I get knocked down, but I get up again...

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After Puerto Madryn we headed further south, a whole 24 hours travel south into the wilds of Patagonia. As usual there is a tale from the bus journey to El Calafate. We ended up travelling with probably one of the worst bus companies in Argentina because of a shortage of tickets down south. Optimistically we thought this would be ok and booked into our cama seats (slightly better than normal but not first class). The bus, however, was over 2 hours late - no big deal, this is south america afterall! But in an attempt to catch up on time they did not stop for 18 solid hours - so that was 18 hours without food, and without proper toilet breaks...squashed on the bottom floor of a stinky claustrophobic bus!! Where were all the AMAZING bus journeys with champagne we had heard of?!!

Anyway, we made it to El Calafate, and in our infinite wisdom decided to save some more pennies and walk to the hostel. This involved a massive climb up a steep dirt track with an 80 litre backpack on...not pleasant. It would be a good assumption that money saving tips courtesy of Harry and Em are not to be followed! The main, if only reason, to stay in El Calafate is to visit the Perito Moreno Glacier. El Calafate itself is nothing special, what exists of the town is purely aimed at the tourists who visit the place, its all very cute and scandinavian but there´s absolutely no nightlife whatsoever. We have found that people travelling around the south of Argentina are also pretty damn unfriendly - in our hostel no one communicates with anyone. It´s is largely made up of couples and exclusive groups....and Israelis. I could go on and on forever about them, but I will resist them temptation. Nevertheless, I think they have invaded! I had a pretty entertaining episode with a couple of our middle aged lesbian dorm mates - one German, one Argentinian who clearly believed I could understand absolutely no spanish whatsoever. Unfortunately for them, and me, I could make out every word of their sordid little love chat - highly embarrassing and awkward, made a hundred times worse by the fact one of them smelt heavily of onions and snored like a rhino. No I dont miss them at all. Actually El Calafate probably rules as the hostel with the worst dormates....one particular bald male would take to having 50 minute showers....suspect, I think so!

Enough of the social problems in El Calafate and onto the more important business - the glacier! There are really no words to describe it, cliche as that sounds! But I honestly don´t know where to start. It is the only glacier within Parque Nacional Los Glaciers that is advancing, therefore it makes the most amazing noises as it grows and changes and huge sections fall off. The huge pieces that crash into the water sound like thunder and the smaller sections like gun shots. Its is suprisingly noisy. We could get really close to it, and even stood there I could not fathom the whole scene. It was totally surreal. The different colours of blue, set off against the turquoise water of the lake below were just amazing, and in the sunlight the surface of the ice seemed to glisten like a thousand diamonds. We spent about 5 hours just wandering around the board walks and staring at it, it was pretty magical especially as we decided to go late in the day when most of the tourists had left so we largely had the place to ourselves, save for a few of the aforementioned, and highly irritating, groups of israelis!

On our last day in El Calafate we were lucky to meet with our crazy, and new best friend, Klara. She is the most hilarious person I have ever met with absolutely no shame whatsoever, it was hilarious to watch her sharing an enormous amount of information about her experiences of squatting over toilets to people she had only met 5 minutes before! In fact it seems that we share an enormous amount of our bodily funtions with each other that we haver have, even when living together. Travelling certainly breaks the boundries of what is considered acceptable and polite conversation!!

We had decided not to do the Torres del Paine trek in Chile for a number of reasons. Firstly, as you all know, we are not seasoned hikers. Most of the people we were meeting had done the 3 peaks challenge in the Uk and that sort of thing...you get the picture. And the second reason was expense, the only way me and harry would have been able to afford to do it would have been to carry all our equipment, food, tents, sleeping bags in all weathers, up mountains passes etc. We realistically could not invisage this ending in success. Instead we decided to travel a few hours north to El Chalten, a small village touted as the national centre for trekking in Argentina, where the trail heads up the torres started just outside the place so we could trek all day and sleep in a nice warm bed at night, much more our scene! We were living in the middle of nowhere - no ATMS, no cards accepted, and only one place with the world´s slowest and most overpriced internet. It is also possibly THE windiest place on the planet, we were literally blown off the bus, up the street, and all over the place! The only casualty was our carefully planned and drafted itinery paper which is now blowing around patagonia somewhere! No matter what the weather sunglasses are an essential item, both for the sun and to keep the huge clowds of dust of the eyes.

The trails are not for the faint hearted though so we decided to break ourselves in gently with two easy hikes - one to a waterfall and one up one of the small mountains to a lookout over the village. The two main day treks in the area are the Laguna Torre trail and the Laguna de Los Tres trail. The first is a significantly easier trail which we attempted first with alot of success completing the 21km within the 6 hours guideline. It was all pretty straightforward apart from a few steep climbs over rocks. At the end of the trail there was a beautiful view of glacier grande and cerro torre (although partly covered by cloud) beautifully framed by mountains and a turquoise lake dotted with small icebergs.


Feeling very optomistic and pleased with our progress with decided to do Laguna de Los Tres. Everyone we had met who had done the trail had warned us how difficult the last hour of the trail was - pretty much vertical climb up a shingle path climbing 800 metres in under a kilometre. The first two thirds of the walk were again relatively easy, and so pretty. Walking up small climbs, through valleys, and rivers, past viewpoints towards the amazing Fitz Roy torre. The last hour of the hike was tough, but no way near as tough as we were expecting, we were pleasantly suprised by our level of apparent fitness. The view at the top made it all worth it, it was absolutely stunning. We could not have picked better weather, the view of Fitz Roy was crystal clear, and the blue sky reflected stunningly in the turquoise lagoon. Climbing back down was painful, in a word. I had a sore ankle, harry has bad knees...we moaned the whole way home! Which seemed to take forever! Worth it though.


Hiking with em and harry would not be without its mishaps and entertaining stories! Provided largely by myself - yes, i am still a danger to myself. Much of the trail is covered in loose stones and shingle - very slippery coming down. I had spent the earlier part of the day explaining that you slip less if you go toes first (thanks for that daddy!). One of the last descents of the day harry was behind me - i heard her slip and shouted ´toes´ at that exact same moment i fell flat on my face! Predictable! So...moral of the story be careful that you follow the advice that you give to other people!
The following day we decided that to aid our cause of standing on two feet we would purchase second hand walking poles. Having purchased them we were just leaving the shop, poles in hand and I trip over a stone....yes thats right, and fell flat on my face again!
Thankfully harry managed to add her own escapade to the tally the following day. We were walking back from laguna de los tres with a group of 30 somethings accountants (highly sensible people!) when harry was crossing a bridge made out of two tree trunks, I look up a few seconds later and harry is sat straddling one of the tree trunks in front of our new found friends! Its currently 3-1 to Me!

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