hand clothes out to someone who would run them to the stuff tent, stumble clumsily into the tent leaving all manner of wetness and dirt outside. Due to a situation with sleeping pads and a number of other factors, we decided that Doug should sleep in the middle. This worked out well for him in the end as you will soon see. We stayed up for a while playing guessing games and talking. It was so much fun, like your first sleep over away from home with no parents to tell you to go to bed. Unfortunately, it rained all night and because we were three people in a two person tent, Cyndi and I’s sleeping bags were pressed against the wall, and the condensation on the tent dripped through and got our bags pretty wet. Lucky Doug managed to stay dry.

During our slumber party powwow we decided to bag the rest of the trek since the rain wasn’t letting up and we had no way of getting our stuff to dry out. The hike out that morning wasn’t too bad but we had to walk a good part of the way back down the road towards Ushuaia. Waiting for the cab to come, we could smell the Sunday asados (large family bbq’s) being prepared along the way. The scent of roasting meats wafting across the way is pretty torturous when you are crawling out of the wilderness after a cold night but we continued on with visions of tenedor libre (literally, “free fork” or all you can eat steakhouses) in our heads.

So ends the story of our Ushuaia trek. More entries to come!