There´s Trekking and There´s ICE TREKKING

There´s not much else to do at El Calafate other than see the Glacier so we then travelled to El Chalten to stay for a few days. El Chalten is a small, developing village in the Nacional Parque de Los Glaciers and is only allowed to develop so far and no more houses will be built so as to prevent the park from being spoilt. The village itself is pretty rustic with no proper roads and only a couple of tiny shops and bars and no banks or anything. When we arrived it started snowing and our Spanish friend Mickey and Buenos Airean Diego immediately went off on a trek, not even properly equipped for the cold!! We were all worried as the snow got heavier and heavier, but they were determined to go and that was their choice.

The next day the rest of us went out on a whole day´s trekking to see Mount Fitz Roy. The snow had disappeared and it was a lovely day. So, about 10km up hills and across bogs and streams, we got pretty far and eventually found Mickey and Diego´s camp. The had gotten that far the previous night in the heavy snow, which was pretty impressive. They had just trekked up Fitz Roy and were just coming back when we were there. They´d had a rubbish night in the cold, but did what they came to do without dying of hypothermia so fair play to them!

The main reason I had wanted to come to El Chalten was to do the ice trekking, but after doing that trek I somehow reasoned that the ice trekking wasn´t worth the money when I could go normal trekking for free. So the next day when Lorna, Jenny and Rachael went ice trekking, I went with the others on a condor trek and we did see some condors nearby, but missed getting a good photo as were all to busy talking about pizza!! All in all it was a pretty easy day. However when Lorna and the girls got back and told us about their day on the glacier it only took me one look at their faces to convince me I had to do it too. Lorna had almost fallen down a crevice in the ice by stamping on it too hard and even though they all looked half dead from the trek, they all love love loved it. So David and I booked up immediately.

OH MY GOD! I loved the ice trek and it was sooooooo worth it. The only trouble was I didn´t think we had enough time on the ice (because we had a couple of slow coaches on our trip it took us longer to get there than I reckon it should´ve). The walk itself was an adventure and very beautiful too. As we started in the freezing dark, watching the sun come up over the mountains was pretty amazing. We had to walk up some pretty steep and dangerous bits, in the trees and over loose rocks and sandy bits which was quite exciting. We even went over a rope bridge and I was great at it even if I do say so myself!

When we got to the ice though, oh my god, I loved it. It is just like nothing I´ve ever experienced. For a start, seeing a glacier is pretty cool but actually being on it I can´t really describe. We got our crampons on, which I loved having on and loved just jumping onto steep bits of ice with. Dave and I were running about like a pair of kids and took loads of photos. Dave even sat on a massive bit of ice for a photo and managed to break it with his butt! Our guide, ´Comedy Christian´, what a barrel of laughs (not!), was probably really annoyed with us but he was so disinterested the entire day and didn´t seem that bothered about telling us off. We got to climb up the face of the ice with ice picks, which again, I was great at and found it no trouble at all getting to the top. Sorry, I can´t help blowing my own trumpet I was just so good heehee! I would do it all again in a minute!!

A lovely thing happened at our hostel while we were there. It was probably the biggest place in town because on our second or third night there it hosted a wedding reception. The wedding party must´ve all all been choir singers or something as during the reception they all burst into beautiful song with harmonies and all that jazz. We all watched from the balcony and cheered them on. They even sung Wish You Were Here, one of my favourite Pink Floyd numbers and it brought a tiny tear to my eye. Aww.

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