We heart Patagonia

El Chalten is billed by Argentinians as the "hiking capital of Argentina", so of course we couldn´t resist checking it out. It´s also an internationally famous rock-climbing destination. There´s some crazy sheer cliffs around here! This city, the newest city in Argentina, is one of those no-stoplight towns, that you have to love (or at least when you want to get away from it all for awhile). The best part about it is that there are tons of awesome day hikes to the famous Cerro Torre and Fitz Roy mountains (again...more pics later when the internet is good). What does this mean? No hauling our heavy gear for 5-6 hour hikes each day!! This is huge.

So we bought camping gear in the last town and posted up in El Chalten at an awesome campsite in a beautiful valley, next to a glaciar river, overlooking the mountain range. (this might be when a picture tells a thousand words...hold out until our next stop...) Oh, did I mention that this campsite has barbecues?? That´s what I´m talking about. That´s what´s been missing from our lives, barbecue!

We´ve been here for a week camped out in our little house next to the river doing one day of hiking and then one day of relaxing (generally reading and sitting by the river, trying to solve the world´s problems...ha), trying to figure out our next steps.

Our first hike was a 5 hour out and back to Laguna Torres, the beautiful overlook to Cerro Torre. As we´ve noticed, both the Chileans and Argentinians are not so good about identifing the time and difficulty of their trails. First of all, they rate their trails almost all as "easy", but the times are off by huge amounts. ANYWAY. This hike was great, mostly flat and beautiful the whole way!





Our second hike was a 5 1/2 hour crazy uphill hike to this place called ¨Loma del Pliegue¨ what is the translation you might ask? Dunno...maybe "amazing view of the entire mountain range, glaciars, and lakes". This hike was a 3000 foot climb to this amazing peak overlook. Pics to come!

Some crazy flowers at the top, they´re called "Lady Slippers"

We made it!! Wind was about 40-50 mph up here...didn´t stay long! Cerro Torre and Fitz Roy in the background


Our last adventure here was a bit different you might say. We mixed it up with a boat tour of the Viedma glaciar, ice trekking, and ice climbing. FREAKING AWESOME! This was our first organized tour since we left Antarctica, good and bad as we all know (you can imagine the touristy nature of this trip, rather than the backpacker/independent traveling that we´ve been doing). Anyway. Let´s just say that ice climbing with crampons is freaking amazing. We walked around the glaciar (and even under it!) for a bit, then found a shear wall to climb. It was awesome, what a great day...and change of pace!

Ready for the adventure! Check out the crazy color of Lago Viedma...




Yep, she´s underneath the glacier!!

Whadya think of this hombres??!! Boo-ya!

That´s it for El Chalten, Argentina. The weather has turned a bit...we´ve been told that it´s generally windy, rainy, and sunny all in the same day...and it´s starting out...so it´s time for us to move on! (The weather has been unbelievable here - warm, sunny, and awesome for the past 6 days!).

Tomorrow we take off for another 12 hour bus ride north along the infamous Route 40 (Ruta 40). Hopefully we´ll find better internet for you to have some pictures!

Hope everyone is doing well back home.

Scott and Lisa