A town on the outer edges of civilization.

Posted on February 1, 2013 by Noel

El Calafete is in southern Patagonai and while it isn’t the most southern town in Argentina, it’s pretty darn close. It sits between an endlessly flat, dry and barren landscape to the East and towering mountains that rocket up the the heavens to the West. The Atlantic side is really really flat and is speckled with an unlimited number of multi coloured lakes. Other than a few very resilient shrubs and grasses nothing grows here and it’s single most striking feature is the milky green Río (River) Gallegos which twists and winds it’s way through the barren land on it’s way to the Atlantic.

El Calafete’s main strip is pretty cute with lots of shops catering to trekking and tourists. We found a really great little restaurant with a bit of a hippie vibe that make kick ass crepes which was a nice change from the typical meat and veggies that most restaurants serve. The main attraction in the area is the Perito Moreno Glacier. The pictures don’t do it justice, but the face of the glacier is 120 feet high and in the afternoon on a sunny day the ice warms up and huge pieces of ice break off and come crashing into the lake below. When it happens it sounds like a cannon is going off and the impact on the lake below rockets water 160 feet out and 120 feet high.The wave that it creates is big enough that you could almost surf it. In a zen like trance we watched the powerful forces of mother nature at work as massive pieces of age old ice continually broke off and crashed into the lake below.

It was here that we saw the most wild life as well. The area is home to Alpaca’s and Emu’s which I saw many as they roamed the desert like planes eating the sparse dried grasses. Had we been in a rental car I would have been able to get better photos because we would have stopped on the side of the straight and deserted roads to get up close and in person with them, but the bus driver must have seen a million of them because he but hardly turned an eye. I on the other hand was glued to the window with my camera in hand and as we raced by I was madly snapping away. I could easily download a photo of one of these strange and interesting beasts, but somehow to me that’s cheating.

Old guy selling empanadas from a shopping cart.

I haven’t really gotten into the food in Argentina in my posts so here’s my quick two cents. If you were a gluten free vegetarian on holidays in Argentina you would be screwed because they love eating their bread and meat. I’m guessing that that’s because the cost of vegetables is so expensive. Every hotel we stayed at included breakfast in the price and breakfast includes; a basket of bread, a selection of very sweet jams, dulce de leche (which is a sweet carmel like spread), sugar coated croissants, sugar coated corn flakes, sweetened yogurt (either vanilla or strawberry), coffee with warm milk and a juice. The first few days I did what I was taught and ate everything that was given to me and then after a while I realized that if I kept it up I was going to have to buy bigger pants and board shorts so I cut back. The funny thing is that Josi finished up reading the book Wheat Belly on this trip which is basically saying that the whole reason that middle America is so dam fat is because of it’s addiction to wheat. Our goal is to be gluten free, but that was shot to hell in Argentina because bread is the staple to their diet. We didn’t really notice a typical lunch, perhaps empanadas? For those of you who don’t know what they are, they are similar to a pizza pocket except that the inside isn’t very saucy. They range in price from cheep to pretty cheep and because of their ease we often took them with us on our hikes. Dinners all come with a big basket of bread, which we eventually stopped accepting. The server usually looked at us funny, told us that we had to pay for it anyway, and then eventually took it away. Minutes later another server usually came along with more bread assuming that our waiter messed up which we also turned away. Prior to turning the bread away I was waking up feeling pretty funky and I was figuring that it was the steaks or other big heavy meals that we were eating, but I later came to know that it was the half loaf of bread that they were feeding us. The one thing that they do have dialled food wise is their steaks. They come tender, cheep, huge and delicious. I didn’t eat many, but in the last month I still ate more than I have eaten in the last 5 years back home in Canada. The secret to why Argentian food tastes so great is their Chimmy Churry sauce. We put it on everything and it rocks.

Posted in Adventure, Cool Shit, Food, Travel, Wildlife
Country: Argentina

Patagonia – Barliloche and Beyond.

Posted on January 29, 2013 by Noel

We opted for a 22 hour bus ride from Buenos Aries to Bariloche rather than spending the extra on a flight. We had been told that the busses were pretty great, as far as busses go, so we had to give it a try. Unlike the busses back home in Canada, the busses in Argentina have seats that go right down into a slightly angled bed with a full leg rest so you can actually lay out and get pretty comfortable. They also play fairly decent movies in english, feed you 2 course warm meals complete with wine and desert, give you blankets and pillows and when they do stop it’s only for a few minutes so you aren’t stuck wandering around weird buss stops in the middle of the night while the rest of the people line up for bad food. All up we arrived well rested and it was a pretty good experience. If I was a few years younger and had all of the time in the world I would likely take busses all over the country, but since we only have a month here and our next destination is a 33 hour bus ride away and then the one after that is even further we are going to take planes from here on in.

Everyone tells us that we got lucky with the weather as it’s been in the mid to low 30’s which is well above their average. Bariloche reminds me of a bigger Nelson in the way that it’s a cute hill side town overlooking a lake and is situated about 11k from a really great ski hill. The main roads are paved and most of the smaller ones are gravel and very dusty. The main strip in town is quite a bit larger than I was expecting and there are lots of scruffy hippy types milling about. The tourists, of which there plenty, flock to the many chocolate shops and buy in bulk. My overall impression of Bariloche is that it’s larger than what I was hoping for, a little run down and a bit spread out. I guess I was expecting a South American Whistler type vibe and it wasn’t quite up to par. Having such a great summer and winter vacation like Whistler in your back yard is something that I will never take for granted.

After a few days of taking busses and taxis to various trail heads for our hikes we opted to rent a car for a week. It wasn’t cheep, but it was worth it because if took us to places we would have never seen otherwise. One of the first things I noticed about this part of Patagonia is that regardless of how far up a remote gravel road you are, you are sure to run into loads of young people hitch hiking with back packs and trekking gear. They must just pop out of the mountains, find a road and start hitch hiking because they are in the most random spots. The same goes for people fly fishing. It didn’t seem to matter how remote we were people were everywhere. I guess crowds are to be expected as this area of Patagonia is considered close (22 hour bus ride) to Buenos Aries and in their summer a lot of them vacation here.

I was keen to find out where the best fly fishing was and Josi was keen to hike every mountain peak. Back home in BC Josi and I usually find mountains to hike that have good fishing at the top so we both get what we are looking for. In Patagonia, when you hike to the top of mountains you are way above tree line and the freezing cold lakes at the top are void of fish because they at the foot of giant glaciers and full of silt. We came to a silent and mutual agreement that for most every day we spent hiking a mountain we would also spend a day finding river to fly fish.

The day after we arrived in Bariloche we did a 16k hike up a mountain peak that overlooked Bariloche and the surrounding lakes. Going up was easy, but one the way down we chose the more direct route to get home which was straight down under a gondola. Going down would have been a great ski run, but on foot your toes start to jam against the tips of your shoes. By the end the day our feet were pretty sore. The next day we hiked 24k on a much much bigger mountain called Refugio Frey who’s trail head starts from Mt Cathedral. Along the way we came across a super cool cabin built partially under a massive huge boulder that is used as a refuge for climbers. At the top there was another cabin/ refuge beside a small lake. Here there were many climbers camping with their tents sheltered by small stone walls to protect them from storms. It was a really cool vibe as people played music, socialized and climbed the many cliff faces that surrounded the camp. By the time we got to the bottom we were pretty spent and getting to see such amazing sights made the trip well worth the effort.

After back to back days of climbing and one day of shopping around Bariloche is was time to go fishing. I read online about one fishing store in Bariloche that was meant to be good so we went in to buy some flies and to talk to them about where the fishing was good. When we got there the older lady working was smoking a cigarette while she helped some other customers so I checked out their fly selection. I though that I was going to be in trouble because I had packed a bunch of trout flies that I tied back home that work really well for cut throat and rainbow trout up in Canada, but the ones they had looked nothing like the ones I had. When I asked the lady what flies worked well and where the fishing was good she pulled another drag from her smoke and told me that she didn’t know and went back to her smoking. Needless to say I didn’t buy anything and hit the road with the flies I had. After driving a while we pulled up at a river to have lunch and I fished for a little. It was pretty heavily fished and I didn’t have any luck with my dry flies, but thought I may have had a bite on a nymph. When fishing in a river you can’t always be sure if you had a bite, or you are bouncing off of the bottom. After lunch we continued on and stubbled onto a little river on a dead end road that lead to a lake so we decided to give it a try. The first thing I saw when we got there was a big brown trout about 4lbs jump out of the water along with a few nice sized rainbow’s jumping as well. I was so dam excited I could barely wait to get my fly in the water. After fishing for a while with no bites I stopped a local who was fly fishing with his son and asked him if he could recommend any of the flies in my box. He shook his head in disapproval and pointed to a couple of yellowish flies and said “colour”, but that was about it. I fished for a while longer using the few that he pointed at and still no luck. We couldn’t catch them so we decided to join them and jumped in for a refreshing swim in the crystal clear water.

When we got to the next town we found a proper fly fishing shop and this time is was more of a familiar experience. The guy in the fly shop showed me a selection of dry flies that work well in the area and then pointed on a map to a spot on a river a few hours away. Unlike the flies we use back home these all had big long legs and they look very real and bug like. All geared up we packed a lunch and headed out. One thing that I find really interesting in Patagonia is how in one minute you can be in a lush green forest with lakes and mountain peaks so high that they reach up and touch the sky and the next minute you are in a virtually flat dry and dusty desert with dusty gravel roads that go straight for miles. It’s a contrast that I’m not used to having grown up in BC.

When we got there we were in what seemed to be the middle of no where and once again we were surprised to see how many people were camping and fly fishing along the banks of this remote river. Turns out that many of the people who live in the cities had for the area in Patagonia in and around Barlioche and many of them love to fly fish. After fishing for a short while and only catching few small trout we drove on. We came to a indian reserve where they collected $30 pesos ($6 CAD) from us in exchange for us fishing on their land. While we didn’t catch a lot of fish the few we caught were small, but a decent size, the biggest of which was about 17 inches.

After that we ventured to Mt Tronador which is 3,491 m mountain a few hours away from Bariloche. We got lucky because there was a last minute cancelation at the Hotel Tronador which is a super remote and very cool 50’s lodge way up a gravel one lane road 30K away from the base of Mt Tronador. It’s situated on the edge of a beautiful bright green lake and included in the costs are three meals a day and the use of a small row boat and loads of trails leading up into the mountains. The lake had huge trout that loved jumping in front of my flies, but none would bite. The local fly fishing guide told me that it was too hot and the chances of catching them were slim. He did tell us about a small lake 8k up a hiking trail in the mountains. Josi and I decided to check it out, but when we got there there were so many hungry biting horse flies that we didn’t even get a chance to fish. We drove up to the base of Mt Tronador and went for a quick hike, but once again the horse flies were all over us. Even our OFF spray from Canada wasn’t enough to keep them away. Josi was even getting bitten through her sweat shirt. Lucky they weren’t so bad in and around our hotel. Staying here was the highlight of our time in the Bariloche area.

My next blog post will feature our next stop in this amazing adventure as we fly south 3.5 hours to El Calafate and then on to the even more remote town of El Chalten. This will be the furthest south either of us have ever been and there’s a lot of excitement around our travels to this remote part of Patagonia.

Posted in Adventure, Cool Shit, Fishing, Travel, Wildlife
Country: Argentina

Goodbye Costa Rica, thanks for the laughs.

Posted on January 2, 2013 by Noel

Another wonderful year has come and gone and I’m stoked for what’s to come in 2013.

A few of our many goals for 2013 are:
– Search out new fun and profitable business ideas
– Continue to grow FreeBird Agency
– Buy a house
– Build my photography business
– Start a new business and or launch a new product

The reports I’m getting from back home is that the snowboarding has been great this season, but when I’m able to jump into my board shorts and surf every day I haven’t missed it in the least. I love never being cold and for me surfing is my meditation. It’s where I can clear my mind and focus only on the the surf. It enables me to turn my brain off and in those moments I gain a deeper understanding of what’s important and a clearer outlook on life. While I’m stoked to be going to Argentina and then eventually back home to Canada, I know that my soul will always long to go for a surf each and every day.

We have just finished packing our bags and are ready to leave to San Jose tomorrow morning. We will stay there for the night before starting the next leg of our adventure in Argentina. More of that story to come as it unfolds.

It was great having Josi’s parents join us here in Costa Rica for Christmas. I’m pretty much with my mom and family every Christmas so having them here made it seem a little more like home. They brought a small plastic Christmas tree with them from Montreal and when we had our Christmas dinner we lit it up and placed it on our table over looking the bright orange setting sun and the surf far below. Mixed seafood grill replaced my usual turkey dinner and the warm breeze off the Pacific was a welcome change of scenery from the wet snow that I’m used to. If only my whole family would have been there it would have been perfect.

We went on a hike the other day and had our good friend Jesse not lent us his prized Swiss Army knife for our world adventure I likely would have had to carry Josi for 6K out of a snake and panther infested jungle. Salt water and lots of walking had gotten the better of her old leather flip flops and they were in bad shape when we took off on our quad in search of adventure. We drove toward the edge of Cabo Blanco National Park along a small dirt road when we stumbled upon the park’s visitor centre at the foot of a trail head that leads through the jungle to a remote beach. I always knew that there were monkeys, huge Boa Constrictors and poisonous spiders in the area, but at the park we learned that there are also panthers, other big cats, a number of poisonous snakes and lots of strange furry animals that I had not heard of or seen before. We didn’t see Panthers or snakes, but we did see lots of pretty much everything else. As you can see I’m not a National Geographic photographer in any way shape or form, but I did manage to snap off a few shots of the wildlife that we saw along the way. The trail we took was about 8k in and 6k out which was a lot more than we were planning considering we hadn’t intended on hiking at all. Right when we started to come back along the 6k trail Josi’s stubbed the toe of her flip flop and the soul was all but removed from it’s thin top. I had some bright pink string that I had found some time back and kept because I thought that it might make a good fly for fishing. Jesse’s knife was perfect for puncturing through both the soul and it’s upper which enabled me to bound them back together. Why I say I would have had to carry her out is that there was no way she was going to walk back with bare feet. One of the photos I posted is of a spider. You can’t tell in the picture, but that thing is huge! To get an idea of how big it is, in the picture you can see a really small spider behind it’s back two legs. That little spider is about the size of a typical spider back home. I asked Josi to stand closer to it so you could get an idea of it’s size, but she wasn’t interested in that idea and there was no way I was going to give her the camera so I could get close to it.

The only thing that I didn’t do was catch a fish on my fly rod! I lost one, had a few other chase my fly, but that’s it. At least we had a great time fishing with Dougy and we all caught a lot. I love fishing and I love eating fish. Lots of time over the next month for catching fish on the fly in Argentina. San Jose tomorrow and Buenos Aries the day after!

Posted in Adventure, Food, Surfing, Wildlife
Country: Costa Rica