El Chalten

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After looking at glaciers yesterday the 6+ hour roundtrip combi ride up to El Chalten does not seem too appealing but we are on the road nonetheless. Our first objective is to get on Ruta 40. For those pagan road warriors this is like Route 66 in the US. La Cuarenta traverses Patagonia from the north to the south and has been used by the likes of Butch Cassedy and Sundance. I put on my best Paul Neuman face for the trip. Unlike the movies however life is not always paved and so La Cuarenta. We got about 30K of ripio (dirt and gravel) to go with the lungful of dirt I consumed outside of Barailoche. This was mitigated by the yellow spring blossoms of the calafate bush (box-leaved barberry). They make jam outta the fruit and one of the sayings down here is “El que come el calafate, volvera” which for you non Spanish speakers means “if you eat this you will return.” I better book my flight now while I have a cheap gas opportunity. A more welcome sight than the calafate bush though was Hotel La Leona. Out here in the middle of nowhere is the best lemon meringue pie I have ever tasted (crust and all). I will be volvering for this too. I tried my hand at juego de la argolla which is an old gaucho drinking game where you take turns to land a ring that’s attached by a string to the ceiling over a hook mounted on the wall opposite. I messed around with this for about 15 minutes giving up when buddy John walked up and hooked it almost immediately. See if I ever give up my front seat on the bus to him. On top of the pie, La Leona marked the end of our ripio experience and within an hour or so we pull into El Chalten. Here we want to catch a glimpse of the famous Fitz Roy mountain named by Moreno (remember him?) for the captain of the Beagle (remember that…how bout Darwin?) This preempted the Tehuelche name of El Chalten in the same manner which Uluru became Ayers Rock in Australia. Western explorers have a way of doing things like that. The bad part is that ol El Chalten gets called that caus of the clouds that surround it and guess what? It starts to rain.

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