El Chalten

We headed up to El Chalten a couple of days ago. We should have realised on the bus there that it was going to be a hole. Most of the 4 hour ride was on dirt roads. When we finally got there, it was pitch black, so finding our hostel was a bit of a pain. El Chalten is a village whose population is pretty much solely made up of tourists going on treks in the mountains. Most of the few buildings there are either hostels, restaurants, or shops selling over priced crap with "El Chalten" written on it.

On the first day there, we went on a trek to the laguna de tores. We were told that it was flat, so we decided that it was a good idea to start with it and warm up for the bigger ones. It was really windy, which means it was annoying as we were sweating a lot from the walking. We were hot from the exercise, but the wind made us cold again. When we finally got to the laguna de tores, it was really cloudy, which means that we missed out on the nice view of the mountain range. The whole thing took us about 5 hours.

The second day, we went to laguna de los tres. This is a lake which is very high up in the mountains, and is frozen even at this time of year. You can pay a guide to take you across the lake, but it was really expensive for what is only a little more than what we did for free. This trek was quite difficult. It was pretty much 4 hours of up hill walking, the last hour of which is extremely steep. The pay off was really worth it, though. The clouds had cleared up by the time we got to the top, so we had a perfect view of mount Fitz Roy. Although, for some reason, my ankle started hurting at the top of the mountain. I´ve been limping ever since, much to the dismay of Sagy, who always wants me to go faster.

Yesterday we took the bus back from El Chalten to El Calafate, because we want to go to Torres del Paine in Chile and this is the only possible route. The bus ride back should have been quite painless, leaving at 1pm and arriving at about 5 or 6 in the evening leaving us plenty of time to buy necessary equipment for our trekking adventures in Chile. Our best laid plans were foiled by the bus breaking down in the middle of the desert. It took a mechanic a couple hours to get out there, and when he eventually told us that the bus could not be fixed, we all crammed in to the back of his van so he could take us to El Calafate. We met a Swiss couple with whom we played cards to pass the time. In the end, it was actually quite pleasant.

Today we´re moving again. We have to go to Puerto Natales in Chile, as it is the closest city to the Torres del Paine national park. We hope to do several days of trekking in the park, and camping along the way. This might be a problem with my bad ankle, but we´ll see about that if it still hurts tomorrow.