Not the worst view

Marieke had been fighting a cold for the last week, so I decided to let her sleep til 8:30am.  By the time we had cooked breakfast and dried out our remaining wet gear from the rain the day before, we had a bit of a late start at 10:30am.  Our bus left at 8:00pm from the edge of town, before which we had to stop at the hostel, repack, and walk twenty minutes to the station.  Oh, and hike a trail of unknown distance to where the two main trails met, then climb the steep mountain of Fitz Roy, then back down the 3 hour trail to the bus.  No problem.

1km to go!

We also might have lingered over lunch, because we happened to be eating in a postcard. Seriously.

Staring at a postcard

By the time we got to the for fork of the trails, it was 2:00pm.  We needed to be back in town at 7pm, giving us 5 hours for a theoretically 6 hour hike.  3 of which would be with our bags in tow, which weighed between 15 and 20 kg.   It was a risk, but we were inspired by two tourists cheering us on, and the fact that the view of Fitz Roy is “the” thing to do in Chalten.  

We headed out, with a timer on my phone counting.  Unfortunately, the trail was super busy, about ten times busier than the trail earlier that day, and the one yesterday.  The first kilometre we managed to pass a bunch of people. as it was pretty easy and we were on a mission.  The second kilometre was pretty much straight up a rock face, with a river running down it.  And a hundred other people, including groups of ten people or more we really enjoyed letting pass. The last kilometre was supposed to take an hour, but I wanted to to do it in 50 minutes as we were so tight on time.  We made it in 55 minutes, due to the large amounts of waiting for people to pass, the 3 hours of hiking earlier, and the half empy bottle of pisco in our bags.

Finally arriving to the top, the clouds had moved in, and realistically we couldn’t see everything. It was still gorgeous though.  It was also really busy, detracting from the view a bit, but we got some great photos, and hey, we made it.  Now we just had to make the bus.  

Exhausted but happy

We got back to the fork in the trail at 4:30pm to grab our big bags, giving us 2.5 hours for the 2 hour 45 minute trail.  We managed to do each kilometre in 15 minutes, giving us some relief on the last couple of kilometres, and the chance to take some photos of the gorgeous views of the valley below.  Reaching town, it was only 6:30pm.  We picked up the rest of our luggage at the hostel, and headed to the bus station, arriving at 7:30pm, time to grab a couple of cokes, souvenirs and a change of clothes.  We spent the next hour waiting for the bus to show up, our first late bus of the trip, ironically.  We stumbled on, exhausted but satisfied, and greatly looking forward to 18 hours of comfortable seats and nowhere to walk to.

Our bus!