Day 19

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El Chalten is expensive. There is no other way to put it. If you want a private room, for example, in a hotel, or even in a hostel, expect to pay for it. We couldn’t so we decided to get a shared room in a hostel. As it turned out they were extremely nice and clean. One thing about El Chalten it that it is new, most of the town is still being constructed, so everything has a nice new clean feel to it.

So after checking in and getting our food sorted for the next day, we did a short hike to a lake and then came back to the hostel.

One great thing about staying in a hostel is the opportunity to meet and chat with other people a strangely double-edged feeling. It is nice to chat with other tourists, but at the same time you want to be the only people there. You want the remoteness the isolation, that special feeling that you, and you alone are experiencing everything that you are.

And then of course there is the stereotype that people fall into. On one hand I say that it is wrong to “categorise” a person, yet stereotypes exist for people of all nationalities and so often the people we meet fit so snuggle into their stereotype that it seems pointless to resist the mental impulse to categorise them.

Of course there are people that are perhaps more wary of their nations stereotype and therefore consciously try to behave in a different manner. Or is this just supposition on my part? Are people so firmly stereotyped that to act differently is a ‘conscious’ effort on their part? I guess I’m basing this on a number of conversations I’ve had with various people of various nationalities, where they have all indicated that they hate the way people from their own country act and they don’t want to be classified as being from country X and so behave differently.

It is one of those strange things, stereotypes exist because they work. Yet we (I) hate them, yet I, like most people, find them useful and easy and so use them. What is the first, or maybe second, thing that travellers ask each other? Easy I hear you say, and you’re right: “So we’re you from?” (Of course if they have a strong accent or you’ve overheard them speaking in their native language this might not be necessary).

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