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Trek to Mount Fitz Roy

The next two days are “free time” in El Chaltén and we can do whatever we would like to do such as sleeping all day or go out and do any kind of activity. For some of my fellow travelers it’s also a question of money since more or less everybody has quit their job just for the reason to travel for several months. So you need to be careful to stay in your individual travel budget.

The wonderful thing about El Chaltèn is that you can go on self-guided hikes which don’t cost you anything. You just go to the supermarket the day before to buy some lunch, get a local map from the tourist information and start walking. If you are on a really tight budget you also have the opportunity to not stay in a hostel but pitch-up your tent on one of the free campsites in the middle of the national park.

We found out one of the most scenic hikes you can do in the area is the one to the “Laguna de Los Tres Lagos” which are the lakes formed by the melting ice of the glacier at Mount Fitz Roy. The hike going there and coming back takes a total of eight hours. I joint my fellow travelers from the UK Mollie, Kim and Ian to do this hike and we started walking around 8:30am.

The first three hours of the hike were pretty easy and not really steep. We walked through colorful trees and crossed a few small rivers always with the spectacular peaks of Mount Fitz Roy right in front of us. Later on it got steeper and we spent the last hour hiking up a mountain until we ended-up at the “Laguna de Los Tres Lagos” viewpoint. Here we found out there are actually only two lakes and not as the name of the spot is saying three lakes. Unfortunately the sun, who was following us all morning, was gone by now and didn’t want to come out again.

Right at the top we had our lunch with a nice view at one of the lakes. Mollie and Kim had even carried a glass of Marmite to the top. Mollie has actually imported this British culinary delight from home. This serious are the British are about their Marmite :-) Even worse are some of the Australians I met during my travels who seem to carry a glass of Vegemite with them at all times. So far I haven’t found out how the two products differentiate in taste but one day I will sample both of them at the same time to find out. In Germany we actually have no comparable product which is as popular as Marmite or Vegemite.

After enjoying the close view of Mount Fitz Roy for an hour or two we hiked back towards El Chaltén. About half way down the mountain the sun appeared again. Ian and I were tempted to walk back to the top but didn’t do so in the end. During the way down my hiking boots started to cause trouble. This resulted in me having two big blisters on my heels at the end of the day. I can’t explain what’s wrong with my hiking boots since I own them already for five years and did quite some big hikes in them. The first time they started to cause trouble was by the end of last year when hiking in the Semien Mountains of Ethiopia resulting in me losing two of my toe nails. Probably either my feet did grow or the boots did shrink which both sounds very much unlikely. So it will remain a mystery.

Back in El Chaltén the four of us went for dinner into a small restaurant called “La Wafleria”. Most of the dishes served consisted of waffles and all sorts of hearty and sweet toppings. I started dinner with a pumpkin soup, one of my favorite dishes, and had a sweet waffle with Dulce de Leche for desert. Dulce de Leche is a very popular sweet in Argentina and the locals eat it with breakfast but also use it to prepare all kinds of cakes. As the name say it’s prepared from sweetened milk which gives it a caramel taste.

After dinner I went to one of the activity shop to pay for tomorrow’s ice climbing activity. On the way I ran into my fellow traveler Juri. While talking to her she spontaneously decided to join me tomorrow and was lucky to get one of the last free spots in the ice climbing group.

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