Adios Argentina!

After our camping experience in Chile few weeks ago, we went back to Argentina in a town called El Calafate. There is nothing special about it but it's the place where tourists end up if they want to go and admire Perito Moreno glacier 60km away. And as obedient tourists as we are, we followed the flock! Even if it smells like a tourist rip off, we have to say that it's still a spectacular place to go to. You really feel small in front of that huge ice cube! It is about 75 metres high and the noise it produces when a piece falls down is just amazing!

Once our little trip over, we decided to stay in El Calafate one more day to rest for a while... yes that's very tiring to wander around all the time!  We took the opportunity to visit the nature reserve Laguna Nimez which was very close to our hostel. It's a wild and very beautiful place where live dozens of birds including flamingos which were too far away to take good pictures of!Ciaran was not that impressed by this spot... I still don't get why!

More pictures available here.

After spending three days taking it easy, we got in one of those buses that we now love so much and went to El Chalten, the famous argentinean capital of trekking. Qualify this little village as a capital sounds a little bit disproportionate as there are probably less than 5000 inhabitants but anyway this is where we probably felt the best since we left Ireland. Before dropping off people to the terminal, each bus stops at the visitor centre at the entrance of the village. Everybody has to get off the bus to attend a short speech given by a very friendly woman. You are told what trails to walk to and what precautions to take to protect the wildlife. Everybody gets on the bus again with their map impressed by the organisation and the warmth of these people! A good start...

We nearly spent a week in this remote village. We slept in a cosy shoe box where you could bearly fit anything else than our bunk beds but we really liked our hostel (In-land-sis). The management was very nice and helpful. Unfortunately from our first hiking on, Ciaran injured his knees and he had to rest for most of the week. I went walking on my own. Somebody needed to go to the top to take pictures of these beautiful landscapes  We probably have hundreds of pictures of their local pride: Monte Fitz Roy. The views from the town are impressive at anytime of the day.

Not only El Chalten is the capital of trekking, it is also the one of food! We have eaten out more than is sensible when we were there and everything was delicious: steaks, pizza, lamb stew...we really enjoyed sampling the local cuisine. We also discovered argentinean bakeries: their pastries are yummy. We left the town paunchier but happy

After so many nice treats, the worse was about to come: a bus journey of 33 hours on la Ruta 40. If you have never heard of it, the only thing you need to now is that the road is unpaved and that the landscapes is the same for hundreds of kilometres: flat and desert! 33 hours on an unpaved road with 45 other travellers who just spent a week trekking and who as a consequence smell bad is quite an experience!!!

We managed to survive the trip though and spent few days in Bariloche. We didn't really do anything there as it rained cats and dogs for 48 hours. We crossed the border a few days later and got to Santiago on time to catch our plane to Easter island... In the next post we'll try to sum up what we did there...