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Mt. Fitz Roy
Beautiful Fitz Roy at sunrise over an alpine lake... our first night of camping out of El Chalten. OK, here are all of the pics I promised from our adventures in El Chalten! A little background on Chalten: it is in southern Patagonia and is home of the Fitz Ray Masiff, a rugged mountain that on many lists of the hardest mountains in the world to climb... the area and mountains are notorious for high winds and big storms that can be very unpredictable.
So, basically we got really lucky with the weather the first few days and took advantage of it by doing lots of backpacking. Then the last day a storm blew in and it poured rain on us and we had intense wind from the moment we got to our last campsite all the way through the next day! So we holed up in our tent that night, cooking our meals inside as well (Jeff did NOT almost catch us on fire) and skipped checking out the last alpine lake on our last day there and instead booked it on back to town. Then, when we got to El Chalten (craving all sorts of real food) we dried out in a hostel for a night, and realized that there was nothing to do in the
Farmboy
On our way out to El Chalten we stopped at this little ranch and Jeff wanted his pics with the chickens... :) rather dinky town... the only brewery in town closed for the day at 3:00 PM and all the shops and stores had a 3 hour siesta from 1 - 4 and afterwards many of the shops just decided to not follow their hours and not open up! Even the ice cream shop was closed! No ice cream, no beer... time to go! So, we booked a bus for Bariloche, left that night at 11:30 PM and after a 33 hour trip, including 2 overnights, in a very crowded and somewhat stinky bus (oh my, was that painful!), we made it here! From now on, when we travel we will be able to take much larger and nicer busses for about the same price. Argentina is known for their first-class, inexpensive bus travel: the seats fold back into full beds... there is a curtain around seats for privacy... they give you all your meals for free... a free bottle of wine for each person... at least that is what we have heard from others. Unfortunately there were none of these busses for us from Chalten because the route (Route 40) is unpaved most of the way... so we had a normal
First View of the mountains and Fitz Roy
...from the bus to El Chalten (from Calafate) bus with cramped seats, were given one sandwich for the entire trip (although we made many stops) and the unpaved road made for an even more adventuresome 33 hour tour!
So, now we are in Bariloche and we checked into a sweet hostel (my favorite so far!) which is on the 10th floor of a building in town... there´s a huge kitchen, large deck with panaramic views, fireplace, big living room with quaint wooden furniture and a giant chessboard (Jeff won...). You have to be super-sneaky to find it though, cuz there are no signs for the hostel... you just head on up to the 10th floor of the building and there it is! (hmm... reminds me of an urban legend... hopefully the hostel will be there when we go back this afternoon!). Thanks to Lonely Planet for the insider tip!
Bariloche is a quaint resort village on a huge lake that is a ski resort in the winter. It reminds me a little of Whistler, maybe a little less resort-ish though and a bit bigger too. Bariloche is famous for chocolate (haven´t tried any yet though) and there is much more diverse food here; I had been
El Chalten
not much to this tiny touristy town of 600, except lots of good trekking and mountain climbing getting sick of toast (or occasionally pastries) for breakfast, a sandwich for lunch, and either meat or pasta for dinner... and lots of plain bread in between, followed by the same thing day after day after day... we actually had Mexican food today! Which was something I had been craving for a loooong time (the day before cinco de mayo too... HAPPY B-DAY ANJ!... oh I asked the lady at the Mexican Restaurant if they were having a fiesta or anything at the restaurant for cinco de mayo, and she didn´t even know about the Mexican holliday... sheesh!) Also, I had the best coffee today that I´ve had since being in Argentina (none of the cafe con leche that is the standard everywhere else!)... that is something I really miss from Seattle!
Back to Bariloche (I spend a lot of time discussing food, hmm...): it is right in a national park in Patagonia (we are in central Patagonia now). Tomorrow we will do a roughly 3 night, 4 day, camping trek up into some Mountains around here. Then, hang out in Bariloche for a little while and maybe head a couple hours away to El Bolson, which is a
View of Chalten
on our way up the trail on our first day in El Chalten... it was such a nice day that as soon as we got off the bus we quickly headed on up to do some backpacking hippie town that is the beer capital of Argentina (produces something like 70% of their hops... interesting to us, b/c Jeff would like to grow hops someday) and Bolson also is supposed to have some good backpacking, so we may spend a few days doing a trip out there as well. Then at some point we´ll head to Mendoza, an emerging wine capitol of not just Argentina, but the world, (guess we´re going from the chocolate capitol to the beer capitol to the wine capitol of Argentina) and then up to see the Iguazu falls and the rainforest and finally back to Buenos Aires before heading home!
So that´s all for us. Don´t worry, no swine flu down here, we are likely safer from it than you all are. Just like Argentina has never heard of the Mexican cinco de mayo holiday, we are also very far from the swine flu that originated in Mexico.
Salud!
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Laura
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WOW
Those pictures are incredible. I can't believe how gorgeous they are. Especially the ones of you guys after 5 days with no shower...:)