El Chaltén, where my dreams and nightmares collided!

Whilst I may moan about early buses, there are times when they definitely have their advantages and the day I headed to El Chaltén was one of those. My 8am bus may have felt like a killer when the alarm went off, but with scenery like this along the way...

I soon woke up and wanted to go walking! The bus arrived in El Chaltén... 

...around 11am and made a stop first at the Parque Nacional Los Glaciares information centre where an incredibly helpful ranger gave us a quick talk on the various walks available to us and recommendations on which to do when, based on the weather, along with a fab map with the walks clearly labelled on it. My hostel had advertised that it didn't do early check ins but that you could leave your stuff there whilst you went off on the walks, which is exactly what I did.

The weather was perfect, with a slight nip in the air but beautiful sunshine and so that first day I planned to do the Cerro Fitz Roy walk. The trees are really starting to change colour here and so the scenery is just beautiful. This was the view as I started into the park to do the walk...

The first stop along the walk is the Rio de las Vueltas viewpoint where I was met with this vista...

I could quite happily have stayed here for ages, but at that point I'd been planning to do a 16km round trip walk and as it was already almost 1pm by this point I decided to keep moving. Not much further along the way I heard the distinctive tapping of a woodpecker - can you just make him out in the centre of the picture??

A little further along the trail I had the choice of going right to the Fitz Roy viewpoint or left towards Laguna Capri. Whichever I chose on the way there I could do the other on the way back and so opted for Laguna Capri. We'd been told that the water was drinkable in all the lakes and rivers in the parks and as my water bottle was running low I figured that would be a good place to top it up!

The views along the way were beautiful...

But the lake itself was something else...

And I did top up my water bottle there!!

Having walked around 4km by this point, the clouds you can see in the right hand side of the picture above were beginning to concern me. I didn't want to walk to the end and miss seeing Cerro Fitz Roy because of cloud and so I decided to head round to the Fitz Roy viewpoint directly. The wind was also starting to pick up by now and we'd been advised by the ranger not to attempt the very end of this trail due to the high winds. I didn't actually make it round as far as the viewpoint because I found myself a spot to sit in with this amazing view.

It was magical, there were lots of small birds flying around near me and condors flying around near the mountains! A little later, a new friend came and looked at the view with me for a bit too!!

I was here for around 45 minutes before the clouds descended, obscuring the view of Fitz Roy.

And they just got worse from this point on so I was super-chuffed with my decision to change my planned walk.

That evening the rain started and so I went to a restaurant close to my hostel for dinner, having spaghetti bolognese for the first time in years! It was a huge portion, of which I left as much as I ate!!

The next morning I woke up and discovered a couple of bites on my arm but didn't really think much of it being a usual victim of biting things. The day had dawned very dull windy and rainy indeed. I decided to wait a little while to see if it would clear up as the forecast predicted, but when it didn't seem like it was going to I put my wet weather gear on and headed out to do the Laguna Torre walk. This had been recommended by the ranger should the weather be bad as you would still get to see the lake and Glacier Grande. 

The first viewpoint is for Cerro Torre but with the cloud, I've included the sign which says what I should have been able to see!

The views were still incredible though!

The areas you walked through changed constantly, one of my favourite parts being though the area with trees either side of me. I have a picture without anyone in it, but this picture really amused me. I set up the shot, and just as I pressed the shutter this guy came around the corner, it made us both chuckle a lot as neither was expecting the other!

About 7km in a guy who had been walking at the same pace as me but about 50m ahead, stopped, as he wasn't sure of part of the rail. I turned up, we figured it out and then stayed together for the rest of the walk! Mark is from Colorado and we had a really great conversation that covered a vast range of topics and made the remaining 2km lake and 9km back pass so quickly! It was such fun! As we got towards the lake, the snow started, making the views even more dramatic...

  and when we rounded the corner, the view of the lake and glacier were stunning!

We managed about 15 minutes sitting looking at the view before the cold got to us and we had to start back. By this point it was properly snowing but it wasn't settling and made the walk back fairytale like!

Being fairly hungry by the time we arrived back in town, I said bye to Mark then went and got what has to be the best burger I've had since I arrived in South America. It had blue cheese, tomato, caramelised onion and avocado on it. Along with papas fritas and a pint of honey beer, it totally hit the spot! Yum!

When I got back to the hostel, they'd weirdly moved me beds in the same room and we had a new dorm room mate, Henrik, staying in the bed I'd been in originally. He and I made plans to do the walk to Chorillo del Salto (a waterfall) the next day then I took some time out to read my book which I'd not done for a while. That night we had the heater on in the room and it got so hot that I started itching, I ended up getting up and on my feet and arms I had what looked a combination of hives and stinging nettle bites. My first thought was that it was the heat, but then as I kept feeling pin prick pains at the top of my arms when I got back into bed, I became less certain. Anyway, the next morning I woke up and saw clearly that they were bites. I wasn't sure what sort of bites but was fairly sure they weren't bed bugs, until I saw a bed bug crawling on my towel. Eeeeewwwwwwww!!!!! Having had bed bugs in Australia, getting them again was my worst nightmare. Fortunately Henrik spoke Spanish and as I'd had bites whilst I was in the bed that he had then slept in that night, he had a vested interest in getting the situation resolved too! The hostel agreed to get all our clothes hot-washed and they moved us into a completely different room on the floor above.

Having sorted that out, Henrik and I finally went off to do the walk. It was soooooo windy! We got blown about all over the place on the way there! It was totally worth it though!

I loved how it looked like the trees were growing out of the rocks!

By this point though I'd started becoming obsessed with getting back and cleaning my rucksack and checking everything that couldn't be washed to make sure it was clean and bedbug free, so I left Henrik who had wanted to find a spot to sit and contemplate the world to do so and I headed back to the hostel. Over the next couple of hours, I thoroughly cleaned out my rucksack, poured boiling water over everything that could get wet and whilst I'm fairly sure it won't have done anything to the bedbugs, sprayed 70% ethanol on everything else! That night I slept inside my trusty sleeping bag liner and thankfully haven't had any more bites since. 

The following day I very happily checked out of the Lo De Guille hostel and started my journey down towards Punta Arenas with an overnight in the lovely Corner Hostel again in Puerto Natales as the entire journey wasn't possible in one day. I've not done an awful lot in Punta Arenas so there isn't much to tell you about here. Tomorrow however I'm heading to Ushuaia, the southernmost town in the world and will tell you all about both places in a few days!!