El Chaltén

After the hell of Torres del Pain we set off to another famous hiking town, El Chaltén, home of the Fitz Roy mountain range. It is officially Argentinas newest town, founded in 1985, and it shows, because they are still building all the roads, post office, shops etc. In the morning, at breakfast, Dee had a couple of handfuls of the "Fruity Loop" type cereal which is right at the back of the breakfast box because they taste like boiled sweets and look like someone smashed a rainbow and covered it in E numbers and sugar. This probably wasnt the best idea because 30 minutes later on the truck when everyone was trying to sleep, Dee turned into a hyper-active giggling child. She was screaming and sniggering and talking complete rubbish. Everyone else on the truck was confused who this new loud, annoying group member was. I put on my mp3 player and pretended to be asleep, but it was hard not to notice the ADHD sufferer sitting next to me. At the next stop everyone agreed that Dee should be banned from eating that cereal again.

The weather when we arrived was sunny, which we were told was a rare thing for that part of the country. Instead of walking up the mountain range we decided to pay for the optional extra of walking on a glacier. We had been so impressed by the Moreno glacier that we were keen to see one close up. The boat trip started early so we could see the sunrise over the beautiful icebergs on the Viedma Lake. We stopped at the end of the glacier and walked a short way to the edge of the glacier. We put on our supplied crampons over our walking boots and stepped onto the glacier. The crampons are great fun to walk about on ice with. They make you feel like spiderman - you can walk up near-vertical slopes and stick to the ground with no problem. The surface of glacier wasnt as clean as the one we had seen before - I think this area is very windy and it blows sand and dirt onto the surface, but the crevices were a dark, dark blue colour where the ice is so old and compressed and it glowed from the sunlight penetrating the glacier. We stomped around with our crampons for a bit and got to an ice cave for a photo opportunity. The guides broke some ice off the glacier and served us Baileys on the (glacier) rocks, which was lovely. We did a bit of ice climbing and Dee kept pretending she needed help because she fancied the curly-haired guide, and then headed back.

The next day we were going to go for a walk up a mountain, but it rained, so unfortuntely we sat on the truck all day and played cards and drank wine. Luca managed to call the hostel we were at previously and arrange for someone to bring my jacket to El Chaltén, so in return we bought Luca a bad hat, which he loved.

That night the kitten, which has been running around the campsite in the cold, got into our tent somehow and slept in my sleeping bag. Dee quite liked the little thing, I think I can turn her into a cat lover eventually.