Alright, here we go.

We left Buenos Aires via train bound for Sierra de la Ventana 11 hours away. It was significantly cheaper than the bus and I had never been on a train (other than John's Howarth Park ride and the train at the Atlanta zoo where Cali lost one of her prized posessions) so it seemed like a good call. Well, it was significantly cheaper for a reason: school bus bench seats, open windows, flickering lights, and loads of people. We decided it would be a pretty good call to lock our bags to the luggage rack, since it was so hectic and they had to be about half a car behind us. Fortunately we had the foresight to buy an entire pizza (for $5!!) before going, so we had a snack. About half way through the night the train cleared out enough to lay down, so we got a not-so-solid 3 hours of sleep. Around 5 AM we had a lively conversation with a very drunk gaucho who had a crush on me and loved to make statements such as "it is the morning." After making it off the train around 6 am we wandered around looking for a campground, where we hurridly pitched a tent and then went in search of a bus to catch to go to climb Cerro Ventana, the reason why we were attracted to the town in the first place. We waited. And waited. Outside of a bakery that smelled SO good. Such a tease. A van took us to the park, where we discovered that we couldnt actually climb the mountain, so we hiked every other trail in the park, super quick. It was nice. John's hat blew 30 meters into the air and he was pretty convinced it was gone, but after a snake sighting, some chocolate, and wine sips we found it VERY far away. We conquered the park so quickly that we beat the bus on its way back, so we hitched back to town. After a kilo of icecream (no joke) we hung around the campsite and wrote postcards.

The next day we were determined to continue south, quickly. After loads of confusion about busses we ended up taking the same bus we took the day before, mostly because we knew where it would pick us up and when. Unfortunatley we did not look at a map before this journey, so our assumption that it would take us to a town that was in the direction we were trying to go was incorrect. Fortunately, I chatted for a second with the only other English speakers on the bus, who turned out to be Floris and Mike, two Dutch guys that we have been travelling with off and on since then.

After some bus transfers and waiting and not sleeping we arrived in Puerto Pyramides, on the Valdes Peninsula, our first official Patagonian destination. We arrived in the middle of a storm, I wanted to camp but it cost nearly as much as the hotel room we found, so we ended up staying inside (and cooking in the shower). We were hoping to find a cheap tour, but the only thing open was a bakery, so you know, we ate some treats instead. Argentinians (Argentines, according to John) know what is up when it comes to baked desserts. We ended up hooking up with a couple from Poland and taking a remise, which ended up being more like a private tour, complete with binoculars and everything. Our taxi driver/guide respected the land so much that he even took the time to inform dumb tourists when they were breaking the rules and hurting the sensitive habitat. I dug it. The tour of the Peninsula took 7 hours altogether. We saw penguins, sea lions, elephant seals, hilarious interpretive signs, guanacos, furry armadillos, native and non native rabbits, and the lowest elevation (-40 meters or somethin) place in South America. Pretty solid.

We woke up to sun the next day, so played on the beach with a frisbee and some super friendly dogs. The tourist office where we got all of our information told us that the first bus out of town was at 6pm. On our way to a trailhead we saw a bus parked where we were dropped off, turns out it was actually the one we wanted and leaving in 20 minutes. Luckily the town was super small so we easily grabbed our bags and made the bus. 2 hours later we were in   Puerto Madryn, just a layover where we were planning on eating Mexican (closed). Instead I ordered an entire pizza from a fast food place and John ordered a hamburger... and 3 hot dogs. After packaging Brodies birthday gift with some cardboard off the street and lotsa conversations with the post office we boarded the bus for Rio Gallegos, 20 something hours away. Yikes.

In Rio Gallegos we ran into our Dutch friends again, and adventured to a campsite near the bus station AKA on a highway in a sketchy industrial part of town. We spent loads of money on food and made an epic dinner, complete with some pretty legit beer we discovered in Buenos Aires. After finishing our meal we got some more alcohol and walked the 20 blocks to the estuary, where there was supposed to be a crazy tide difference. After an eventful night of drinking we made the bus at 8 AM for another stupidly long ride to Ushuaia that required some serious border hopping. Our bus was pretty empty and full of fun people and we got to ride the ferry across the Strait of Magellan (I missed the trip from Powell River with Jerin, a bit). In Ushuaia we found "a very nice place to rest," claimed the sign, and got our own dorm room.

We looked up some day hikes around Ushuaia, and after a crepe-ish breakfast with chocolate and apples, we wandered up the mountains north of town. Pretty long day of walking, but also incredible to be able to walk from the ocean to alpine in just a couple hours. We climbed up to the tourist trap glacier which came complete with a chairlift, which we obviously skipped. I was a bit disappointed that the famed glacier was mostly just a small bit of snow (certainly not Alfred status). We ended up hiking up to an adjacent ridge which overlooked the mountains to the north, a valley we hadn't seen before and I took my first mountain babe shot of South America (http://mtnbabes.com). Stoked.

The next day we did basically the same, on accident. Another epic hike, just wandering away from town going generally up. Hanging around town we ran into a Brazilian we met on the train from Buenos Aires, more than 2000 km away and then while hanging out in the square with him Mike and Floris showed up! We  had been planning a multi day trek in the area around Ushuaia and ended up hastily preparing for it with Mike and Floris. At the hostel that night, while cooking and drinking, of course, we added Tyler from Chicago (has an adorable dog named Shannon, lives in Montana, and bartends, so we obviously had plenty to talk about) to our party.

The trip began with a very long search for the trailhead, after a pit stop at a bakery, even though we had bought a map and Tyler had done a bunch of research on access. We ended up walking through what appeared to be private property (obviously not legit in the US, but way more acceptable here, still difficult to wrap our minds around though) and ended up stumbling upon what appeared to be a fantastic party, complete with an entire lamb roast. John drooled a bit, but we tore him away and continued in the right direction, now verified by the party-goers.

We took it pretty easy through a bunch of windthrow (blown down trees, across the trail) and made it to the alpine ridiculously quick. We traversed a valley across a scree slope, crested a ridge, and then climbed down to an alpine Lake, our first camp. We were too stoked that there weren't bears, so we stupidly left our food out for a fox to eat. I was devastated. All of my callories  (cheese) was gone! Priscilla Vivio saved the day (again) with the Lara bar that she sent us to South America with.

The next day we followed a river through the valley mostly down hill. I went ahead of the group a bit (you know, my dislike of people) and took the logical path around the swamp, while the boys attempted to traverse through the swamp. They claim only two dunks, but the bandaids were broken out for the first time. We arrived fairly early at the prettiest meadow and immediately de-shoed and threw the frisbee. We decided there was no way we couldn't camp there, even though it wasn't as far as we had planned (we were planning a mountain summit the next day). After some popcorn, Dutch cards, and dinner we crashed pretty early. The next morning we woke up to breakfast (John is the best travel partner) and rain. The mountain was a no-go due to visibility, so we just hiked out, meeting tons of neighborhood dogs on the way. As a wet group of 5 we had no hopes of hitching, but Mike ended up flagging down a pickup that we were all able to pile into the back of and got a ride to the highway. After another hour we were back in town and wandering around looking for  the pizza that Floris HAD to have. Familiar, right? Like everything, it was closed. So we ended up in an Irish bar (good beer at least, right?) and had pizza and crab caneloni, We bought a bus ticket to Punta Arenas, Chile for the next day at 5 am and proceeded to make another super epic meal at the hostel.

The bus was fairly uneventful. We arrived in Punta Arenas in the evening and walked to the only hostel with camping in lonely planet. We camped for half the price of staying inside, which also meant we didnt get an included breakfast (luckily we had left over pancakes from the day before. Like I said, John is the best). The next day we went to Zona Franca, the duty free shopping area where we heard we could buy good outdoor gear for cheap. We couldnt get it together fast enough though, so ended up arriving just as the stores closed for their afternoon break, so killed time grocery shopping. The outdoor store was not what we had hoped, but we purchased rain covers for our packs. Back in town we searched for a map for a trek to Cabo Froward, but apparently they don't exist, so we bought more groceries, took pictures of the map hanging in the hostel, and packed our bags.

John was very sure that there would be a bus to San Juan, the closest town to the trailhead, even though the man who owns the hostel said it was only in the morning. Turns out it is in the morning and the evening, but only MWF, so he was half right. We decided to hitch, a very uninformed decision on my part. Hitching was easy though, pretty much every car that passed picked us up, but the trailhead was at the VERY end of the road, as in the road dwindled down to a trail, and eventually the beach, so there was literally no traffic about 20 km  from the trailhead. After our last ride we started booking it down the road, passing a cafe that had signs mentioning shrimp empanadas and craft beer, that was only open for lunch, heartbreaking. We walked about 12 km before it was too dark to see a trailhead that we still thought came off of the road. We camped by a river, essentially in the middle of this tiny village. We were a little concerned about disturbing the neighborhood dogs, but made dinner and called it a night early.

We started the next morning around 10, with more road walking in the direction we assumed was still correct. We passed a badass 4x4 van with BC plates on the way. Whaaaa!? Once finally reaching a sign verifying we were doing it right, we saw a rock cairn marking a trail that John assumed was just a trail inland a bit, avoiding the hard walking on the beach. After multiple map consultations in which he asssured me we were "just going a bit  inland," he finally realized we were taking a very muddy detour up a mountain, not in the direction we wanted to go in, through weather that was just windy down below, but nearly hailing on the mountain. We ended up backtracking back down, and hiking along the beach in the rain and gnarly wind for about 4 hours, passing a hostel, with a menu posted on the trail (ouch!! that was a hard one to pass up) and a lighthouse. The photos of the map that John took with his phone had rumors of a refugio a bit past the lighthouse. Turns out it was far. And it was raining. So  once we arrived (nearly passed it, luckily I've got an eye for brightly painted buildings in  the woods that John doesn't seem to possess) we had dreams of staying in it, but knew the river  just beyond  was supposed to be tricky to cross at high tide. We dropped our packs, walked to the river, and made the very inaccurate decision that the river was so minor that crossing it, regardless of the tides, would not be an issue. We collected wood for the sketchiest fire (hole in the chimney, very questionable stove) and in doing so, discovered that the refugio, which was actually an abandoned and very rundown homestead, had raspberry bushes behing it!!! We built a fire and attempted to dry our clothes and boots. We also decided that since this was the only night that we were definitely going to be warm and dry, we would celebrate my birthday early. We made our infamous mango concoction. Hella good, like always, and drank our 2 beers each, which we bought at the duty free store- bear on the label and forest green can, how could I resist!?

We woke up to more rain. Once we arrived at the river we realized that we were quite mistaken. The river actually rose A LOT with the tide. After some wandering we found a bit of a log jam that we could crawl across, without too much issue. It stopped raining and we continued walking on the beach and in the forest, similar to Juan de Fuca or the Lost Coast (other backpacking trips we've been on). We had about 3 hours between where we started that morning and the 2nd river, in which we navigated a bog, John up to his waist in water at one point (certainly not employing  Jerin's tai chi method). At the second river we realized that based on our river observation the day before, that it was not low tide. We built a lunch fire, drank some mate, and waited till what appeared to be low tide. We then de-shoed, and de-pantsed and waded in really cold water. I had a minor freak out due to my extreme dislike of the bottom of lakes/things under water because there was at least half a meter of decaying organic matter to walk through- I imagine dead fish, leaves, and kelp. Ew. 2 more hours mostly along the beach, but not in the rain, and we arrived at the 3rd major river, which required some more undressing, but luckily an immediate camp set-up on the other side allowed us to warm up by the fire and cook dinner on an open flame. We got to bed at a reasonable hour, and decided we´d get up early so we could try to make it out to the point at Cabo Froward at the end of the trek, back to our campsite, and 15 km back to the refugio for the next night (Acacia´s birthday night). Well, I (John) woke up early to try to cook birthday breakfast, but realizing we were out of flour, came up with an oatmeal based pancake recipe (that may have included chocolate, dulce de leche, and plum jam) on the fly and served her breakfast in tent. Then it started raining. Damn. So, since it was Acacia´s birthday after all, we decided to sleep in a bit. 10 o´clock rolled around, and it was still raining, so we decided to start our extremely ambitious day way too late. We made the solid decision to leave our packs at camp and continue to the cape unburdened. The rocks were super slippery, there was a lot of seaweed, and alot of slimy blown over trees along the beach. After 2 hours (when John had planned our arrival at Cabo Froward) we had just glimpsed the cross WAY in the distance on a hill, but more immediately 2 figures walking towards us. Mike and Floris, our Dutch friends were on their way back! After a quick birthday greeting, and Priscilla (via Floris, who had it from our trek in Ushuaia) saved the day again with another power bar (meal-in-a-bar-bar, we have lovingly termed it). Unfortunately our friends were the barers of bad news, the cape was another hour and a half away. We eventually made it to the trail up the hill, in the rain, and cold, on my birthday. We trudged through mud up the mountain and the rain and wind  got more and more intense. By the time we dominated some sketchy ladders, as well as the rest of the hike, the wind was the strongest we have ever felt ( a record previously held by the storm we arrived during in Puerto Pyramides) and the rain was incredibly painful. We weren't down for some accomplished summit pictures, especially since we had forgotten  the camera. Again. We quickly turned around and made it about 20 meters before John realized he did have his phone!! Some quick flinching/grimmacing summit shots we slid/walk/stumbñed/flew down the hill back into the normal rain (much more bearable after experiencing the cape). More slippery rock. Half way back to our campsite from the previous day we realized it was already 4:30!! Not only was this way too late to complete our overly ambitious day, but it was already past low tide for our river crossing!

As we arrived at the camp from the night before we saw Mike and Floris just completing their river crossing (we made up loads of time on that tricky beach since we didn't have our packs, but still way behind schedule). We (sorta) quickly packed and crossed the river, which was VERY painful on our feet at this point because our feet were so wet that they were pruny and the sand got stuck between our feet wrinkles. Ew. Anyway,  hurried back to the second river, which was about mid tide, and camped before crossing, with another ambitious plan of waking up at 5 am the next day to cross when the tide would be low, we assumed. After more mango dinner, yeah, it is that good, and some hot chocolate (to make me go to sleep) John crawled into the tent and left me to clean up the dinner mess by myself. After I crawled into bed it started to rain, so I got up again to gather my clothes that I had been hoping would at least drip dry over night hanging in the trees.

The next morning the alarm went off, and I apparently woke up with the observation "that's terrible" (although I was too asleep to remember). It was dark, raining, and cold, so John made the very educated decision to sleep. Who wouldn't!? Too bad that meant that we would be crossing the river at nearly high tide, so that we could make the only bus for  36 hours back to town (or walk an extra 20 km to a town that would maybe have enough traffic for us to hitch). So, I (John) decided to test out the water by depantsing and deshoeing, but quickly realized I hadn´t undressed enough. The crossing required a full strip, backpack on the shoulders so as to keep it dry, and then plunge into freezing water with feet that felt like giant ice clubs. We got to the other side and could hardly move fast enough to warm up. But after about 2 hours of hiking, warmth came back (sorta). Fortunately, this was our best weather day yet. Pretty non-raining with large patches of blue sky and maybe even some indirect sun. We passed up the dutch guys as they were breaking camp, which they really disliked. We were booking it though, because we had at least 20 km to go in 7 hours. Some of the rivers which were totally crossable with boots on the last time we crossed had risen because of the rain and tides, so we were slowed by debooting our 100 percent saturated boots anyway, further exasperating our rock wrinkle issue as well as slowing us down. We stopped for a quick hardboiled egg sandwhich lunch, which sucked because the sauces were buried and the bread was soggy. (Actually I was stoked to eat anything,. so I thought they were great). They were followed up by some walking chocolate and walking halva, which Acacia was way more stoked on. We also took about a 5 minute sun lay down in some dune grass at one point, which made our feet hurt terribly bad once we started walking again. But those were our two breaks for about 9 hours of walking. Back to the weather though. We got a pretty good rainbow, saw an owl which was out, and a group of dolphins along the beach which made the trip pretty enjoyable in that aspect. Walking, more walking, beach walking, road walking... It was a lot of walking. But we finally made it to where we thought the bus was going to pick us up about 2 hours ahead of schedule. Alright! Time to hang out with the friendly dog, make some mate, lay down, and eat whatever didn´t require cooking. After chilling there for about an hour and a half, Mike and Floris walked by, sounding much better than we did upon arrival, and informed us that we were about 10 minutes from the bus pickup spot. So we got our packs back on, and walked to the main road and waited for the bus. Floris pulled out a sleeve of cookies which we munched on while we waited, and then jumped on a super warm bus for the ride back. We had made it!

So we got back around 8pm with dreams of a warm building with beds and a hot shower and a hella tasty breakfast. We walked straight to the hostel some of our stuff was at, and our dreams were crushed! No room! Worst news ever. The owner sent us to a nearby hostel, which was run by a super old lady. We knocked on the door, so naturally, she cracked the window, asked where we were from, and told us how much the beds would be. Yes! We want beds, that´s why we´re here. Well, there were rooms available, as we  were the only guests. Anyway, Floris and Acacia took some showers while Mike and I went shopping for some dinner ingredients. I couldn´t resist a huge baked good for the walk back to the hostel, and I got Acacia one too. After we had eaten those, the dinner ingredients were unneccessary because the dessert and beer calories filled us up. Barley sandwhich anyone? This old lady was not down though. At like 9pm she asked if we were going to bed. And Acacia was very fluent in understanding, but not at speaking, as usual. We continued to drink a few beers and lounge in the living room that we had cranked the heat up to maximum in and was decorated with puzzle pictures? Floris and Mike were still going to make dinner, which didn´t happen until about midnight (the old lady was pissed at this point). "Cocina? A la una  de mañana!" Sorry lady. We eventually moved the party upstairs, I went straight to bed and everyone else stayed up a bit. Today has basically just been a rest day. We moved back to the hostel we originally wanted, and laid around. It was fantastic. We even did laundry for the first time in a month.

Cheers!