El Chalten

The next town, El Chalten, was more or less an alternative to an expensive Chilean National Park, because in el Chalten we could hike for free, which is what we did when weather was nice.

We even camped one night. We may or may not have set up the tent in a non-camping zone, followed by us seeing no reason to pack up the tent and sleeping bags when we only needed to walk 100 meters or so, resulting in us carrying an already set up tent. Maybe that happened.

We did hike to Cerro Fitz Roy, good ol' Fritz, which was quite the hike, might I see. It's a nice jaggedy mountain with a glacier lake at the top of the trail. All water being potable, I drank some of that deliciously pure glacier water.

The hostel experience might have been the best part of our stay, because during a miserable rainy day or two we sat in the kitchen and chatted it up with people from Argentina, Switzerland, the US, Israel and Puerto Rico (which is also the US, albeit without a star as we mercilessly teased the dude).