Week 3 - El Calafate to El Chalten

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After our trekking stop in Torres del Paine we left Puerto Natales to start our journey north to El Calafate. The first day was slow progress due to some big climbs and stopping to go through the borders to get our passports stamped. We decided to stop early after doing about 60km to do some bike maintenance and found i had 3 broken spokes. Not good as i hadn´t realised they had gone. We repaired them and did other maintenance on our bikes and i´m now checking my spokes every evening! The next couple of days we did 100km and 90km, both nights camping next to rivers so was nice to have a bit of a dip as it´s been absolutely boiling the last couple of days - have to put lots of sun cream on each morning.

We arrived in El Calafate about 11ish on the fourth day and found a hostel recommended to us by another traveller in Puerto Natales. Was a really cool place and we had a late night (by our standards) chatting to some other travellers about their trips. Visited the Moreno glacier the next day which was awesome. There´s viewing platforms which get pretty close to it so really give a sense of the size of it. I´d guess it was about 50-60m tall above the water and stretched back as far as you can see. Lots of chunks of ice falling off now and again which was cool!

The next 3 days to El Chalten were not fun to say the least. The weather got worse and the headwinds got so bad we had to push our bikes on a few occasions so we pretty much hated every minute of riding. Was a shame as the scenery was spectacular between Calafate and Chalten. We arrived in El Chalten about 4pm yesterday and luckily the weather has got better now and the winds have died down so fingers crossed for the next bit! The plan now is to get onto the Caraterra Austral road which involves 2 ferries and 22km of walking/riding on footpaths to get to the second ferry so will be interesting.

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Photos

and again
Me, Rachel (fellow traveller at our hostel) and Jake at the Moreno Glacier