After a night of not nearly enough sleep, we stuffed our too-small packs to the gills once again and returned to the airport in order to depart on our our Patagonian side-quest. We arrived almost 3 hours early, after having read horror stories about the length of lines at airports in Argentina. To our surprise, the airport was quiet, and we managed to check in, clear security, and grab a bite for breakfast with almost 2 hours to spare. The flight itself was uneventful, with the only notable point of interest being how brown everything that we were flying over was. We landed at El Calafate airport, next to a brilliantly blue lake with the shadow of the Andes in the background. With a mixture of my hopeless Spanish and the transport company employee's terrible English, I managed to secure our tickets for the transfer to El Chaltén, where we we're scheduled to stay for the next week.
Why is the water so blue?! It's because of MAGIC! (Or, ya know, hydrogen bond wavelength scatter lime content something something)
I passed the 3 hour drive to El Chaltén drifting in and out of sleep that was punctuated by brief moments of semi-conscious registration of the vast emptiness of the landscape around me, and the odd group of grazing guanaco. We felt like we were seriously in the middle of nowhere (which I guess is fairly accurate). The only sign of civilisation on the drive was when we made a pit-stop at Hotel La Leona, one of the places that Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid stayed at while fleeing across South America.
"Hey Jeremy, take a photo of me with the writing on the roof and stuff!" "Sure *takes photo with writing semi cut off*"
There is only road and mountains. That is all.
The mountains loomed higher the closer we got to our destination, jutting through my drowsiness so that by the time we disembarked at our hostel, I was alive enough to vaguely understand a small percentage of what the owner was telling us about how the stove and heating worked. And that heating was sure necessary. Despite the fact that it is currently the middle of summer, jeans and t-shirt does not cut it for walking around in the daytime. We spent the evening wandering around town and grabbing a bite and a (local craft) beer, and by the time we wandered back to the hostel, I was shivering with cold even with a hoodie on. Welcome to the south.
El Chaltén is the supposed capital of trekking in Argentina, and is such a cute little town!
Forget the otherworldly views, what we're really here for is the beer
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