The trekking capital

Something I forgot to mention in my last post,  was the surprise we had at the end of the Glacier trek in Perito Moreno. We walked into something that looked like a small landing on the ice and were greeted by a treasure box. Inside this box was a bottle of whisky... a very welcome sight  indeed. The guide then hacked some ice off the glacier wall and Whisky on the rocks took on a new meaning! Great touch I thought!

Our plan was to head out to Torres Del Paine in chilean Poatagonia the next day but we kept hearing about bad weather conditions, and cancelled treks. Torres del Paine has a beautiful but very tough trek called the W. It is a 4 day trek and if the weather is bad some parts of the trek can be life threatening! we heard a few horror stories as the wind was blowing at aroudn 90 k all week. Taking into account the cost, the chance of a cancelled trek and the time we would waste, we decided to cancel. The saving grace was that El Chaltan was in many ways similar to Torres del Paine but much smaller.

We took the early morning bus to El Chalten and planned to spoend the day trekking there. As soon as we reached El Chaltan we regretted not staying on for a few days. El Chaltan is the trekking capital of Argentina, and it is beautiful! Mount Fitzroy is the peak to try and get to but that is out of question at this time of the year. This rock edifice stan upright in the middle of the Andes. It is a strange sight because it is structurally nothing like its surroundings. Sheer, with a greyish tone, and ice capped, it sits near by a beautiful lake. We trekked to a viewing point and then to this lake where we had our home made sandwiches and drank pure water from the lake. The trek takes about 5 hours in total and it is quite a climb but the fall colours with the beautiful canyon below and the mountain on the other side makes it enchanted. the weather was great, the sun shone right through the day while the temperature were around 10 /12 C so it was perfect. The trek take you through streams and rivulets, beautiful little bridges, some fantastically huge trees, and leaves of yellow and red.

If we hadn't already bought out tickets to Bariloche for the next afternoon, we would have definitely stayed on to do a few more treks. At least we got to walk in a part of the earth this beautiful!
The next afternoon we jumped on a bus, semi cama this time, and started another 20 hour ride to Bariloche.