More Patagonia

The day after the superbowl, I crossed back into Argentina to get to El Calafate. The town is pretty touristy and they know how to make everything easy for you. Before I left to have dinner with friends, I had my bus ticket to the Perito Moreno Glaciar the next day, my transport to and from El Chalten to see Cerro Torre and Fitz Roy the day after that, and then a bus ticket out of El Calafate to Bariloche the day after that. Easy. One complaint though: I was staying at a different hostel from everyone else - at I Keu Ken. It was a nice hostel but they advertised themselves as being four blocks from the bus station... it was, but four blocks uphill... not fun with bad knees and a backpack.

Perito Moreno: This is pretty much the only reason to visit El Calafate - it's in the Glaciar National Park. The Glaciar National Park is said to house the third largest ice field after Antarctica and Greenland. Even after Antarctica, turns out I'm not sick of glaciars. This one was especially cool because you could see it breaking apart every now and then. Huge chunks of glaciar would break off and fall into the water. It was incredible to see and so loud, like fireworks only they were exploding beneath you! My camera ran out of batteries so instead of taking pictures, I enjoyed the view and snacked on chocolate bon bons. :)

El Chalten: More hiking. My body is definitely mad at me now. I hiked for 9.5 hours to Laguna Torre and halfway to Cerro Fitz Roy (the two highest points). Cerro Torre and Fitz Roy are part of the Glaciar National Park too, only about 3 hours away from El Calafate. I have mixed feelings about El Chalten... I got an incredible day.... no clouds to obscure the beautiful view and great weather... sometimess the town goes 10 days without seeing the peaks! I was lucky and it was awesome!

(This next section is a big rant. Feel free to ignore and skip to the end.) El Chalten was beautiful that day, but I'm also pissed off at El Chalten and everyone I talked to about it. I had overly ambitious plans of doing both hikes.... Once I got to the park, I was discouraged from doing so and pretty much made to believe that this is impossible (little did they know the pace I kept in Torres del Paine!). So the ranger says not to do it. The RANGER! Okay, fine. I start in on another hike to Laguna Torre - this is amazing. Then there's another viewpoint an hour away - the Maestra. I am most pissed off about this because the view (an hour away up a rocky crappy hill) wasn't any better than from Laguna Torre! I even asked people if it was worth it and asked about what you could see ... nobody told me it was shit! So that's two hours of time wasted. (This becomes important later...) Around this time (3pm), I realize that my two-week old backpack has lost its bottom... comletely ripped at the seams with my stuff falling out. It looked like everything was still there.... but it was when I went to reapply sunblock that I found out that tht was missing. Oh coppertone! I've also lost my orange which I was really looking forward to eating! So I can already feel the sunburn on my shoulders and I happen to glance at the map to find out that Cerro Torre and Cerro Fitz Roy are CONNECTED. WHAT?! I assumed doing both hikes in a day is impossible because you have to go back and forth to the start point. Nobody told me! It's like a hologram... you just dont see it for the longest time, and then once you see it, it's all you can see. So all I could see on this map that was very confusing, is the route to Cerro Fitz Roy... that I now am probably too late to take. Heading back into town from Laguna Torre, I stop and ask a girl for some of her sunblock. Bad decision. She tells me she's taken this connection route from Fitz roy to Laguna Torre... that it took her about two hours.... and that it was the most beautiful part of the park she's seen. Crap. I can't miss that!! So I get to the sign and it says three hours to Poincerot (where the first Fitz Roy lookout is), then another two hours from there to town. It was 4pm. I had to be back in town for an 8pm bus. So what do I do? I go for it! I know, I know, stupid... but I was used to beating park estimates. But the sunblock girl did NOT tell me it was SUPER uphill and I had already killed my knees getting to the stupid Maestra. So I'm discouraged.. but I power on. Again, stupid, I know. Then I run into a guide who says its another two hours - I'd been trekking for about 40 minutes uphill... and that I can't make it back to town going that way by 8pm. He says if i hurry, I can try to see one of the lakes and then rush back to town... so I did that. Then went back all the way I came... basically trekking two hours out of the way, then another two hours to town. I made it with about 40 minutes to spare before my bus but the whole way back I was so mad!!! Would have taken me about two hours to get to Laguna Torre, then three hours to Poincerot, then another two back into town... It sucks that I hiked 9.5 hours and still wasn't able to do what I wanted to do in the first place! Why did the ranger discourage me?! Why did I take the stupid Maestra?! (Not only was it crap, but I would have had those two hours to do both treks!) Why didn't anyone tell me the Maestra was crap? Why didn't I know the treks were connected?! Why did I stop to talk to the one girl who'd tell me what I was missing? Why did I go for it?!!! GAH!!!! Basically, it was my fault for not knowing, and then trying to go for it anyway... but at the time, I was mad at everyone! It was also poor time management and that's just not something I'm used to.... therefore it makes me so incredibly angry! AHHH!!!! To top it all off, I almost missed my bus because it started pulling out of the station at 7:55pm. He let me on, and everything was fine, but goodness! Anything else, El Chalten?! Thanks for the sore knees, sunburnt skin, and bad tan lines! (Rant concluded)

My last afternoon in El Calafate I spent buying sunblock, buying a new backpack, reinforcing the backpack with duct tape, and buying a new watch (my old one died recently...). I ended up with a kid's Winnie the Pooh watch because it was the only thing moderately affordable. :) 28 hour bus ride to San Carlos de Bariloche that actually wasn't bad because I was in a fancy (cama) seat that almost reclines into a full bed. Now I'm off to celebrate a friend's birthday... Happy 24th Birthday Kelly Toomey!

p.s. Mom tells me there was a 7.0 earthquake in Chile... I didn't feel it! I'm safe :)