El Chalten and the Fitzroy

Up early on the bus to El Chalten. The ride was pretty good, although a sign on the bus said that you weren´t allowed to take your clothes off while on the bus - very odd. We passed through the Patagonian desert and finally started to see the Fitzroy range which looked absolutely amazing. The area is part of the Glacier National park which apparently contains the largest ice sheet outside Greenland and Antarctica. The bus stopped quickly for us to snap our first view of the mountains. As the town itself is in a national park, we´re required to stop and be given a talk about the rules and how to look after it, as well as information about the treks. In contrast to Torres del Paine, the treks can be done in a day and from the town. El Chalten is a real one horse town. There isn´t much to it and everything is really spaced out so you still have to walk far to get to anything. The place we stayed in, while not cheap was probably the nicest place on the whole trip so far. Really well decorated, cute and homely.

On that day, the weather was absolutely fantastic which is a rarity. We went the ranger station to check on the weather and was told it was going to get very bad. So much for camping! Colin suggested that we take one of the main treks up because the weather was so good. I wanted to go for sunset and after a little argument, I was persuaded. The trek was beautiful, passing over beautiful valleys, forests and lakes and had an amazing view of the mountains themselves. We found a great spot by a lake overlooking the mountains and had lunch there. The mountains really are some of the most stunning we`ve ever seen - pinnacles of rock permeating the sky. The photos just don`t do it justice. We headed back, having a great trek and seeing lots of beautiful mountains. Once we were back and having dinner we watched the sunset. It turned out to be completely cloudy - covering the mountains, and this is how it would remain for the rest of our stay. Thanks to Colin, we actually managed to see it.

The next day, we did a trek to a different area where a mountain called the Torre - a huge pinnacle of rock, was located. The trek itself was pretty easy and again took in fantastic forests, waterfalls, glaciers, mountains and lakes. The weather held up for most of it, although there was quite a lot of cloud around and we couldn´t see the tops of the mountains. The main destination of the trek is a lake where you can view the Torre from. It is pretty beautiful but we can`t actually see the main thing we came to see so we have lunch and head back. We had a great walk back, thoroughly enjoying it. The whole way back a storm was following us. We were constantly on the edge of it. The moment we got back it started to piss down and we were incredibly happy that we´d managed to do it in time and then watch the rain pouring while we sipped on a nice bottle of Argentinian red.

For our final two days, we did some more local walks. One to a viewpoint of the town and of the mountains (where we could see most of the mountains) and another to a pretty waterfall through a beautiful valley. We really enjoyed all the walks here. Shame about the weather but this area has some of the most unpredictable weather on the planet. Lucky we still managed to see some of it. We managed to eat pretty well here - in a fantastic meat place where Colin swears`he`d had the best lamb he`d ever tasted. This was pretty much the end of Patagonia for us. The next day we went back to El Calafate and then took a nasty thirty hour bus up to the Lake District in Argentina, a town called Bariloche to celebrate Christmas.