Where on Earth are we?

Back across the Chilean border, to Puerto Montt. We learnt, like so many transport hubs, that it was just that… a fairly unattractive, uninspiring port town, which was a little surprising and dissapointing due to it’s location within the Chilean lake district. We thought we’d get on the next bus to Pucon, bus alas, they were full… seems we were’t the only ones trying to make a swift exit out of this place. So here we stayed for 2 nights, and one of those days was May day where EVERYTHING shuts. Not even a market stall open. The only place with open doors was Mcdonalds - so Maccy brekkie it was. The day came to catch the 7 hour bus to Pucon pretty quickly… and this is what we found… now that’s better :)

…and this was the view from our bed. Awesome.

Here, we cooked, did a spot of doodling and enjoyed the views…

Our next stop wasn’t far away - just 45 minutes on the bus and we arrived at our lonely, cosy pyramid in the country. Our host kindly picked us up from the bus stop and, well… isn’t it just beautiful.

We did manage to do one productive thing during our time in Bariloche (although, I happen to think that drinking wine and eating chocolates is a pretty worthwhile past time). We took a trip to the Patagonian Museum - a small but informative place filled with stuffed animals from the region - wow.

The journey from El Chalten to our next Argentinian destiantion, Bariloche, was LONG, COLD and EXPENSIVE. At £180 for two tickets and 29 hours we were very much ready to kick back and stay put for a while. So we did.

This is pretty much what we did for 6 days. Ate, drank and enjoyed the clear skies and lake view. Ahhhhhh… travelling sucks.

We made it to the top!! After a horrible icy 1 hour steep climb (I hate steep climbs more than anything) we arrived at the snowy peak. It was snowing furiously and was super windy, but that didn’t stop the turqoise glacial lake ‘Los Tres’ looking INCREDIBLE against the crisp white. There weren’t many people up there but rather oddly and despite the blizzard, we bumped into a guy we had shared a cab with back at Lake Titikaka. Bizarre.

If you ever plan a visit to Patagonia, then it has to be during Autumn - just check out them colours! It was getting chillier the higher we climbed, so the thermos of soup we packed was gratefully recieved - being warm from the inside out seems to make sense in these parts. Oh. and Stu got a little close to one of those trees with arms - we spent a wee while getting him out, not before I took a picture of course.

The first 3 hours was just wonderful… reds, yellows and oranges, large wooded areas, all the time with a snow-capped mountain back drop. Less winds but the clouds meant the Fitz Roy peak was pretty much invisible. Hey ho - one cant really complain. It was wierd though, some of the trees had arms… human arms. We had to be careful not to get to close.

Today we decided to do a bigger hike - an 8 hour stunning walk up to the top of Mount Fitzroy - named after the Captain of Darwin’s Beagle ship. This was the start of our trek.

We arrived pretty early so took one of the short walks to a couple of different look out points. The views were stunning, although it was insanely windy. We met some cows on the way back, actually they were bulls, and I realised I was wearing a red jumper and immediatey paniced - It was crold, so I wasn’t prepared to shed the layer so just hitched it up under my armpits instead. Thankfully we made it back safe n sound.

Our next stop within the Los Glaciares National Park was the village of El Chalten, where almost every house looks like it came from a grand designs eco special. There are tons of free hikes you can do in the area, from 2 hours to 2 days if you fancy camping.

And if you havn’t seen enough already, since we had so much time on our hands, we also took some pretty epic panoramics. They give you a better sence of the scale. Oh, and there are those autumn colours again!

Once off the boat we were given 4 hours in the park to wander the trails, bridges and lookout points. It means you get a view from above and the other side too. 4 hours was a bit too long to be honest, since it was freezing! So we sat with our thermos and our homebaked empanadas, waiting and watching for bits to break off and fall in, which is actually a lot more fun than it sounds!