So, up early again this morning (5:45am) which seems to be a bloody reoccurring theme. We are continually told to be there 15mins before the bus, but the bus isn’t even there 15mins early! But that’s cool. It’s only a 3 hour bus trip to El Chalten from El Calafate and Kurt manages to sleep most of the way even though the bus is bloody freezing. The driver stops at the national park information centre on the way into El Chalten, and we all get off to get maps and told about the park and the various tracks we can hike. We venture to the hostel nearest to the bus station that the English couple recommended, and get beds in one of the dorms. It’s a tiny little place with only 10 beds (another 4 or 6 to come), but it has everything we need and is nice and cheap ($10 a night each), the cheapest place we’ve stayed so far. We walked around town then out to the waterfall which was a nice easy hour’s stroll, but we didn’t have a camera as we were charging the battery. It was a beautiful little waterfall and would be a perfect place to swim and spend the day chilling out if only the weather ever got warm enough. The average highest temperature is about 19°C and it’s always ridiculously windy, so I doubt that ever happens. In the afternoon we went for another shortish walk (3 hours) up to some good viewpoints over the town and lake. One of the lookouts is called the Condor Lookout, but alas, no condor sightings for us. El Chalten is a tiny mountain village on the disputed border with Chile, and was only built in 1985 making it the youngest town in Argentina.
The next day we went on a hike out to Torre Lagoon and Glacier Grande which took about 4 hours one way. It was a beautiful hike with plenty of lookout points and we were pretty lucky with the weather as it only started to sleet/snow when we got right to the top of the ridge above the glacier. It was an impressive view, but a pretty hectic walk back down the rocky ridge because of the wind and weather.
On the way back we passed the French couple we’d met while hiking in Pucon, Chile, and they confirmed that Ushuaia wasn’t worth going to, so it’s been officially scratched off our list. After 7 hours of hiking we were pretty knackered, so hot showers and hot food were top of the list. That night another French couple we’d met briefly in El Calafate arrived at our hostel, so we got chatting to them. It was kind of strange because they’re at the end of their 2 year jaunt around the world, and we’re just beginning ours. They were also the same age as us when they started, so it was really good to strike up a friendship with them as they had so much great advice for us. We spend hours talking with them over 2 nights, and they’ve already invited us to stay with them in Paris when we get there. Thanks Philippe and Fadia. They confirmed what we thought about WWOOFING, so we’re going to get started on that as soon as possible. We’d also thought about couchsurfing before we left but didn’t do much more than think about it, but again, they confirmed it’s one of the best things they’ve done on their trip. So, we’ll be getting our profile set up immediately so we can get some great local experiences. Once again, thanks to Philippe and Fadia we’ll hopefully see a whole new side to the countries we travel in instead of just staying in hostels and meeting travellers. We’ll get to meet locals and see how they live, what they eat and what they think, which is what we want to do as much as possible.
For our last hike in preparation for the ‘W’ (the 5 day hike we’re going to do in Torres del Paine, Chile) we headed out to Laguna de los Tres hoping to see Mt Fitz Roy. After about 5mins we came across a woodpecker going for gold and got some awesome close up shots.
The next 1.5 hours were pretty tough as it was all uphill, so the lungs and muscles got another good workout. By the time we got to the viewpoint for Mt Fitz Roy, the weather was pretty shit – freezing cold, windy and lightly snowing (sideways). And good old Fitz Roy was nowhere to be seen as it was completely covered by cloud. So we continued on to the end point to see Laguna de los Tres, but along the way we saw a couple who had camped overnight and were told the track was knee deep in snow and too dangerous to continue right to the end. We carried on as far as the campsite then had to turn back due to the weather conditions. As we were heading back the weather seemed to clear up, but we still wouldn’t have been able to make it to the end so we decided to walk back out to the waterfall so we could take some pictures. It was a great spot for lunch and a bit of a rest. That night we had some well earned beers with the other people at the hostel. There was a 56 year old Aussie bloke who was a larger than life character, and he had a million and one stories about his 40 years of backpacking around the world. There wouldn’t be many languages he doesn’t speak at least a few words of, so we were pretty amazed. We had a great night and this is one of the reasons we backpack – to meet interesting people like this. After sampling many of Argentina’s finest, we had a sleep in before our bus back to El Calafate.
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