With low clouds blocking views and wet snow covering the streets, we decided to have a quiet Christmas and rest up.  We even slept in til 10:30am!  Hooray for black out curtains!

Brewery in Chalten

Interspersed with attempts to get a strong enough internet signal to Skype with our families, we drank really cheap red wine (250 pesos or $2.50 CAD for a litre), watched Die Hard, and dropped off laundry which was getting a bit desperate.  We also splurged and enjoyed our only second sit down meal in a restaurant in two weeks in Argentina, sharing Malbec, steak, lamb, chorizo and (oh my gosh) grilled veggies at a lovely little restaurant with our new Brazilian friend Leo.  

Happy!

The snow had turned to rain so we wandered to the bus station and booked an 18 hour bus north to Esquel, for the following night.  We managed to get the last two seats for the ride which only runs every three days.  Despite the weather, we desperately needed to get out of our busy hostel, so packed our bags and headed out for the mountains to get a better flavour of the trekking El Chalten is famous for.

The light drizzle that accompanied us on the first hour of our trek soon turned into full out rain and after another three hours left us soaked to the bone.  We trudged into the campsite and wordlessly pulled out the tent and set it up in a record two minutes.  Good thing we had practice by now.  We hauled our somewhat dry packs into the tent, ate a long overdue lunch of hardboiled egg blue cheese sandwiches (for some reason, blue cheese was inexplicably cheap in this expenisve tourist town), and huddled down into our sleeping bags.  Two hours later we woke up, freezing.  Convinced the rain had stopped, we grabbed our wet clothes and headed outside to move around and attempt to get warm.

Blue cheese and egg sandwich

Exiting the tent, we gasped in surprise.  Right behind our tent was a snow covered peak, glistening in the sun.  A hundred metres further, there were peaks all around us.  A hundred metres further, we encountered the lake and peaks the trail was famous for, and we had it all to ourselves, as the rain had scared everyone off, and it was too late for anyone to be there who wasn’t camping.  We spread our soaking clothes on the rocks, poured some pisco and coke, and settled in.  A few other campers showed up and we spent the next few hours discussing how this might be the most beautfiul place we had been with so few others, especially when the last clouds finally lifted, revealing the highest peaks in the background.  It was beautiful enough the Australian couple at the camp even got engaged that night!

We had dinner with Ron and Ash, enjoyed some more pisco, and headed to our tent when the cold got to us at about 11:30pm.  We wanted to get some star shots with the tripod, so Marieke bravely got up at midnight to attempt it.  She got some great shots, even if there weren’t a ton of stars out due to the everlasting light.  Overall a great day and night!

Our new friends