Hola from El Chalten, Southern Patagonia

I am Southern Patagonia in Argentina. El Chalten, to be exact...it´s Thursday 8th March and it´s 12pm local time.

Just had three nights of camping in freezing cold (below zero) weather (at night)...whilsts sleeping in a tent...but the flipside is that the weather has been fantastic! The days were nice and warm, but not too so that it made hiking too hot.

The hiking wasn´t too hard, some days were long though. The paths not too tricky or difficult too! As they told us before, it was moderate hiking.

Both the scenery and the weather is fantastic...I cannot complain about it at all. The place, although it looks isolated and remote (which it is) is well travelled with many tourist - both from overseas and Argentina. Everyone is friendly and obviously it is full of similar like-minded and hardly people who like long walks in the national parks...:-)

At least we got hot food each night and a hot breakfast. The food isn´t that great, but it fills you up...at least we don´t have too good it...they have ´camp assistants´to look after the campsites and cool the food and prepare our ´packed lunches´ (do the dishes, make us tea & coffee & hot chocolate).

I went for walk on a glacier yesterday...it was a very long day too. We (it was an optional excursion) spent some 11 hours or so walking...thankfully, it ended in a hosteria (budget hotel) with a hot shower and a nice warm comfy double bed. I am lucky that I don´t have share with anyone!

Thank god I had a shower...the first in three days. With most of it wearing the same same clothes too. I took change of clothes though (socks and undies too). Wet & cold weather gear was essential too.

The first night back in the hosteria was a mixed blessing...the room was warm and comfy. Too warm in fact. The room was okay, but hey this is a budget hotel...so you can´t complain. The whole group had dinner in the hosteria I stayed in. Some people stayed in the hostel acrossed the road...they had 4-6 people per bunk room. Apparrently not great, but us in the hosteria paid extra for that privillege. I can tell you that I was pleased I did.

I´ve taken over 300 photos in the past four days. Some good ones too. I hope to post some of the good ones to my webshots website soon.

It was hard and great fun. The first day walking was wet and then got cold. We were all a more than a little concerned about the next few days was going to be exactly the same.

Our guides - both the ones for the local part of the tour (in El Chalten - Fitz Roy and Torre) were excellent. But much was lost in the translation from Spanish to English.

Most of my tour group were English speaking. The majority from the UK, the rest from Australia. This tour group was twice the size of the usual group. The result of a group of confused people, at times (well, most of the time!).
We are off back to El Calafate for two nights. We will be visiting the Moreno Glacier...but no glacier walk this time.

Time to go. Hopefully I will get a chance to upload the photos...today is our day off hiking. I am wondering this tiny town...this part of Patagonia is very dry ..it is usually windy too...but is a perfect day - warming and dry...not windy.

That´s it for now...my next posting is from El Calafate.