March 1, 2006 El Chalten, Argentina
I awoke around 6:30 this AM to the breakfast noise downstairs and the sweltering smoke. It was really hard to breathe. Lovely. My favorite way to wake up is not because you're no longer tired, but because you literally can't breathe in the room you've paid for. I'm most disappointed that we have one more night in this place.A quick breakfast and last minute preparations had us ready for hiking by 9 AM. Santiago was our guide, and we hit the trail for Fitzroy straight from the hostel. Our group leader, Roberto, informed us this would be a nice warmup hike for the rest of the 4 following hikes we have scheduled. So I thought it wouldn't be too bad. Little did I know, Fitzroy leads us through a winding trail at a decent incline for about 6 miles. The last 1.5 miles, it's at a much more dramatic incline and was quite tough. I was sucking air, bigtime! The views were spectacular.Fitzroy itself is a mountain structure in the Andes that is about 12,000 feet high. Although we climbed to about 5000 feet of elevation, the steepness of the peaks were unlike I've seen in the mountain ranges in North America. The peaks are like granite swords sticking straight into the sky. Imagine a pitchfork upside-down, but made out of solid granite and with attaching glaciers and dramatic vistas. I snapped some great photos today, so I look forward to posting them. I should mention now-- age level has no bearing on trips like this. ANYONE can do it with training. Among our group, the Aussie couple (Richa and Eddie) and ourselves our the only ones in our 30's. The other 2 couples (Brits and Swiss) are well into their 50's and handled themselves quite well on the trail. The hike in total took us 10 hours and totaled 15 miles. The trip down was intense and banged the knees up pretty good. We were all ready to take a break after this one.Terri and I were to the point of starvation upon returning, so we walked straight to town and hit up a recommended restaurant, Esteppia. I'm sure the people inside loved watching us enter with our backbacks on and all grimed out. The decor was really nice, but the music was straight out of some cheesy 70's movie. It was a CD of some Argentinian dude singing U.S. love ballads in poor English. The worst part--the songs were picked from the 70's and 80's and rarely would you even hear the original version fo these tunes. It was pretty funny.Anyway, Terri learned herself a nice little lesson tonight: If you don't understand a word in the food you're ordering, it might be best to NOT ORDER IT. Lasagna Aubergine, we now know, is actually Eggplant Lasagna. I'll vouch for her--it was disgusting. It looked like a brick on a platter, as it was the single largest piece of lasagna I've seen in my life. The catch---there was no pasta or noodles. Just huge thick pieces of eggplant piled on top of each other with a couple of sliced tomatoes and cheese in between. I ordered a pizza, which contained no sauce, really funky cheese, and undercooked crust. It's a rare day in this world when I encounter a pizza I can't eat. But this one fit the bill. So out of our 80 peso dinner ($25), we did enjoy a couple of sodas, and the empanada appetizers were great. Lesson learned. You win some, you lose some. Due to the remoteness of this area, the prices are definitely creeping up. It's still cheap by American standards in most places, but no longer the 3 for 1 deal we got in Buenos Aires.Walking home from the restauarant, the day has really started to take a toll. The sun has been far more draining than I realized. I'm sunburned, tired, and a little dehydrated. Time to drink up and get some sleep. We have another long hike tomorrow.
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