Beauty and the Beast
Day 198
El Chalten is about as touristy as a town can get. Its not a pretty place and its expensive, it is however set in a valley with some of the most amazing mountain peaks on earth looming above it. It was established only 23 years ago this very weekend for the sole purpose to serve as a base for trekkers in the Parque Nacional Los Glaciares. Which isn’t exactly your ordinary national park. The park is over 724,000 ha. and over 40% of that is covered by ice fields. 13 major glaciers make up the Hielo Continental Sur or the Southern Patagonian Icecap. Its the largest body of ice outside of the poles in the world. Impressive stuff, to bad Greenpeace estimates that 42 cubic km of it is melting annually or “enough to fill 10,000 large football stadiums”.
We arrived in the town last night. As our bus crossed the patagonian plains approached Chalten the spectacular jagged peaks of Cerro Fitz Roy and Cerro Torre came into view. Made all the more dramatic by the fiery orange sun that set behind the peaks. Jordana and I couldn’t take our eyes away from the window, these are the moments we will always remember.
As the sun rose in the morning it revealed a dusty and windy town with no real centre. El Chalten really does look better in the dark. The peaks above us however made up for the towns flaws. The Fitz Roy massif rises so abruptly its sides are to steep for snow to stick to. We shared a room with Natasha and Seamus, a decent 4 bed dorm with our own bathroom. The morning was spent doing chores and searching for a decent breakfast, something that I’ve come to the realization just doesn’t exist in Argentina. Well unless you love to have a super sweet croissant every morning. Anyway I will leave the food story for another blog, trust me it deserves its own entry if not its own separate blog.
In the afternoon the 4 of us figured we better get out and do some sort of hike since we were in the trekking capital of Argentina. We did a short but somewhat strenuous 4 km walk up a hillside just south of town. Below us to the south was the blue Lago Viedma with icebergs floating that had broken off a nearby glacier. Back toward town we had an excellent view of the almost cartoon like peaks of the Fitz Roy massif. The steep peaks reminded me of the mountain the grinch who stole Christmas lived on.
Back at the hostel we cooked dinner with Natasha and Seamus, Natasha sharing a meal with us enlightened vegetarians and Seamus eating more meat, sorry Seamus no offence intended. We know you’ll come around one day. We played cards the rest of the night, the backpacker classic shithead and a new game, spoons. I never knew a card game could get violent. We met Irene a traveller from Hong Kong who was to join us in the morning as we hiked further into the park. We planned a 17km hike tomorrow to a small glacier lake at the foot of Cerro Torre, so early to bed it was. While the town didn’t impress the surrounding mountains had me excited to get out on another trail in the morning.
Tags: Argentina, El Chalten, Glaciars, Patagonia
Michael Coroneos
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