El Chalten, Argentina

November 4-9, 2007

From Puerto Natales in Chile we went north via El Calafate and on to El Chalten, a tiny pueblo in the middle of the Andes. We arrived just after sunset and as the bus drove over the crest and we could see the lights of El Chalten, there were a few giggles from the passangers. Simply because it was tiny and cute and set amongst the massive mountains of the Fitz Roy range.

Someone forgot to tell us there was no bank in town so we rocked up with about $60 pesos (10 quid!) Luckily the hostel accepted credit card and we found some friends who were able to exchange some foreign currency for us.

As a tourist, all there is to do around El Chalten is get amongst the mountains and glaciers.

Day 1, Davo went trekking with Tyler, a new American friend from Seattle. The visibility was average and we got snowed on. But that didn´t stop our optimism as we pulled out a deck of cards and chewed on some empanadas as we waited for it to clear. Didn´t happen! We also learnt that Tyler is a good friend of the only person we know from Seattle. Small world.

Fi, meanwhile, was back in the cosy warmth of the hostel having a day of rest. She ran into our staulker frineds Anna and Mike whom we first met in Rio.

They generously offered us their camping gear so we could endure another night freezing our tits off camping under falling snow in the Andes. We were blessed with pretty good weather for most of the time between snow storms. This offered some beautiful views of the massive granite towers, deep blue fresh water lakes, blue grey glacier rivers and lakes and one frozen snow covered lake.

The new addition to crazy wildlife spotted on our trip was the woodpecker. We were introduced to our first one by a camera happy tourist. But from then on our ears were pricked and we became expert woodpecker finders! The damage they do to the trees was amazing.

Inspired by a fellow trekker who spotted puma tracks in the snow, we went on a bit of a puma hunt but it was fruitless. May be a good thing since we didn´t have Fi´s mum or her trusty 410 with us.

We mentioned earlier that the world is small. We were again reminded this as Davo was walking down the main street of El Chalten and he saw a funny looking bloke gauking at him from the other side of a cafe window. Moments later he was giving Ben a big bear hug. Ben is the brother of Tom, our good friend from Felsted, England. Both of whom Davo went to the Glastonbury festival with earlier in the year.

We had a celebratory dinner that night which doubled as a farewell to the staulkers Anna and Mike since our paths were not going to cross again in our South American adventures.

We did a day trek on our fourth and final day which pretty much exhausted our energy reserves to the point that our legs just wouldn´t go any further unless we fed them cold beers with pizza topped with Patagonian lamb followed by quince and cheese on bread and finally home-made lemon meringue pie. We couldn´t disobey our hard working legs!