The Three Towers

Thursday 15 February

We were up, breakfasted and ready to leave for our trip to the National Park, by 08.00. Veronika was our guide for today – a young Chilean lady, who now resides in Basle and plays the oboe in several European orchestras – here, working for a month as a holiday.

The morning was a little overcast as we made our way along the side of the fjord we had traveled yesterday by boat. After about ten kilometres, we came across a major road-building project, where they are laying a new concrete road, which went on for miles - must have been more than thirty kilometres – where many sections had been completed but which the traffic was not yet allowed to use, We criss-crossed back and forth from one side of the new road to the other. Many sections on the temporary road were long stretches of single track operated by “stop / go” boards – where the men (or women) at the passing places were in contact with each other by two way radio. This meant slow progress, as we often had to queue for quite long periods while traffic the other way came through. Once through these roadworks, we stopped at a small town to buy postcards, leather souvenirs - all made in Argentina – and drinks, before making our way into the National Park, by which time we had been driving for more than 3 ½ hours. We stopped a few times to look at condors, soaring above and on one occasion, three condors at the top of a small hill feeding on some dead meat – which our driver thought was probably a guanaco (like a llama, but different) killed by a puma during the night, as another guanaco was standing close by. We also saw large groups of guanacos feeding near the roadside, some red foxes, a lake with a large flock of bright pink flamingos feeding around the edge, families of rheas, and an eagle.

Our first scheduled stop was to see the “Towers” – three great monoliths of rock standing between 2,600 and 2,800 metres high, jagged peaks topped with snow. The sun was trying to break through the clouds by now, but cloud kept passing over the tops of the “Towers” and obscuring the view. We kept watch as we proceeded in the minibus, and every time the cloud cleared and we could see these peaks, the driver would stop for more photos. We traveled around the park, looking at more stunning scenery, until we arrived at a spectacular waterfall – oceans of aquamarine coloured water cascading over a rocky fall, with plumes of white spray and foam spurting high in the air, then confined along a narrow channel to go from one lake to the next. It wasn’t a vast drop, but the amount of water rushing along made the scene phenomenal (you felt the water was trying to push past itself in a crowded place in its anxiety to reach calmer waters). Although sunny when we first arrived, there were a few spits of rain while we were here, and we all prayed that the weather wasn’t going to change. The sky had been full of menacing clouds in the far distance all around us for most of the morning. But we were lucky, this was just a passing shower, and in no time at all, it was dry and sunny again.

It was then time to move on to our lunch stop. We pulled up at what was called a ‘camping ground’, with a restaurant and facilities, but we were led to picnic tables by the lake, with the “Towers” as an amazing backdrop. Veronika produced the bottle of “pisco sours” well shaken, followed by red wine – we were getting used to this scenario – and then gave us each a “lunch box” with two halves of sandwiches in thick white toasted bread – one chicken and peppers, and the other smoked salmon and tomato. Barbara cannot eat wheat, so the hotel had provided an enormous box of salad, with ham and cheese and almost a hundred tiny tomatoes which we all shared too. There were chocolate and cereal bars, and nuts and raisins for dessert. It was a feast. The local sparrows and finches came around to mop up any crumbs we might have dropped.

We continued our journey through the park to the Grey River, Lake and Glacier. We stopped at the top of a hill, and wandered down a leafy track to a large sandbar across the lake, near to the where the river flowed out. The lake was 17 kilometres long and at this point more than a kilometre wide. We walked across the stone and shingle bar to the far side where we looked up the lake and could see the massive glacier falling into the water. The end of the glacier was about 20 metres high – a thick blue body of ice that looked like a frozen waterfall cascading into the lake. I climbed a little way up the cliff at the far side, for a better view - this had once been a small island in the lake (probably composed of moraine originally deposited by the glacier millions of years ago) before the sand and shingle were deposited by the lake so that now the water could only flow around the far side of this hill to the river. It was windy when we first walked on the beach, but nothing like the strength of the wind on the far side – it was very difficult just to stand upright, never mind stand still – it almost blew you over. Consequently the journey back across the bar was made more strenuous as we were battling against the wind. We eventually made it, and met up with several of our group, who had decided that the walk across the sand was a few steps too far, and had sat in the shelter of the trees, basking in the sun, which was very warm by this time.

Back on the minibus at last, it took us three hours (without another stop at the village which had been scheduled) to reach the hotel, and it was almost 20.00 by the time we got there – meaning we had been out almost twelve hours. We were amazed to find that we were the first group back – the two hiking groups were still out!

It was time to change for dinner and make our way for drinks and yet more tasty nibbles in the bar. The other two groups had arrived back within half an hour of us, so it was almost 21.30 before we made our way to dinner. Tonight’s tasty repast was prawn, scallop and avocado salad, followed by salmon and mashed potato with basil, and a dessert which looked a bit like a portion of pale Christmas cake – it was made up of fruits and nuts, topped with a layer of white icing, with ice cream, strawberries and raspberries. All washed down of course with lots of wine – some people have suggested that after this tour we may all need to go to a rehabilition centre to dry out!!!

Veronkia came to the restaurant and gave a short recital on her oboe. She seemed very talented and everyone was enchanted. We then chatted in the bar for a while to the manager and the “Irish” guests, before making our way to bed. We had decided not to do a trip tomorrow but to try and catch up with emails and the blog.