Winging it in El Chalten

We stayed a day longer in El Calafate than we wanted to because all the hostels in our next place were booked up (peak season in Patagonia!). Carmen is very planning averse so I've had to panic her into hostel bookings. Because there wasn't much left to do in El Calafate we decided to head to our next stop, El Chalten, today- without anywhere booked for the night, with the hope we could camp.

Round 2 of hitchhiking. We had a better sign this time but it took much much longer...maybe 4 hours. We had to wake up at 6:45am to be outside early. Everyone ignored us apart from the stray dogs (there are many, they roam everywhere, including the hostel kitchen on occasion). We soon had a gang of 5 of them all sat with us and they were super friendly but I did find myself glad that I'd had the rabies jab! One of them tried to eat my camera strap. One of them played a game called bite the car. Whenever a car drove past she would try and bite its exhaust but was clever enough not to get run over. Soon her doggy friend was trying to copy but this one was not clever and kept running in front of the cars, causing chaos and a bit of panic from Carmen the vet.

We found out we were stood in the wrong place and moved about a kilometer up the road- the two crazy car-biting dogs came with us. They were having a field day as there were lots more cars in the new spot. The clever one was leaping from car to car over the central reservation. The stupid one was causing traffic jams.

We got picked up by three guys on their way to El Chalten for lunch. This is insane as El Chalten is a 3-4hr drive away. But we were not going to argue and said goodbye to our temporary pets.

The drive was quite fun and I made a miniscule effort to speak Spanish and a much larger effort to understand what the hell was going on. We were fed pastries and more mate. We drove for four hours and only came across one building in that whole time. Argentina is massive.

El Chalten is a small town catering for people who come to the area to trek in the mountains surrounding it, the most notable being Mount Fitzroy. It has lots of outdoors shops, restaurants and a vibe like a cross between a hippie and an outdoorsy trekking type. Lots of the cute small wooden buildings are really new and brightly painted.

We managed to find some camping gear to rent and pitched our teensy two man tent. Empanadas for lunch, empanadas and chips for dinner... and many visits to many supermarkets to try and find some kind of food for our breakfast and lunch the next day. The supermarket food here is weird and bad because the town is in the middle of nowhere; either mouldy lettuce or tinned peas. Also apparently I've been pronouncing empanada wrong like a classic tourist.

It gets dark at 10pm here!

I had a shocking nights sleep as our tent is for two people and forgets about the rucksacks these people own. I was squished with my body contoured in between two bags, trying not to elbow Carmen in the face or choke on her hair, using my hiking boots as a pillow. Lovely.

Pic 1- crazy dogBaca lagi