We came to see Perito Moreno Glacier. It's as long as Buenos Aires with 50-70 meters of ice sticking straight up out of the ground and another 150 meters of ice under the water. The glacier is constantly moving - if a piece breaks off, it's ok because another piece will reform somewhere else. While we were at the park, we witnesses 3 massive parts fall into the Lake and heard the thunder crack of many more crashing somewhere in the middle of the glacier.
We were given 2 hours to view the South side of the Glacier from various walkways (all while it rained) before we headed to a boat that would take us to the base of the mammoth. Jagged blue ice teeth soared upwards when we stood at the base. Luckily the sun came out and we had a clear sky. After a nice guide helped our tour group put on crampons (ice spikes you attach to your shoes) that must have been leftovers from the explores in the early 1900's, we began our ascent onto the ice; it was slow going and we had to walk like we had shit in our pants, all wide-legged and slightly hunched over because crampons are a hindrance and you can either stab through your foot or trip yourself and face plant if you're not careful.
But once on the frozen tundra, all the caution was forgotten. Fresh water rivets streaked down ice gorges and pooled into small ponds. The water was so clear we filled our bottles. Based on the sun's light reflectivity, crystal blue outlined the white/clear of the ice, giving the glacier a beauty it wouldn't normally have. Picture after picture, Robby and I tried to capture the essence of the blue, but it was really hard to see in anything but the eye. For 1.5 hours we walked all throughout a small portion of the glacier; it was amazing and definitely worth the ticket price. We were even given whiskey over glacier ice at the end. I snapped a lovely whiskey commercial-worthy photo to commemorate the trek.
Once back in town, we just explored the downtown shops and then went back to our hostel. The following morning, we woke up early to explore the Walicku Caves. We decided to take a lone German traveler staying at our hostel because she had nothing else to do and we like hitchhikers. The caves turned out to be a 30 minute walk along the lake with some rock formations on our left. We stupidity declined the audio headset, so all we had was a map with numbers that corresponded to different parts of the cave - kitchen, hand image, big cave, little cave, etc. Not very helpful. But the site was beautiful, so whoever the people were, they lived in a nice place.
After the caves, we caught a 3 hour bus to El Chalten, a hiking paradise. Most known for Mt. Fitz Roy; a very tall mountain range that mostly hides in the clouds and is know to be windy and freezing near the top. We were only in El Chalten for about 27 hours. The Fitz Roy trek is 20 km, so we went back and forth a bit on if we really wanted to hike it (mostly because we're actually very lazy and 20 km sounds daunting), but in the end, we decided we had to. It was after all the main reason we came to El Chalten. To ensure that we couldn't back out, we booked a van that took us passed the mountain range and dropped us off at a point 8 hours from town or roughly 20km. Along this path we bypassed another mountain glacier, this one actually looking like a glacier instead of a snow-capped mountain like in Ushuaia.
For the first part of the hike, it was a peaceful jaunt through a forest of trees with the glacier peaking out. Then the woods opened up to a wide white-stoned river bed. We followed the river to the base of a small, but sizable mountain ridge, and began to climb upwards on a rocky-stepped trail that our hiking boots did not like. When we finally reached the sign said 1 km to the Laguna del la Tres - the top of the Mt. Fitz Roy hike - we realized that whoever was the person incharge of distance marking the trail, was an idiot; it wasnt even 1 km as the bird flies. Robby's fitbit hit 1.8 miles before we crested the top of the large mountain and realize there was still another small hill to ascend before we saw the lake.
You would think Laguna del la Tres would mean three lakes, but it's really just one at the base of Mt. Fitz Roy. We lucked out and had warm sunshine for most of the trail and at the top. There wasn't even that much wind. Other people that we met had said they climbed the trail in the snow. Hum, I guess things were looking up for us, even if the 1 km to the finish wasn't nearly as spectacular as we were hoping. The journey there and back to town was prettier, in our opinions, but what counts is that we didn't chicken out and we hiked the 20 km trail which might have really been 23 km. Afterwards, we rewarded ourselves with wine before hopping on a 11 hour night bus to Los Antiquos - the Argentinean border.
Our bus was supposed to be a sleeper bus with food and drinks, but it broke down on the way to El Chalten and an old greyhound type bus showed up as a replacement 1.5 hours late. The drivers werenice, but the bus sucked - seats didn't go back, the AC was on full blast (it was 50f outside), and our dinner consisted of a cheese sandwich the drivers picked up on the side of the road 2 hours into the journey. Needless-to-say, when we made it to Los Antigous, but we were tired and cranky when we got there. It didn't get better when we found out that no taxis were available to drive us to the Argentinean border- 3 km from the bus station. It was Christmas, but still, something should have been running. Instead the whole town looked deserted. So us, and 15 other people from the bus, including a guy in a wheelchair, walked the 3 km with all our packs on. It was kind of funny to see us all dragging suitcases or wearing large backpacking backpacks while walking through the empty streets.
We had chosen to take the night bus to the Los Antigous border because we heard it was easy to cross into Chile at the town of Chile Chico, which was supposed to have easy access to the town of Coyhaique (via another bus), where we were to have a rental car waiting for us the following morning. Instead, the Argentinean border is 4 kms from the Chilean border, through which we had to walk what is essentually a "no man's land". I'm not sure of it was Christmas, or a Sunday, but again, no taxis or collectivos were available to drive us through the random wasteland between the borders. All we could get out of the Argentinean border guards was, "hitchike or walk." Luckily our friend in the wheelchair, Elmer, was picked up, otherwise fate would have been very cruel to him. Once we reached the Chilean border, very sweaty and tired (a 30 pound backpack is no joke when you carry it far distances), we discovered that it was another 5 kms to the actual town of Chile Chico. Ugh. Good thing the border cops were nice and one called us a taxi that turned out to be super helpful.
We discovered that the bus to Coyhaique was 1) not running on Christmas, and 2) was a 12 hours ride because it had to go the long way around (apparently there's a river we didn't know about). Our taxi driver dropped us in front of the ferry terminal and said that the boat would take us to Puerto Ibanez, where we could catch a 1.5 hour bus to Coyhaique. Yep, sounded like a plan. We sat in the freezing wind for 2 hours while we waited to obtain ferry and bus tickets - we didn't want to miss the boat. We lucked out and were traveling on Sunday, the only day the ferry ran at 3pm. If it was any other day, we would have missed the ferry (there's only one a day) and would have been stuck in the very small town of Chile Chico.
So, after the craziness of walking the border and stressing that we were not going to make it to Coyhaique (we didn't know when the buses left for the Coyhaique for Chile Chico), therefore missing our chance to get the rental car and messing up our plans for the next few days, things ended up working out. I even managed to get coffee in the all but desolate town. A random caterer was opening his business for Christmas dinner and he made Robby and I a craft of hot water with a bowl of instant coffee, a bowl of milk, and sugar. It was so sweet and very welcome after our insane morning.
For the rest of the story, the ferry took 2 hours, the mini bus to Coyhaique was easy to find, we had dinner in the only open cafe that didn't have a menu, and our hostel was a giant cabin in the woods with lots of fun, but crazy backpackers in it. Until next time...
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