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Published: March 25th 2009
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Lama lama lama lama yaaamaaa
Nobody around for miles and then suddenly 50 italians crowd MY picture!!! El Chaten
The next day with clear blue skies, we were off again on a 5 hour bus journey to El Chaten; a town at the foot of the Fitz Roy Mountain Range. Through yet another wilderness (much more deserty this time), with a multitude of grey rocky mountains, screes from sandy brown to grey (we're talking serious sedimentary layers) and lakes of every hue of blue.
Patagonian weather is still being kind to us as we arrived into El Chaten, a small town formed in a valley, with the buildings made by the people who live in them. New buildings are popping up like mushrooms, literally out of chipboard, wooden fence poles and lots of hollow ceramic bricks, that are all chipped and broken in transportation from Northern Argentina. It felt like a frontier town without the dodgy, danger element, houses came in all shapes, sizes and colours and were often tiny, weeny and ever so cute.... if you were just staying in them for a week.
The winters here are cold and the hostel we stayed in was built in raamshackle way and needed constant hot air pumped into it 24hrs a day that
just oozed out the walls, doors and windows. So much for saving the world through insulating your house like they're telling us is the way forward in the UK.
Full of confidence and buoyed on by our Chilean hiking experience we set off on a two day trek from El Chaten into the Fitzroy Range of mountains. The hike started fairly positively but we couldn't find the start of the trail, so we traipsed around the edges of town until we found a local who in very fast spanish pointed us in the right direction.
The weather looked a bit grey but we were hopeful that it wouldn't turn too nasty, the temperature started to drop and the visibilty became limited. We continued to walk for 4 hours seeing very little and eventually arrived at Lago Torres, to say we were a little disappointed was an understatement, we were very cold and the wind was gusting at 80 mph literally taking us off our feet - you could see the rain coming toward you
horizontally before pinging into your face like an insect (we later learned a climber died that day of hypothermia).
So we found a pitch out
of the wind and set up tent a lot earlier than usual to get a brew up and try to warm ourselves - the usual fare of pasta was served up and we didn't really leave the tent for the rest of the day. We did however need water and were told that the river water was drinkable but it came straight off the glacier and was a milky blue colour, having no choice we drank it (and are still fine).
Thankfully we hired -12 degree sleeping bags that saved us from a very cold night, we pulled every available drawstring to pull the bags tight around all our layers of clothes that we were wearing. We don't know how cold it was but when we say freezing we mean it! We were being chilled by wind straight of the Patagonian ice field that never melts.
The next morning we found it hard to rouse ourselves because we were so cold but Karen got the milky water boiling for some tea. We left the tent and what a difference! It was sunny, bright and clear. Still cold but now we had to cover all our skin as there
is no ozone layer and you start to burn in around 10 minutes.
All the mountains had now appeared and everything we couldn't see the day before were glowing at us (look at the before and after pictures to see what we mean).
We hung around the lake smiling at each other glad we had made the journey the day before to see the difference and be there before anyone else that day.
We decided we'd had enough of trekking through the changable weather and set off back to the hostel - we had been in Patagonia much longer than originally anticipated and wanted city life, we had seen a glimpse of Buenos Aires and we were excited by it.
We looked into getting a bus!!! On and off about 3 days travel - on a bus? You must be joking!!
So we booked a flight with the Argentine Air Force! Flew out with the miliatry on LADE airlines, which wasn't scheduled and we initially thought someone had ripped us off as at the airport as there was no check-in desk, no listing on the departures - nothing.
Then 20 minutes before the
flight loads of activity and we were off.
Buenos Aires here we come.
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