More trekking and glaciers (4-14/Feb/06)

Coyahique, Chile

With all this talk about Southernmost part of the continent, penguins and glaciers you’d think we are freezing out nuts off here, but it isn’t like that at all. Penguins seem to be pretty happy in the baking sun. And glaciers seem to take an awful lot before melting too.

Definitely a glacier is much more appreciated if you have to trek 4 days to see it. Riding on a boat or getting in a bus isn’t the same. Still, the boat trip was pretty awesome no matter what, and you get really close to the edge of an 80m high chunk of ice. The Moreno glacier was also amazing, spent the whole day just waiting for massive chunks to fall off (it is one of the few moving glaciers, so is pretty more active than the rest).

After El Calafate we took a short (ish) bus ride to El Chalten. Here things are much less traditional-touristy and much more backpacker-touristy. The roads are still unpaved, there are much more trekking routes (virtually non-existent in El Chalten, which is why we had to take boat & bus), and accommodation much more basic. We did one amazing route on the 1st day. The 2nd day we were going to do some rock climbing with an instructor but the weather turned pretty bad so we cancelled. After that the weather turned great again so we hired some shoes and did some bouldering. Third day we went for a trek on one of the glaciers with some crampons, as ended it with a bit of ice climbing.

Had a mini economic crisis coming into Chile, which is why we haven’t been in an Internet café for a bit – the only bank for some time accepted only MasterCard and we only have Visa. They also wouldn’t take our emergency travellers cheques. Luckily we had a few Argentinian pesos left and changed those. Took a detour (for more trekking!) to Villa Cerro Castillo but then realised it wasn’t worth it so only stayed 1 night. From there we have taken the bus to Coyahique to see if we can hook up with Esther’s cousin who lives in the area as a farmer or something. I hope he rears sheep or cows. I’m starving.