Friday, January 4th

El Chalten, Argentina

Stayed at: Rancho Grande Hostel

Dear Obiwan,

Welp, back to sleeping horribly, lamb chop. I had a top bunk and I am just, a failure at life with top bunks. I have to pee about…11 trillion times?…give or take at night…and I am a natural clumsy DISASTER…so…yeah top bunks are just…a challenge for me. :D. And it didn’t help when my lower bunk mate arrived at 2:00am and fell asleep and then began the 2nd loudest snoring of this trip. 👍

Oh…um…confession Obiwan…I also opened the window in the middle of the night. It was a sauna in our room and we had this big beautiful window in our room…so I opened it…only to find out in the morning, in the day light…that there was sign on the window, in ENGLISH- “PLEASE DO NOT OPEN THE WINDOW” and then discovered that the window (just ours, all other rooms the windows worked) was BROKEN. It had a bunch of stuff on it that showed it was not a functional window…but, hey it was DARK!

After a mediocre and pretty cheap breakfast at our hostel, we checked with our awesome hostel workers again and were told that the weather today was supposed to be…BEAUTIFUL!!! Yay! We’re so lucky Obi!

Also, quick note…similar to Torres del Paine and the Towers (Los Torres) I also did not know about Mt. Fitzroy until this trip. I researched the towns we were going to on google briefly, but didn’t want any spoilers so I didn’t look at pictures of Mt. Fitzroy. So, I was in for another surprise!

In the last 10 days of Patagonia, everyone told us that this hike was steep in the beginning, then is flat, then SUPER steep at the end.

And, well, everyone was accurate! Unlike all the liars and under-exaggerators about the W-Trek, this trek was exactly what people said! It was teeny bit steep at first, but then it levels out and is FLAT. ACTUALLY FLAT OBIWAN. Not fake ‘in-shape’ hikers flat that actually is steep and hill-y, but no…it was ACTUALLY FLAT! It was lovely.

Here are some pictures of our walk to the path, including a little hut serving food called Primos, like in Philly!:

We walked over some rivers and you go through some forests, it was beautiful!

We saw a wood peker!!! You would have hunted him and battled him Obi Jedi!

And Obiwan, look at the views just from the hike there, truly breathtaking!

But, Obiwan, there was a new elemental challenge in this hike…HORSE FLIES. SO MANY HORSE FLIES OBI. Unlike other flies or bugs that are just annoying…horse flies BITE and their bite HURTS. And it’s weird, they some how land on you without you knowing a lot of the time…so your just hiking along, singing a ‘Sound Of Music’ song in your head…then you look down and THERE’S A HUGE BUG ON YOU, GEARING UP TO CHOMP. Then you SWAT it but usually the moment you notice it is the MOMENT IT BITES YOU.

I don’t understand where they came from?! It felt like a horror film at times! And I felt like I was losing my mind…they were so loud so you just hear them flying by your ear hundreds of times, ‘…bzzzz…bzz…bzzz…BZZZ…BZZZZZ!’ And then I’m just swatting the air around my head like a windmill and MISSING THE BUGS or every now and then you swat them in the air! Like a ninja!

Oh look, we saw a condor!!!:

Finally, after many horse fly bites later and a few screams of anger by me at the universe for creating horse flies (I NEED TO RESEARCH THEIR EXISTENCE IN THE FOOD CHAIN, WHY ARE THEY HERE?!), we were at the final part. It took us about 3 hours to get there. As always, me and Kelsey part at hills, we said our goodbyes. And then…it began.

It was only an hour long, but it was all in the sun, unlike the rest of the hike that was covered mostly. I thought this was easier than the Towers hike in Torres del Paine! But it was definitely longer? I think it was easier to me since, compared to the W-Trek, I wasn’t hiking the last 4 days with my bag.

But after an hour of a very steep incline…you make it to a sort of top? But it slightly levels out and you have to walk another 7 minutes.

And then you actually reach the top, and it was MAGNIFICENT! There was a lake at the bottom too! Just like at Los Torres! The sun was shining and it was glorious. It was crazy windy at the top as well.

It felt so good to reach the top Obiwan. I’m starting to understand why people do these things. What an incredible reward it is to push through physical and some mental pain and then reach beauty like this!

The first thing that happened when I was taking and savoring the moment was couple went, ‘could you take our picture?!’ It was the first time in my life I wanted to say, “NO.” But, I felt rude, so I said yes, in between my wheezing. They THEN noticed that I just got there and said, “oh no, did you just get here?! Sorry!” But. It was fine. I took their picture then took a few minutes to gather my breath.

After this I found Kelsey! Together we searched for a rock to have lunch together, she waited to eat for me! Hilariously, she accidentally bought a VEGGIE sandwich. The sandwich was in the wrong section at the store!

We only stayed at the top for about 45 minutes due to it being cold and windy. But we got some incredible photos!

We then hiked down…and we both agreed that we want to take our TIME and not rush down. I was surprised by how hard it was to go down. It took us 1.5 hours to get down from the steep part, it took LONGER to go down?!

It was additionally hard due to the huge amount of loose gravel. It was very easy to slip!

Once at the bottom Kelsey wanted to go an additional 30 minutes to see another viewpoint. Unlike the Condors hike, this hike had no signs, and oddly enough there was no sign when you reached the viewpoint, so we accidentally went further than the viewpoint.

We eventually turned around as we were walking through this seemingly endless forest. The forest also had soooo many caterpillars and Kelsey then spotted thousands caterpillars in nests that were on the plants lining our path! Very cute, but also, AH, hopefully I won’t brush into one of the plants and get a million tiny caterpillars on me! It only happened once Obi…when I felt and FOUND a tiny caterpillar crawling up my NECK. BLECH. Ew!

After this pretty, but not as gorgeous as the top of the mountain, viewpoint, we headed back. It took us 3 hours to get back. I felt pretty strong throughout this 8.5 hour hike, but the end just was tough. I was hurting real badly on my feet and legs. We both were!

Our day ended with a nice dinner at a beautiful restaurant in town called ‘El Maro’ or The Wall. We had wine and steak :D. Not the best steak of my life, but it was my first Argentinian steak and it was good.

Off to bed my dear Jedi,

Love you,

Tú Madre,

Carly