May 6th-8th (Sun-Tue)
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| Tiny village of El Chalten is the base camp for all mountain trekking. No phone reception but enough wi-fi to power UCD's James Joyce library. |
Good ol' Windguru is the popular weather forecasting website here. Why? For cloud coverage percentages of course! Outdoor activity is entirely dependent on cloud coverage, no point in putting yourself through the torture of 8 hour hikes if you ain't got to see anything to show for it. Reminds me of the time my family went on a 10 hour hike to see a volcano and there was virtually no visibility at the top, the photo of me at the top is of a scrawny ten year old having a moment of complete despair. Fortunately we had perfectly clear visibility when we tackled the Laguna de los Tres hike, 'a strenuous 12.5km hike which ascends sharply to a glacial lake with in-your-face views of Fitz Roy'. Terrain covered to get there included grassy mole hills, steep, leafy and sometimes muddy paths through sparse forest land and high bush, passing ponds, rivers, lakes and waterfalls. Over sand and past many patches of odd looking burnt trees. And then the climb, the strenuous bit. Half way up all I could think of was that the guidebook had exaggerated, I could definitely have done this in my converse. Then we got to a point where we were essentially walking up a steep stream, which then turned into a snowy and icy stream. At that point I realised converse would not do and I wished I had hiking boots and walking/ski poles. I felt like Frodo and Sam venturing through Middle Earth. Legs were Stage 4 Burning by the time I was home, it occured to me more than once that it would have been so handy to just ski down hill.
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| So you've the hill that I'm taking this photo from, then another one... and then another one.. and then another big steep one! |
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| One more hill to go! |
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| Lovely aperture! |
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| I spy with my little eye.. a sneaky glacier in the background! This one made so much noise it sounded like a jet airplane over head. |
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| Laguna de los Tres, best place to view Mt Fitz Roy (3,359m) |
'We' this time includes myself and my roomies from El Calafate who have followed me here, literally to the dorm across from me. Two kids around my own age from Cleveland, Ohio. Very American at times, though sometimes I can't tell if they are joking... e.g. 'Woah how have you seen Good Will Hunting?' 'Of course I have seen it, it's even won Oscars' 'Yeah, but the Oscars are in America!' or 'Who sings this song?' 'Amy Winehouse' 'Oh yeah, she's 'ours'' 'No, she's British!' 'Yeah, but we made her ours'. They've been good company on the hikes, even if I find their long discussions about US history to be a bore.
Met an amazing American photographer over breakfast this morning. We had seen him yesterday at the top of our hike and I saw himself and his girlfriend were carrying some serious looking tripods. I had to talk to him! Turns out he is a hiking fanatic/professional photographer who has been all over the world doing treks to capture sunrise and sunset of some of the worlds most unseen mountains, lakes, rivers - ie landscape in general. He gave us a bit of a run through of his HUGE Horseman 90M camera (I think?) and we saw his photos from his trip to the Antarctic Circle which he took for some exhibition in LA in August. He said if I sent him an email he'd send me some prints of Mt Fitz Roy for super cheap, cool as! Other than him and my American pals everyone else in the hostel has been French, Austrian or German.
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