El Calafate and El Chalten

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Waiting for the bus with Celine from the hostel in Bariloche I had managed to quit smoking for about one and a half days after the New Year but crumbled in the face of the forthcoming enforced 36 hours of non smoking on the bus. Before geting on I met Tom and Hannah from England and Wales and it turns out we were very well met seeing as we´ve had a pile of adventures since and are about to embark (tomorrow 25 Jan 2008 as i write this) to the Antarctic! But first there was the bus trip from hell which we made worse by passing through Chalten which we wanted to spend time in . At this point in the season you can´t rock in anywhere without a reservation so we didn´t get off the bus but headed to Calafate and spent a while there. Apart from a lazy day on Lago Argentina in a catamaran looking at all the glaciers and willing the globe to heat up so that half the glacier might fall into the lake for our gratification I can't remember getting up to a whole hell of a lot. Found myself a nice librobar where the bar staff were friendly enough but the hostel was fairly unmemorable. However El Chalten was different proposition. This place was absolutely beautiful and the bus ride there passes through some stunning scenery. You go to El Chalten for trekking. Tom And Hannah were off to do some camping but I went for day treks to continue building up some stamina for Torres del Paine in Chile. The first day i trekked up to two look out points called the eagles and condors, none of which decided to put in an appearance but this was just for a warm up after arriving late in the afternoon. I was staying in a place calles Aylen Aike - Aylen being the owners aughter whose name means warm in Welsh and Aike meaning place. The two lads running the place were Sebastian and ? Doh who were heavy metal fans - but tempered their hogging of the TV to show metal concerts thankfuly. The next day I headed to the base of Fitzroy on the lago dos tres trek - Fitzroy was the captain of the beagle who took Darwin around the place. I didn't know he committed suicide ( these are the litttle bits of useless info you pick up when you are travelling - strangely enough so did his predecessor). Anyhoo That was a 25 km trek round trip and I followed that up to another 26 km the next day to Lago Torre. You're damn glad to get back down after those distances and they were without packs. I met Tom and Hannah on the trail and we found we were all heading to Ushaia at the same time so hooked up for a parilla and beers til 3am to start the trip from Calafate once again..

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