El Chalten is the trekking capital of Argenina and the whole town is all about trekking. In the off-season, only 1000 people live here but it's a beehive of activity right now and everyone is either trekking or mountain climbing or ice climbing. The trekkers are from all over the world and range from young back-packers to seniors' walking clubs. I didn't realize that there was such a large trekking culture. Live and learn, I suppose.
On Friday and Saturday, I did a couple of full day treks. They were both great but I was totally bagged on Saturday night.
We did an ice-trek on the Viedma Glacier today. We had to take a bus and a boat to get there. They pulled the boat up to the rocks (no dock or pier at all - just the rocks) we all clambered off the boat onto the rocks; and the trekking began. After climbing over the rocks for about 30 minutes, we reached the glacier, strapped on some crampons and off we went. It was really fun. Hard work, though. I had imagined that it would be fairly flat but there was hardly a time that we were on a flat surface. We went up and down hills, through valleys, into ice tunnels, alongside crevasses. It was really great fun and I'm really glad that we did it. We were on the glacier for about 3 hours and the time raced by. That is sure to be one of the highlights of this trip.
Our day of ice-trekking was quite a bit shorter today than the last couple of days so we ended up wandering around town and we stopped for dinner in a bar/restaurant that had Olympic coverage on th TV so we got to watch some of today's highlights, including some curling. Yes, they are showing curling highlights on Spanish ESPN. GO CANADA GO! Sunday is football (soccer) day in Argentina an I think that the other people in the place wanted to watch football but they very kindly left the Olympic coverage on for us.
We haven't seen a lot of the Olympics but we have managed to keep up with the medal standings and the curling standings. We've also been following the weather in Canada so that we can feel good about not being there. I'm not hoping for bad weather back home but it's nice to be reminded how much better it is here.
Tomorrow is our last day in El Chalten. Then we're off to El Calafate. As much as I like it here, it's the 1st major stop where I feel satisfied with the amount of time that we've had.
Gord is recovering from his cold but he very generously decided to share so I now have a cold. Curses! The schedule is packed for the next 4 days so there isn't a good opportunity for a down day. I will try to soldier on and hope that it passes quickly.
Some new photos can be seen here .
Cheers!
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