El Chalten: Disaster is usually self inflicted.

February 11, 2018

It was pretty cold when we woke up this morning - some guys who joined the ferry and had slept up on the hill at the border said it got down to three degrees below zero. Despite the cold I managed to give the bikes a bit of a clean and changed my front brake pads which had worn down to the metal. Jay even tried his hand at fishing and much to his own surprise caught a nice rainbow trout.

Jay shows off his trout. Ninon later told us that they had it for supper that evening and that it tasted great.

We got on the ferry, which was full of a tour group who were heading for a hike to a glacier, and set off in the direction of Fitzroy. I had lovely views of Fitzroy in the background, glaciers on the right and the boat's bow wave in the foreground so I took out my mobile phone and got some nice footage. Then disaster struck - I dropped my phone into the lake. With it went all of the photos and footage from yesterday's struggle along with my navigation aids.

From that point, anything else in the day had to be an improvement. We dropped the other passengers off for their hike to the glacier leaving the whole boat to us cyclists and a couple of French hikers who had also stayed at El Mosco. After docking on the other side of Lago Desierto we set off on what was initially a nice piece of ripio. It soon got rough but was never atrocious. What was best was that the motorists were so much more careful and courteous than what we had become accustomed to to Chile.

We rolled into El Chalten soon after four in the afternoon and it is a bit of a shock. It's a very hip tourist town full of upmarkjet restaurants and micro breweries. There are lots of hostels but they are all very expensive. We are staying a bit of a dive called the Hippy Vibe Hostel. I guess the name says it all but it is only 200 pesos per person per night for a bunk bed in a dormitory. The wifi is almost non existent so getting my journal up to date might not happen. We had also hoped to do some research here and won't happen either so I guess we will head out for El Calafate tomorrow and see how far we go.

The sign says a lot about our hostal and the wifi was as slow as someone who has spent the day on Transkei Gold

We cycled back into the main street to get a beer and burger for dinner. Expensive but soooo good after really dull Chilean food. I had a pale ale and red ale - so much better than the approximation of beer that is labelled Escudo - while Leigh sucked on a couple of G&T's. We stopped off at a mercado on the way back to the hostal, picking up some food for the next few days on the road to El Calafate. Argentina might be expensive but it tastes better.

Today's ride: 41 km (25 miles)
Total: 1,258 km (781 miles)

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