El Chalten

For my 31st birthday, I decided to treat myself to a vacation, one which I had thought about for years as some nebulous life-list sort of thing, but for which I now live close enough to turn into a reality.  I am currently enjoying the hell out of the first full day of my Patagonia vacation and yes, it is ALL THAT and a bag of chips!

First things first:  I have another "only in Argentina" story for you.

Petra and I arrived in El Calafate last night.  We had just found out some incredibly good news about her next job assignment (she got her number one choice and was accepted into one of the war colleges for their masters program on Campaigning - as in, how to wage war and kick people´s behinds!) so we decided we were going to go out for dinner and celebrate.

We landed in one of the restaurants along Libertador, the main street in town.  Whilst munching through dinner and sipping our Malbec, the conversation turned to our taste in men and we were commenting on how different our choices of mates/lovers are from the physical speciman that we generally find attractive.  (Please feel free to imagine just how loudly and vulgarly we might have been discussing this - after all, we love to live up to the Obnoxious American stereotype.)

The talk moves to other, more refined topics - I swear! - and, in mid-conversation, this lovely blond woman, who had been sitting at the table to the side of us walks up, and...

Lovely blond: "Excuse me, I don´t mean to put my nose in your conversation (note that she is not a native English speaker, which I find AWESOME), but I couldn´t hellp but eavesdrop and I just had to tell you something."
Petra and I: (exchanging mildly terrified looks with clearly false smiles pasted on our faces, wondering exactly which completely inappropriate conversation she´s about to inject her opinion on...)
Lovely blond: "When looking for a man, you need to go with tall, blue-eyed and Dutch.  Can´t be beat."
Petra and I: (Looking over at her tall, blue-eyed and apparently Dutch male companion) "Dude, I think she likes you!" (insane, slightly relieved laughter inserted here - oh, don´t you wish you were a fly on the wall so you could know what else we were talking about!  Sorry folks, hate to disappoint, but that´s between me, Petra and the two Dutch people...)

Ah, Argentina...how I love thee, let me count the ways...

So today was our first full day in El Calafate, er, mejor, in Patagonia.  We actually caught a bus and drove out to El Chalten, about 3 hours away so we could hike and see the glory that is Fitz Roy (3,400 meters), one of the tallest, if not the tallest, peaks in the Patagonia region.  I can´t even begin to tell you how amazing it was.  I just absolutely LOVE being here.  I have spent the last year or so completely stressing myself out, moving four times between four different countries, pushing myself to excel at my job, forcing myself to be more social to help me cope with ending my 5 1/2 year relationship with Anthony, and just generally draining my energy reserves...that it feels really fantastic to get away from it all, to be out in the wild, windy, isolated awesomeness that is Patagonia. 

While I wouldn´t take away a single experience of the past year, I am finally able to breathe.  In an out, in and out...the sound of the wind rushing past my ears as I stand on a hiking path, or the moments of silence that follow when the wind abruptly stops - such a balm for my soul.  I love, love LOVE IT.

Petra and I have now seen a small part of El Chalten, the tiny little pueblo of approximately 700 inhabitants - the only town allowed to crop up in the middle of the Glacier Reserve, to cater to the tourism industry.  El Chalten is only 25 years old and still far from being connected to today´s world - their one ATM isn´t quite a year old, no cell phone gets a signal there, and many of the buildings are still constructed out of tin or whatever other scraps they could somehow get delivered to this isolated corner of Argentina.  The town is clearly a hiker´s paradise, with most of the people you see clearly not having seen a shower in too long a time (or a haircut either) and all of them decked out in North Face gear and hiking packs.  It is a very harsh, rough terrain, good for nothing other than tourism.  So hotels, restaurants, and panaderias are cropping up all up and down the sometimes paved, and sometimes rocky, roads of this hiking outcrop.

When we arrived, we had a half hour before we were to join our guide, so Petra and I decided to walk around a bit.  It started raining a bit, then a little bit harder so, to save our cameras, we ducked into the next shop that looked interesting: La Waffleria.  Although we didn´t have time for their waffles, we did have time for mint and cinnamon hot cocoa.  I have never tasted a hot chocolate so viscous in my life, at such a perfect "hot but not too hot" temperature.  The thickness, the flavor, the warmth...just spread through me.  LOVE.

When we left, we spotted our purple van just outside - our driver had been driving around town, desperately searching for us, thinking we had got lost (as if we could!  All of El Chalten can fit in two city blocks).  He even admitted to thinking we might have been eaten by a puma.  A puma!!!

Side note: I don´t know what our driver´s real name was, but our tour guide said it was, "Harry...as in Harry Potter!  Doesn´t he look like Harry Potter???"  So, for the rest of the day, he was our Harry Potter.  End side note.

So we met up with our hike guide and the two Argentines of clearly German descent who would be joining us for our hike.  The shortest possible way to tell this story is as follows:  We climbed up and up and up.  It was raining very little, with a bright sun.  We took pictures and climbed up some more.  Somewhere along the way it started getting windier, the sky grew gray, it rained harder.  We didn´t get a clear view of Fitz Roy because of the cloud cover, but we saw beautiful trees, hardy flowers, lots of crazy plants, a glacier, and a lake.  At the lake, we stopped to eat lunch.  And that is when it STARTED HAILING.  It was freakin´unbelievable.  I could barely feel my hands to unpack my lunch, and I´m getting pelted with hail, and I´m drinking this all in, thinking, "I couldn´t be happier to be here."

We looped back and hit the trail we started on and descended.  I was the last in our group for nearly the whole hike, since I was stopping to admire some part of the nature we were passing, taking pictures, or just pausing on the trail to stand there, with my eyes closed, breathing in the clean, brisk air.  There was even a moment on the descent, when I halted on the trail because I could hear the wind in the trees behind me.  I looked back and the trees in the distance were tossing about violently, in the throes of a particularly strong wind.  I knew it was coming our way.  And it hit with startling ferocity, forcing me to take a few steps forward to steady myself on the trail and a huge laugh erupted out me, entirely unbidden, that felt like it came from my toes.  It was such a strange, delightful moment for me.

After the hike, our whole group - Petra, myself, our tour guide, Harry Potter, our hike guide, and the two Germans - went into town for ice cream.  We sat on colored cubes, and ate enough calafate ice cream to turn our tongues purple.  (Calafate is the name of a berry here, which looks remarkably like a blueberry and tastes like a cross between a blueberry and a boysenberry.)  Then we loaded up the purple van again and turned our eyes South, back to El Calafate.

I can´t even begin to describe how happy I am to be here in this place, right now, in this particular space of time.  I wish you were here.