Esquel

Something that we have found rather annoying throughout this trip is that when you travel by bus you are not allowed to load or unload your own bag. You have to wait in line behind everyone else that was on the bus while some random guy not even affiliated with the bus company hands you your bag, that you could have just as easily grabbed your self. Then you are expected to tip and they will ask you for money if you don't readily offer it and if you pretend not understand they will show you money and say in English, tip for my salary! This really blows because is hard to keep small bills around for such occasions. We usually have the Argentinian equivalent of $20 bills, and it's not like we'd tip that much! This is what happened to us when we got off the bus at Esquel. We saw some other people grab their own bags, cause the line was taking forever. So we grabbed ours and started walking away. The luggage man, who had some sort of speech impediment, started chasing after us and shrieking and showing us money. He wanted a tip even though he never touched our bags! We didn't have any small bills so we just stood there staring at him while he shrieked and eventually gave up. It was very awkward. If Jeff and I had a dollar for every bag we ever loaded into a bus, we'd be multi millionaires! Plus the bags we load are about 5 times heavier and more difficult to move around than our than our backpacks!

We have now been in Esquel 3 days. We hadn't intended to stay so long but the bus to our next destination (El Chaltén) wasn't until today, Monday.

There's nothing really to do inside the town of Esquel and not many tourists come here, but there's something very pleasant and peaceful about it. I really liked it here. In a way it reminds me of San Martín de Los Andes, with many nice houses, lots of them A frame cabins with yards full of pretty flowers. The town is surrounded by low mountains and hills. And they take siesta very serious! The streets become deserted and everything closes from about 2 to 6!

Our first day we did just about nothing since we are still sick and wished to rest. We took a nice walk to the bus station to buy our onward tickets and also to book a tour to visit Los Alerces National Park. On the way back we found a nice pine tree with a perfect nest for people, so we climbed up and took a rest. When we got back to the hostel (Casa del Pueblo) we had a nap and then spent the rest of the evening in the hammocks.

The next day we took a bus to the nearby town of Trevelin, which is a Welsh settlement. There are many Welsh settlements in Patagonia and some of the people in these towns still speak Gaelic! They also still serve traditional Welsh tea service, and this is precisely why we went to Trevelin, to visit a tea house. I am still having difficulty understanding Patagonian Spanish so when we entered the tea house (Nain Maggie) and the lady asked us if we wanted complete tea service we just blindly agreed and didn't ask questions! I thought it was pretty cool she brought out fancy tea cups and a big pot of tea, and a little carafe of milk, a plate of cheese, four slices of bread which is made with flour they grind at their own mill, locally produced cherry jam and butter and two scones. Another 10 minutes later she brought out another plate, this time full of cakes and pastries, five different kinds and two of each kind! It was an incredible amount of food, more than we could eat for sure! We could have shared a serving! We also prefer to call these things un-sweets because although they looked like desserts they were not sweet! There was something called black cake which looked like a black fruit cake and tasted like it was dipped in whiskey! Not good! There was also some sort of sour apple pie type thing, a sour raspberry tart sort of thing, something that resembled flan pie and a piece of very dry chocolate cake. It was all quite strange to us. We only ate half of them and we got the rest to go on a paper plate, which I ate on our tour the next day. Jeff was not impressed and didn't want anything to do with them! I didn't care for them much either but we paid for them and I don't like to waste! We we paid the bill we were quite surprised that the tea service cost $20 each!! By far the most expensive meal we have had in Argentina! After tea time I was on absolute carb overload and we went and took a rest in the shady grass of the local park before returning to Esquel! We had corn flakes and white bread with dulce de leche (caramel spread) for breakfast, I think I am becoming malnourished on this trip! Too much bread!!!

Today is our third and last day in Esquel and we went on a boat tour of Los Alerces National Park. It was a very expensive park to visit. Including the park entrance fee, boat ride and transportation it cost us $107 each, which is double the cost of any other tour we have done! The main attraction in the park is to see the Alerce trees that the park is named for, and more specifically the Abuelo or grandpa tree, which is 2,600 years old! The only way to do this is to take the boat, as there are no trails into the area of the park where the Abuelo is located. We had 2 separate boat rides to take to get the ancient alerce forest. The first was about an hour and a half ride down Lago Futulaufquen, up the 3.5 km long Río Arrayanes and into Lago Verde. It was a very scenic ride across a very deep glassy glacier lake. The surrounding hills and mountains were reflected perfectly into the lake. The part on the river was pretty cool because you can see the bottom the whole time as it barely meets the depth requirement of 90 cm for the boat to pass through, so they zig zag around avoiding sand bars. The shore in this part is lined with the red orange barked Arrayán trees, some of them are growing right out of the turquoise water like mangroves. After the first ride we had to get off the boat and walk 1 km to Lago Menendez and board a second boat. It was another glassy glacier lake and this time we could see a glacier and snowy mountains along the border with Chile. After another 1 on this boat we disembarked in the Alerce forest. Unfortunately our boat had 80 people on it and there was another boat there with just as many people aboard! It was ridiculous. This was the part of the trip we had been most looking forward to. They split the groups into "small" groups of 40 and tried to stagger us down the trail. We probably walked no more than half a mile and it took us an hour doing baby steps the whole way! And sadly the forest had been logged until 1937, so there were very few Alerce trees! The wood was seen as very valuable, as it is extremely rot resistant and used to build roofs, flooring, houses, boats, etc. We only saw three trees that were over 1,000 years old and a small hand full of younger trees. The Alerce trees are very similar looking to the Giant Sequoia trees, but they are extremely slow growers. We saw one tree that was probably 2 feet tall with a trunk of maybe a centimeter and the guide said it was probably 40 years old! They only grow a few millimeters a year at most! They are the second oldest living trees on earth behind bristlecone pine trees!

Our entertainment for the walking part of the tour was seeing all the silly Argentinians photographing each other with every random tree, fallen tree or trunk. They make really ridiculous sexy poses, especially the ladies, but the guys too! (We were the only foreigners on the boat).

After the brief forest walk we boarded the boat and had to do the same thing all over again, only this time it was blazing hot and miserable!

We are now back at our hostel. In two hours we will board a 22 hour bus ride South to El Chaltén, the trekking capital of Patagonia. It is a very busy place and we plan to stay for 3 days. We had to make reservations at two different hostels because there wasn't a single place in town that had room for us all three nights! The first night will be at Rancho Grande Hostel and the second two at Aylen-Aike Hostel.

*I have included a photo of a monkey puzzle tree! (Araucaria araucana)