Iguazu Falls, Puerto Iguazu, Argentina - Day 35

Our next 2 days were spent traveling for 40 hours to the Iguazu Falls. We are getting very sick of all the hours we spend on buses! The Iguazu Falls are the largest waterfalls in the world reaching almost 2 miles wide with 275 individual falls. They straddle the border with Brazil, but Argentina seems to have the better half. We have arrived to the hot and humid jungle. We've been looking forward to the hot weather, but 95 degrees (which feels like 107 with the humidity) was a bit of a shocker! The good times of no bug repellent and no rain have ended abruptly.

Top of La Garganta del Diablo (Devil's Throat). There was so much mist it felt like it was raining.

Waterfalls as far as the eye could see!

The roar of the falls dominated any other sound.

Tropical paradise; it didn't feel real!

A coati stopping to scratch an itch. They are like a rainforest raccoon and are pests in the park stealing anything they can get their paws on, including our sunscreen!

Our ghetto campsite in the jungle.

 

Peninsula Valdes, Puerto Madryn, Argentina - Day 32

The next day, we decided to go whale-watching to see the Southern Wright Whales and their babies. We did see babies, but unfortunately, the whales decided to be boring this day, and none of them jumped out of the water :(

The captain let us sit up top to get away from the annoying tour group...pretty nice.

Mouth of an adult whale.

Another angle; no one informed her that humans want to see them jump, so all she did was come up for air.

Sea lions hanging out on a rock.

The boat made them all want to get in the water and play.

This alpha male one was easily 5 times the size of any of the other sea lions!

We walked along the beach after the boat ride and found that a lot of the baby whales don't make it :(

 

Punta Tombo, Argentina - Day 31

We travelled on a bus to Puerto Madryn, Argetina to see penguins in a nature reserve south of the town. This particular penguin colony, in Punta Tombo, is the largest colony outside of Antarctica, with 400,000 penguins! The timing worked out very well, because they all had their baby chicks. The weird part was that Punta Tombo looks like a desert and it was about 80 degrees! The penguins get really hot and lay on the ground panting heavily with their wings and legs stretched out to try to keep cool. There is no water here, but the penguins have a special gland on their noses that enables them to drink salt water and filter the salt out. They constantly sneeze to expel the salt. It sounds very cute to hear thousands of penguins sneezing all around you.

A penguin beak duel!

Penguins need shade too.

This guy was too hot he couldn't even make it under the bridge.

They are not afraid of people...

 

...and are surprisingly still very curious of them, even though they see people every day.

Waddling to the beach to cool off!

Penguins are monogamous and the males arrive first to dig the burrows in this desert landscape before the females arrive to lay the eggs.

Infant penguin.

A typical nest with a parent watching over. Both the mom and dad take turns protecting the babies.

These little nuggets were nuzzling each other.

 

Travel Days from El Chalten, Argentina to Bariloche, Argentina - Day 20-23

These past 4 days have been filled with mostly traveling. We left El Chalten, Argentina to head north to the Lakes District. Unfortunately, our options were to either wait 4 days for the next direct bus, sleep over night in some other town, or take the non-direct route back to El Calafate and then head north from there. We chose the non-direct bus, and 29 hours and at least 10 movies later, we arrived in Bariloche, Argentina. Also worth mentioning, is the only ATM in El Chalten ran out of money, so we only had enough to get us to El Calafate and then had to purchase the rest of our tickets from there.

At least the buses are really nice! Bird's eye view from the top, seats that recline into a bed, and 3 meals.

We spent a day in Bariloche to do some more planning, and have decided to head up to Pucon, Chile to hike up a volcano that has a magma lake at its peak! But before leaving Bariloche, we treated ourselves to some delicious Argentinian steak. It was the best wev'e ever had!

Good thing we ordered the half portions!

View of the lake next to Bariloche.

 

Fitz Roy, Patagonia, Argentina - Day 17-19

Our next adventure was a 27 mile 3-day trek in Parque Nacional Los Glaciares, which is the home of the famous Fitz Roy granite spires. We took a bus from El Calafate to the small mountain town of El Chalten. This was our favorite area in Patagonia; it was beautiful, we lucked out with unusually good weather again, and there were no entrance or camping fees! And no refugios (luxurious ski lodges for tourists who can't carry their own gear) meant less people!

Our hike in.

After setting up camp, we hiked up to this lake and had it all to ourselves!

Our front porch view :)

Sunrise on Fitz Roy...We slept in by 30 minutes and missed the red glow on these beautiful granite spires.

We hiked this ridgeline on a neighboring peak to get a better view.

Kris standing on the frozen lake taking in the view with no one else around!

 

Glacier Perito Moreno, El Calafate, Argentina - Day 15-16

We left Chile and headed to El Calafate, Argentina to get up close to the Perito Moreno Glacier to watch icebergs fall and take our first guided tour on top of the glacier. "Glaciar Moreno" is 21 miles long, 3 miles wide, almost 200 ft high, and advances up to 6 ft a day! Huge icebergs continuously fall into the lake at its base, but it is one of the only glaciers in the world that is currently not receding. This is due to mass amounts of snow it receives at its start high in the mountains.

Kris preparing the grill to cook some sausage at our nice campsite in El Calafate

Panoramic shot of the glacier

Here's a large boat for some size reference

One of the many ice bergs crashing into the water!

Being on the glacier is unreal. Here, you can see the trail we hiked on.

Kris wearing the homemade crampons the tour group gave us.

So, we can't stand guided tours because they move slow, have too many rules and regulations, and treat you like youv'e never stepped a foot outside. But they quickly redeemed themselves when they served us whiskey on glacier ice!

Cheers!

 

Ushuaia, Argentina - Day 5

(This day has already been posted and was accidentally deleted, so here it is again)

We returned back to Ushuaia from the park and still had 1 day "to kill" before our 12-hour bus ride to Puerto Natales, Chile. But killing time is nice here; we spent our day hiking on a glacier above town.

Bella working on the blog in our hostel

 

Tierra del Fuego National Park, Argentina - Day 3-4

We left our campsite in Ushuaia and headed to Tierra del Fuego to backpack in the national park.

We are standing as far south as any road will take us

And on a boardwalk that takes you just a bit further south