El Chaltén

First rule of hostelling: never assume you have the dorm to yourself - no matter how late it is! On Friday night we went to bed quite late after enjoying a BBQ buffet and red wine. We spread all of our things out across the room thinking we had it all to ourselves, then at 2am there was a loud knock on the door - a French couple had arrived to share with us. I had to hurriedly get up and lock all of our valuables in the locker. I could hear them whispering 'putain!' as they navigated their way around the room in the dark with their backpacks.

The next day we just had a lazy day in el Calafate and went for a walk to the lake with an Irish boy (Mark) who we met in Buenos Aires on a walking tour. He is doing a very similar route to us so no doubt we will bump into him again. We saw flamingos and some nice views of the lake and the mountains. We then came back to our hostel, had lunch and chilled out. We intended to go to bed early as we had to get up early the next day for a bus ride to el Chalten but in the end we ended up going to bed about 1am. The french couple still weren't in at this point though; they rolled in at 2am and the girl took about 40 mins to get ready, giving me a grand total of about 3 hours sleep for the night.

The next day we got an early bus to El Chalten, a very small village in the mountains, famous for its mountain Fitz Roy. I had seen pictures of this in guide books and really wanted to visit it so we decided to stay over night there and have two full days hiking. We left our rucksacks in our hostel in el Calafate and just took a little overnight bag with us. We slept all the way on the coach as we were both exhausted. When we got to El Chalten we were very pleasantly surprised with our hostel as we had only paid around £4 for it. For this, we got our own room in a cosy little chalet. We decided to set of hiking straight away with a South African girl called Rie who we met in Calafate. The hike to the lake took about 3 hours and we almost ran it. With Rie setting the pace, it was a speed walk up the mountain and I was really struggling to keep up most of the way. The weather was great but we kept having to add and take away layers. When we got to the lake it was all worth it because the views were like a postcard.

An actual photo I took (not a postcard!)

The views along the way were also fantastic. More photos here: Patagonia

We stopped at the top for lunch. We had made some sandwiches in Calafate but left them in the hostel so we bought some empanadas at the bottom of the mountain when we first arrived and had them for lunch. We then took about 2.5 hours to hike back down and we went straight to the local shop to find something for tea. We went back to the hostel, had an amazing shower and then cooked dinner with Rie (the standard pasta, tomato sauce and vegetables). Then we all went to bed by about 9pm.

Today (Sunday) we got up early to do the main trek to Fitz Roy (the one I had really been looking forward to). The weather was a lot colder and very windy and the route was a lot steeper with lots of steps and hills to climb. Unfortunately we never made it to the last viewing point and so never got to see the elusive Fitz Roy in all of its glory because Jemma hurt her knee and couldn't carry on due to the pain. We were actually only about an hour away from finishing but the mountain was covered in cloud anyway so we probably wouldn't have been able to see much more than we did. Jemma had to walk all of the way back down using two sticks to support her and is still in pain now with her knee.

The view of Fitz Roy

When we got back to the bottom, we had 4 hours to kill before our bus back to El Calafate so we ordered a bottle of red wine to share between the 3 of us and then had a nap on some beanbags in the hostel. 

 We have just got back to El Calafate and it is the chef's night off so there is no food to eat - we just had to make do with the tuna sandwiches we left in the fridge two days ago. We are now trying to decide what to do next. We are half tempted to stay in Calafate another day so Jemma can rest her knee, and also because we really want another BBQ buffet. We are supposed to be heading to Bariloche next but there has been a volcano eruption recently and apparently everything is covered in ash. We shall see!