After a day of traveling and our first night spent in different rooms (shock) we made it to El Chalten it was absolutely perfect weather we could see all the extraordinary snowcapped towers of the Fitz Roy mountain range! Breathtaking! The weather report was that it was set to stay clear so we could do a few good walks get to the end and still see what we went there for!
The next day we headed on our first trek to Laguna Torre to see the spire of Cerro Torre. It wasn’t a hard walk but it still was hard on our tired legs! Great scenery all the way through and the final view was amazing, beat all the Torres del Paine views put together! We sat by the lake for a few hours taking in the view, then I thought it would make a great picture by picking out a huge bit of ice and drinking from it, soon it got too much and I moved and stepped right in the lake to Clare’s laughter, so I had a very wet trainer and sock that we had to leave to dry for a while. Before long we was comfy on the lone rock in the lake slowly falling asleep so we had to get up and make our way back before sunset. Finally found the hidden supermarket on the way through town so we bought the best mince meat ever (he literally put in top quality steak to mince up) and cooked a nice pasta.
With everything looking up we had a evening trying to sort our estanica stay out what was proving more difficult than we could have imagined, simply we was close to it on a map but to get to, we was about 3/4 hours drive away. Luckily we had a nice guy, Fedrico who was a friend of the estancias ower helping us out from the town who gave us a discount off our stay and helped us get transport there and back, but meant we had to go the next day and then come back here to finish of our walks! Blog to follow.
We worked out we didn’t have as long as we had hoped here so our next trek that was going to be broken up into 2 days, camping overnight, was now going to be pushed together and do it all in one day about 8 hours walking! (Not so bad seeing as we was doing 7/8 a day on Torres del Paine but we still had the Pains from there!). The walk was to Laguna de los Tres to get to the base of Cerro Fitz Roy! The center piece of the range! The night before we got collected late from our estancia and so couldn’t stay at our nice hostel up the road but ended up in a nice if run down place nearby and half the cost, so not all bad. We woke up to lots of news about a huge earthquake in Chile which had happened while we was in the middle of nowhere and as plans could have been a few days early we could been very close to it all!
As we do, we set out for our walk a few hours later than planned 10:30. Still full of ambition to do it all. It was clear and sunny, perfect for seeing Fitz Roy but made walking up hill for 4 hours hell! Both really struggled, lack of will power from the constant up… The views form the viewpoint were fantastic though. Clare wanted to go back after that and I wouldn’t have blamed her it was hard to there and was about to get harder but she pushed on! It was about a third uphill, third flat and the last hour and a half… oh my goodness was sooo steep, climbed 500m and the sun was on you 99% of the time there was no escape. It was bloody hard, if you didn’t get all that! The view was bloody amazing, absolutely amazing and thank god worth the pain of that up! I think we really made the most of being at the top there was no rush getting back down and we found some icy snow to lay in! Some how after resting we made it back to our hostel in about 2 and a half hours! Well deserved shower and food with a more cheap wine! Clare got bitten about 40 times again and I had none… not a great combo but she dealt with them really well! Tomorrow we start our 2 day bus journey up Route 40.
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