Day 4 - 375 KMs, El Calafate, Argentina (11:00) to El Chalten, Argentina (20:15)

Glacier Paradise to Mountain Paradise:

Today started out in the rain at that camping site.   It was an ugly, wet place filled with music festival concert goers. There was a big music festival in town called, "Fiesta Nacional del Lago 2015, El Calafate".  It was crowded everywhere and noisy..

Noisy, rainy campsite

I woke up @ 9:45am very tired. I didn’t even bother to make breakfast.  I just wanted to get out of there as it was too busy, too dirty and nasty.   I drove into the town, filled up my petrol tank.  Again, filling up my tank, which took an exhausting 35 minutes of patience and waiting I left for the Glacier National Parque.   Nice drive,

The drive from El Calafate to Glacier National Parque

not too long (approx. 100km to the glacier).   Took a bus into the actual areas where you can walk to see the glacier.

Foreigners have to pay a whopping 210 pesos for an entry where locals (ARG/CHILE) get in for either free or 80 pesos.   The drive was but there was a slow as fucking driver going 20km/h in the 45 km/h zone.  I got frustrated (mild bit of road rage?) perhaps of the price I paid to get into here, and had to pass them; risky move? Naa!  I stopped 10km shy of the main parking area to eat some canned strawberry with juice.

Eating canned strawberries with this view...

Yumm as it’s hard to find  any fresh fruit here in Southern Patagonia.  

Once I got to the glacier parking lot it was clear this was a busy as national park like Mt Rainier NP in Seattle on a July 4th holiday weekend.  I took the shuttle bus to the actual viewing area.  Once at the viewing areas, I walked down to the glacier.  Holy shite!
I have seen glaciers before, but this was massive and UP close. Check it out:

A slice of glacial ice 6 building stories tall falling into the lake

Pano shot from my smart phone. Very impressive sight even for someone
like me who used to live in Alaska.

For 3 hours I sat there in amazement and took photos of calving glaciers and scenics with my GoPro, smart phone and DSLR cameras.   Amazing!  I walked back up to the bus area occasionally turning around to try to see a calving glacier that I just heard cracking like a cannon, but to no avail; did not see any more.   After waiting 10 minutes for the next bus, I was soon back to the main parking lot and here I met

Jon and Yoanny, my 1st set of
hitchhikers in Patagonia

Jon/Yoanny trying to hitch a ride back to El Calafate.  They looked bewildered when I saw them. They asked if I was headed back to El Calafate and told me they were robbed by locals who drove them out to the park.    I gladly offered them a ride to the town.   They chucked their shit into the van, I made room for Yoanny in the back of the van for her to lay down as we drove back.

Jon was a friendly chap. Yoanny was not as chatty, perhaps because her English/Spanish was not as a good(?).  She was a nice girl though. Anyway, we had a nice ride back see the massive BLUE lake along the way to El Calafate.   I tried to record via GoPro the awesome drive, but I forgot to take off the f*ck*ng lense cap off my GoPro. Ouch so I only had audio of the drive.  I am an idiot what else can I saw!  Ouch!  Jon was telling me about the people who robbed them and what they looked like.  I felt really bad for them. They told me they did NOT have travel insurance.  Luckily they did not get his passport, wallet and phone.  They are from Spain as they stated.

Anyway, I stopped for pretrol, filled it up.  My Visa card works only ½ the time here in Patagonia.   I paid with Visa for petrol, when I went inside to buy some 10W40 oil my Visa card did not work. WTF?   Anyway after dealing with that charade inside, I went back outside and said my goodbye to Jon / Yoanny and they walked to the police station.

Saying goodbye to Jon and Yoanny -
wishing them well! 

I found my way to the outskirts of town and ended up picking up MORE hitchhikers, Jakob/Juliane from Germany.     After only 3 minutes of driving we were stopped by the local police at the town border to no man’s land.   They did not like that Jakob was in the back of the van with no seat / no seatbelt.    They ordered him outta the van and said “no”.   They asked for my passport , drivers licences, etc.  I tried to speak Espanol to them, even with 5 officers tring to understand me. No can do. Jakob spoke them in Espanol asnd they said to me.  They need to walk 300m and you can give them a ride from there.   I guess the cops did not care if I had an illegally seated passenger, but  they had to cover their asses so they offered that to us.  We accepted the deal and did that. Fucking hilarious indeed!    There were tonnes of backpackers hitching rides from there.  We had no more room as I was already illegally carrying +1 too many ;)

The drive was long to El Chalten, but the company was nice to have to talk to.  Jakob, sitting in the back, spoke the most, but none-the-less it make a long drive (in good weather) very nice indeed.   Approaching El Chalten was amazing.  The mountains were jagged and remote, like teeth on a pre-historic monster fish about you eat you alive.   The drive around Lake Viedma was long, but worth the effort.  Sunset over the Andes Mountains was amazing.

We arrived late @ like 9:45pm.
It was late to get dinner going on camp stoves. So I suggested we get pizza  at a local place.  We picked the place called “Patagonicous”. It was a overall good café which sold all sorts of stuff, with an awesome mountain/hippie atmosphere.   The owner spoke enough english too to help me with questions about why my Visa card only worked 50% of the time here in Patagonia, but I never got an answer that made any sense. Haha!    The pizza was amazing and not just because I was starving to death.

Really good pizza place in El Chalten, Argentina

We drove back out of town to the Park signage and camped there for the night. Jakob/Juliane set up their tent outside of my van and crashed quickly.



I was up for 20 mins or more updating my blog and transferring videos and photos to my external HDD from today’s excitement.

I went to bed @ 23:45 ready for the next day of adventure!!

zzzz

Daily Summary:

Amazing scenery, very interesting day picking up hitchhikers for the first time  and spending time in two amazing mountain towns. While I like being with other people like my current hitchhikers, I also want to be careful to spend enough time alone. After all this is a solo road trip.  I think now I feel pretty deeply immersed in the Patagonian life.  I feel part of it now.  This feels amazing.  Looking forward to tomorrow.