Thursday, January 05, 2006

January 3, 2006 - Back to El Chalten
It was a good thing we decided to hike the last hr. to Mt. Fitz Roy yesterday, because the weather looked pretty crummy today. There was a thick cloud over Fitz Roy's head. Quite grey and overcast. Looked like it would rain, so we took down our tent pretty quick and ate our oatmeal. Our bus for El Calafate was leaving tonight at 6pm from El Chalten, so we decided to get an early start to our hike out....well, "liz's" idea of an early start...we left camp by 10:30 or so. It was a 3hr hike back to town and very easy terrain. Mostly flat and downhill. Fine by us.


There were a lot of day hikers coming to view Fitz Roy that day. Hopefully the weather would clear up for them. But, by the time we reached town, the rain started coming down and it got cooler. The rain didn't last long.


We met up with the same Indian-American from yesterday and went for lunch at one of the more popular little restaurants. Homemade pasta. Very tasty. Ziad's been enjoying the popular Argentinian beer "Quilmes". Light taste. I think he liked the coffee here as well. Strange, you would think that you'd get excellent coffee in Argentina and Chile, but everyone (foreigners) hasn't been too impressed with the taste. Mostly instant stuff. Evidently, the good coffee is exported to other countries, while the not-so-good stuff is kept in-country.

The bus picked us up at the main hostel and it took us 4 hrs. to get back to El Calafate. By the time we got there (10:30pm)very lively with tourists and Argentinians. January/February is Argentina's holiday. Since Argentina's economy has weakened over the last few years, many Argentinians can't afford to leave for other countries during their vacation time. Instead, many of them head down to Patagonia. We liked the fact that the tourist industry was not only catered to the foreigners, but also affordable to the Argentinians. This is different in other countries, like Peru where the locals can't afford to eat in the same restaurants as the foreigners.

There was still a lot of life on the streets when we went for dinner around 11:30pm.

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