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We took the bus to a town called El Chalten, it’s about three hours from El Calafate and it’s the jumping off point for treks to two mountains, Cerro Torre and Mount Fitz Roy. These mountains are massive and daunting and only two or three people are able to summit them every year. We arrived at our hostel, Condor del los Andes and got ourselves settled in. we met an Aussie guy at breakfast named Jeremy, or Jez as his friends call him. He was a hell of a cool guy. We also went with our roommate Farhan, a guy from London. The weather was beautiful and everyone there said how lucky we were to have such lovely weather because this time of year it isn’t certain what it will be like. We got our stuff together for a hike and Jez, Brett, and I set off for the Mount Fitz Roy trek. It is a prescribed two day hike but we were confident we could do it in one day. It was about four hours to the end of the trail, at the top of this mountain adjacent to Fitz Roy and then four hours back. The trail was very
picturesque the entire way there however the last forty five minutes or so was pretty much just straight up the side of this mountain and it was no joke. I was seriously struggling walking up this hill, we all were. At the top there is a huge lake and it was amazing to see the mountain up close like that. It’s just so huge. We had some food at the top and some water and then promptly headed back down the windy side of the mountain as we wanted to make sure we made it back to Chalten before nightfall. The trek itself was nearly 25K there and back; I was so tired at the end. It was getting cold and night was falling, all I wanted was my mom’s cooking and the couch in front of the TV. Of course I got none of those things but we did get back to the hostel, it was dark out and we made dinner and had a few cold beers. We went to bed early and it felt so good to sleep! We woke up the next day and cooked a proper breakfast, sausage and egg with some onion and garlic.
It was lovely and filling. Farhan wanted to come with us this time on our trek to Cerro Torre and we welcomed him. We all got out stuff together and headed out towards the opposite end of town. The fall colors were so beautiful as the trees lined the path we walked towards this majestic spike of a mountain. This trek was less difficult than the day before but still about 11 miles there and back, not a small endeavor. The walking was much easier on this trek and we made it to the lookout point in about two and half hours. We spent about an hour there at the lake watching the mountain; eating and we bought a little whiskey and Fernet and took some rips of the bottle as a little gift for ourselves. We left our bags open and walked down to the lake, there wasn’t anyone around really so we weren’t worried about our stuff getting knicked, but there were some fluffy sea birds flying around and these Aussie or British guys, not sure which, just stared at all our stuff, walked down and said to us “hey there are some buzzards going through all your
shit”. I was like oh well fucking thanks asshole for shooing them away, that’s what any normal person would do except this guy just let it happen. We joked about it endlessly, this huge wanker. We hiked around the side of the lake that was at the bottom of Cerro Torre and over to the glacier that we could see. It was pretty amazing, not as huge as the Perrito Moreno but still really cool to see. What struck me was how remote it was there, we were just miles from any type of civilization. The quiet and the calm of that place really grabs you when you stop to realize where you actually are on a map. We hiked back to the hostel, made some dinner and talked for a while and then went to bed. Another beautiful day that we had to take advantage of was lived to its fullest. Sunday was rainy and cloudy and we couldn’t have been happier since we were exhausted from two days of trekking, I didn’t want to do anymore! The hostel we were at was actually closing for the season the day we were leaving so the trip to Chalten couldn’t
have gone more perfectly. We hung around the hostel until about two pm and then went to a bar down the street and had a bunch of beers in preparation for our bus ride. We hung out at the bus station for a while waiting, playing some music on the iPod and drinking a few more beers. We got back to Calafate and Jez and I hit it hard. We drank the hostel out of alcohol. We ended up at 330a drinking a bottle of red wine the only thing they had left! I woke up the next day feeling horrible and realized that someone stole my orange Adidas jacket that I had just bought! Someone stole Brett’s Patagonia jacket as well. What shit. We were really pissed. We said goodbye to Jez and got a bus to the airport, the smallest airport I have ever been to and got our flight to Buenos Aires. We met up with Aaron, our Aussie buddy who is working at the hostel where we are staying and got amongst it immediately. We went to this drum show called La Bomba, it’s in this massive warehouse and it was filled with people and the
drum show was unreal. These guys really went to town. After that we came back to our hostel, drank some more and went to the clubs. We were out late again and now I am recovering nicely. I’ll update more when I can. Bienvenidos a Buenos Aires!
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Sean
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Great buzzard story. I guess there's wankers no matter where you go. Beautiful pics.