El Chalten

Sooo... Stacy and I just finished backpacking, again:), from Argentina over and into Chile. It was a bit wild. We were in this town called El Chalten, gorgeous and where most people hike Fitz Roy, famous mountain and really beautiful, look it up. I say look it up because the weather didn't cooperate enough for us to see it.

Stacy and I kind of messed up. We went to book a shuttle for our backpacking trip and were told the 10am is already booked and like the two geniuses we are, we held off on buying the noon shuttle and instead tried hitchhiking for a while. When that was unsuccessful, we went back to buy the noon shuttle and sure as shit it was already sold out😂, leaving Stacy and I stuck and back to hitchhiking 🤷‍♂️

Stacy and I have certainly hitchhiked a lot in our travels but this was a tougher one. We sat around for hours before finally finding someone who would only take us halfway down to the lake where we were starting, placing us in the middle of nowhere without cell reception. We accepted the ride and got dropped off in the middle of nowhere and hoping someone else would pick us up, otherwise we had no plan.

As an aside, after getting out of the vehicle who took us halfway down in a Toyota Hilux, think Toyota Tacoma, started to drive away as I was still grabbing my backpack (think he forgot we still had to grab our bags) and the driver promptly ran over my right foot!! It hurt and amazingly did not break my foot or any toes.

After way too much more time anxiously waiting for another ride in the middle of nowhere, the may of been some fighting over this decision:), we luckily had someone tell us to hop in the back of his pickup truck and then endured one of the most uncomfortable 20 kilometer ride of our life, yet life saving because he took us.

We arrived and missed the boat that would ferry us across the lake by 15-20 minutes and were forced to camp on the south side of the lake for the night. But, it did give us a chance to hike Glacier Humel that night, run over foot and all 😂.

The ferry we missed the night before naturally doesn't run on Wednesdays, duh:), and had to hike the 12 kilometers of the lake to the Argentinan immigration offices on the other side of the lake. The hike was really challenging, tons of mud and ankle deep water often without good ways to get through, lots of wet shoes/feet. There were also tons of river/creek crossings, most passable through a series of sketchy wet slippery rocks to hop on but one simply required us to change into tevas to cross.

It was a difficult hike and we were exhausted when we got to the immigration office for leaving Argentina. We asked the agent how much longer we had to go tomorrow to make our ferry by 4:30pm and he said 22 kilometers! Stacy said let's go, meaning now😂 and immediately vetoed that idea since I barely had the energy to set up camp let alone hike another 22 kilometers that evening.

The immigration office didn't open the next day until 8am but Stacy convinced him to stamp our passports that night so we could get up early and hike out. Amazing. The next day's hike was pretty easy, just long. Luckily the ferry was running that day since it is weather dependent and had not shown up the previous 6 days!! You are told to bring enough food to wait out the weather and for the ferry to arrive and thank god we weren't stuck there for endless days.

We are now in the small town called Village O'Higgins and are stuck here for a few days because the bus to go where we need doesn't leave until Sunday 🤷‍♂️ Well this has been incredibly long so will leave it here for now.Baca lagi