Camping and Tramping in El Chaltén

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Well for the last few days I've been up in a little town called El Chalten with a German guy and a couple of Australian girls I met while back in the Torres Del Paine National park over in Chile. They were so cool, we camped for two night and hiked about 4 or 5 hours for the three days we were there. Me and Mike were in charge of putting up the tents and fighting of the mice, while the girls cooked us up mean feeds and pointed at mice for us to throw stuff at. It worked well.
The trip up there from El Calafaté was a drag, 5hrs on a less then adequate bus on dodgey gravel roads. Most of the buses here are pretty worn out and your lucky if it doesn't break down at least once during the trip. We had to stop to change a tire at one point because part of the break disk broke off and managed to rip a hole right through the wall of the tire. nice. Got there in the end though, and after a piece of lemon mirangue pie and a coffee at the local cafe in El Chaltén we were off.
The first night was awesome, there wasn't a cloud in the sky and it was a full moon so we had an awesome view of Mt Fitzroy, and what I was most stoaked about was that I could see both "the pot" and the "southern cross" amoungst the stars so that was a nice taste of home. later on Mike and I made a trap out of a plastic bag and a couple of guy ropes off my tent and caught heaps of mice and rats. it was so fun, but the girls wouldn't let us kill them so we had to let them go. Bugger.
We also had to tie the food up in trees so that the mice didn't eat it at night, apparently if you keep it in your tent they eat holes in the side of your tent so they can get in and eat everything. Mike and I conquered though, nothing missing and no holes in the tents - boys rule!
The coolest animals I saw over there were Woodpeckers! they were awesome! All black, with a bright red head and they just go crazy flying form tree to tree banging they're heads against anything that looks hard, so cool to watch. Apparently there's the odd Puma kicking around in the park too nut luckily we didn't cross paths with any of them.(they grow up to 3m long!!!)
After 3days of great weather and great views, we piled back on the bus and headed back to El Calafaté from where over the next few days we all caught buses and planes in all differant dierections. Sad to say goodbye, but for me it's off to Ushuaia, the southern most town in the world where hopefully I'll be able to do a bit of dog-sledding so it's not all bad.

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Photos

A tyipcal bus in Patagonia
This is the view you get out of the front of any bus down here, from the cracked windscreen to the magnififcent background, and the crapy road to the cross hanging from the rear-view mirror.

Mt Fitzroy by moonlight
It doesn't look very clear on the computor, but if you look really hard off to the right of Mt Fitzroy you can see "the pot" in the stars.

The El Clalten crew
From left: Mikey, Elizabeth, Krissy and Me

Gauchos hearding their sheep
A rough photo taken from the bus but it gives you an idea of the sort of land the farmers(gauchos) work their sheep on, and how they get around - no 4-wheelers or farm trucks here.