Parque Nacional Torres del Paine

Hola a todos! Hello everyone!

As I promised in the last entry, this one will be about our adventure in the Torres del Paine National Park. This park is located in Chile, which is a country bordering Argentina to the west. See if you can find Chile on a map! Look for the very long, skinny country along the very south western border of the South American continent.

Torres del Paine means "towers of blue". The name comes from the huge granite towers that you can see throughout the park, and these are surrounded by giant blue glaciers. We spent 8 days backpacking in the park and completed a circuit called the "Q". It is called this because on a map the route is shaped like the capital letter Q.

On our first day we walked through a large, beautiful valley as we approached the towers. As we were trekking, a gaucho and his group of horses came running past us. A gaucho is someone we might call a cowboy. Like cowboys, they live in the countryside and ride horses, often tending to flocks of animals. Unlike cowboys in the western United States, however, they dress in very colorful clothing and often wear brightly colored scarves and chaps. We were lucky to see this man pass by because there aren´t many gauchos around anymore!

A few days later, we woke up very early and walked up a steep boulder path in the dark to watch the sunrise on the towers. We were tired and groggy but it was worth the difficult climb.

After a couple more days of walking we came over a tall mountain pass and on the other side saw the enormous Glaciar Gray, or Gray Glacier. It is one of the largest in Patagonia and seemed to never end! Our campsite was right next to the glacier so we spent our evenings sitting on the rocks looking out over the massive sheet of ice.

One day we decided to do some exploring near the glacier and we found an ice cave! This one formed as a river coming down from the mountains above washed into the glacier and melted out a large hole. To get into the cave we had to climb down a small waterfall made by the river. We got soaking wet but it was one of the most amazing and beautiful things I have ever seen! Here is a picture of Nathan and me in the cave (look how blue it is inside!) and another of me climbing back out of the cave.

We saw so many other beautiful things on this hike too but I can´t fit all the pictures here!

Now we will try to do some more treks down here in southern Patagonia before we start heading back north. If we`re lucky, we might get to do the southernmost trek in the world!

Animals of the Andes

Hola Estudiantes!

First of all I just want to say how happy I am to hear from you all! I miss all of you guys and think of you while I´m traveling. It´s a lot of fun for me to write this blogs and share my adventures with you. Also, thanks for being patient between the entries. We do not always have a computer around to use, and we spend a lot of time hiking in the mountains away from towns.

Nathan and I just got back from an eight day trek, or hike, through the Torres del Paine National Park. I´ll talk more about our trip in the next entry, but first I´d like to answer some of your questions.

A lot of you asked about the weather down here. Now that we are in Patagonia, the most southerly region of South America, it´s getting pretty chilly. Right now we are in the town of Puerto Natales, Chile, and the latitude here is about 51 degrees south of the equator. The equator is at 0 degrees latitude. As you move further from the equator your latitude gets higher and the climate gets colder. So here at 51 degrees below the equator it stays cool even in the summer time. We have to wear hats and coats almost everyday!

The most amazing thing about the weather here though is the wind. It is one of the windiest places on earth, and some friends I have met here have told me about being knocked off their feet by gusts of wind. Actually, there have been a couple times in the mountains when I was almost blown over, too, but fortunately I caught myself!

A lot of you also asked about the plane ride down here. Actually, it was a very smooth flight, even though it was very long, but I always seem to be nervous in planes. So for me, yes the flight was a little scary!

Some others asked about the kinds of animals we have seen. There are so many cool animals living down here and we have been lucky enough to see some of them. Though we have not seen any snakes or lizards yet, they do live down here.

One of my favorite animal spottings has been of the Andean Condor. On our hike in Torres del Paine we saw several of these gliding along the wind currents next to cliffs. They are huge birds whose wingspan can reach up to 3 meters, or about 9 feet!

Another animal we saw in the park was the Guanaco. These are a species of llama that can stand up to 4 feet tall, weigh up to 200 pounds, and run as fast as 35 miles per hour! As we drove into the park we saw herds of them grazing in the plains. They like to live in arid (dry) regions of the Andes mountains and Patagonia.

When we were camping a couple weeks ago in the town of Chalten, Argentina, we spotted this little guy in the grass near the river. It´s called a Pichi (pronounced pee-chee) and is a lot like an armadillo.

We have also seen woodpeckers, flamingoes, geese, choico (a Patagonian ostrich) and lots of other birds. Puma and foxes make their home in Patagonia as well, though we have not been lucky enough to see either of these yet!

I hope this answers your questions! Please feel free to ask all the questions you´d like and to make comments, too. I love to hear from people back home. I miss you all and when we get back to the United States I´ll definitely come visit you all in Circleville!

Glaciers Galore!

Buenas Dias!

Nathan and I have been visiting a lot of glaciers lately in Parque Nacional de Los Glaciares, or Glaciers National Park, and Ms. Beth is in heaven! Glaciers are one of my favorite landforms and they are so interesting and beautiful. A glacier (spelled glaciar en espanol) is a very large mass of ice that can actually flow and move much like a river. They move VERY slowly though so you can´t actually see them move.

Here in the South Patagonian Ice Field we have been able to see lots of glaciers. We spent four days backpacking in the park and hiked to see many glaciers. This first picture is of the Glaciar Torre, and the second is the Glaciar Piedras Blancas.


Do you notice the brown lines running through the sides and middle of the glaciers? As the glacier moves, it breaks up and pulverizes the rock it moves over and this sediment gets mixed into the ice. Also, you might notice that in each picture, at the bottom of the glaciers, you see water. These are the glacial lakes that form as the ice melts in the warmer months. This melted water fills the valleys that the glaciers have carved out and forms lagos, or lakes.

This next glacier is one of the most famous in the world because it is one of the few advancing ice sheets, which means it is actually growing and moving forward. It is called the Perito Moreno and thousands of people visit it every year. While we stood in front of the glacier we could see huge pieces of ice calve off the front and fall into the lake below. First you hear a really loud craaaaack and when the piece falls it makes a huge splash and lots of waves! So cool!!

In a few days we will visit another park in Chile where we hope to see lots more glaciers and beautiful mountains too!

Buenas Tardes! Good afternoon!

We've seen so many different and beautiful plants and animals here that I thought I'd make a blog post about them! We haven't been able to get many pictures of the animals yet, but when we do I'll share them with you.

This tree is called the Monkey Puzzle tree and it is native to Chile and central Argentina. It is sometimes called a "living fossil" because it can live to be 1000 years old! As you might guess, it can grow to be very tall, up to 40 meters (40 meters is about 120 feet) and up to 2 meters, or 6 feet, in diameter. What I like about it is it's leaves, which are really stiff and kind of spikey. The Monkey Puzzle tree is an evergreen, which means it does not lose its leaves in the winter.

When I went for a bike ride near Bariloche I saw this lovely flower, called the Amancay. It is one of the national flowers of Argentina and many artists here create paintings, photographs, wood carvings and even jewelry inspired by this flower.

Another fun thing I have learned about Argentina is that its name comes from the Latin word for silver, argentum. Silver mining and production is a very important part of Argentina's economy and when we go to ferias, or markets, we see many artists selling the silver jewelry that they have made. Ms. Beth can hardly help herself from buying every piece she sees!

Spanish School

Hola Estudiantes! Hello Students!

Nathan and I are in Bariloche, Argentina, which is at the very top of the region of Patagonia. We are very excited to start exploring this wild and vast region, but first we stopped here in Bariloche to spend a week learning espanol, or Spanish. So we were students just like you this week! My teacher, Celeste, was very nice and taught me all kinds of new words and phrases. I can speak a little bit better now, but I still have a long way to go!

One of the other students in my class was a woman named Laurie, and she and her family are going to be living in Argentina for several months while her husband, Tim, works in Buenos Aires. They are all from Cleveland, OH. Laurie's kids, Madeleine and Liam, are 11 and 8 years old--the same age as some of you! Can you imagine living in Argentina? I thought it would be fun to find out what it's like for them living in another country so far from home.

I asked them what kinds of foods they eat here in Argentina, and Madeleine said, "Steak!" That's not surprising, because Argentina is one of the largest producers of beef in the world, and everyone eats a whole lot of bife, or beef. Madeleine also noted that they eat a lot of chorizo (sausage) and salami, too. Morcilla, a blood sausage, is also excellent to eat. Surprisingly, there is a lot of Italian influence here so pastas and pizza are very common, too. Liam claims that the pizza here is not as good as ours at home though! (Nathan and I agree). In this picture you see two beef steaks, chorizo and morcilla ready to go on the parilla, or barbeque.

After a big dinner of parilla you might have some sweets for dessert. Dulce de leche and alfahores are two yummy choices. Liam describes dulce de leche as, "like caramel, but really creamy--I just eat it with a spoon!" Madeleine says an alfahor, "is like really good chocolate cake with dulce de leche in the middle and the whole thing is covered in chocolate!" Sounds awesome, right? Well I can certainly say that they are delicious and one of my favorite Argentinian foods.

I asked Madeleine and Liam what kinds of things surprised them about Argentinian culture. They both agreed that the greeting people give each other when they see each other, even when they meet each other for the first time, took some getting used to. Friends and strangers say hello by shaking hands and giving each other kisses on the cheek. Madeleien calls this the "air kiss" because a lot of times the kiss doesn´t quite make it to the cheek. Sounds funny to us, but Madeleine says that although she didn't really like it at first she's used to it now and it doesn't seem so bad.

Liam and Madeleine are also learning Spanish here in Argentina and I asked them how they introduced themselves in espanol.

Liam says, "Me llamo Liam. Soy de Los Estados Unidos," and Madeleine says, "Mi nombre es Madeleine y soy de Cleveland". Do you have any idea what they are saying? Well, let's translate!

Me Llamo Liam: I am called Liam. (So if you want to tell someone your name, you can say, me llamo (your name).

Soy de Los Estados Unidos: I am from the United States.

Mi nombre es Madeleine: My name is Madeleine...

...y soy de Cleveland: and I am from Cleveland.