Zo On The Go

After three weeks in Chile, it was time to head into Argentina. First port of call is a little place called El Calafate, famous for it´s very active glacier. The glacier is 5kms wide, 60 meters about water and moves 2 meters every day causing large peices of ice to come crashing down into the lake. Pretty awesome sight.
We were only here for a couple nights, there´s not much else to do in this little town besides the glacier. We had our first Argentinian steak - it was huge and very, very good.
Zac and I parted ways here. He left to see more mountains, lakes and glacier before heading south for his Antarctic trip. I headed north for the big smoke, Buenos Aires.

The name of this national park in southern Chile is aptly named! After a long journey to get down there, Zac and I were off on a five day trek. We hired all our camping gear from the hostel we were staying at and were all prepared with our water proof gear and I had my new ugly but very comfy hiking shoes (I resent having to fork out so much money for shoes that aren´t pretty!) We walked for five days through some pretty rough terrain in some of the most stunning scenery I have ever seen - mountains, rivers, lakes, glaciers - really beautiful. We had about 20 season changes every day. It would be hot one minute, raining the next, hailing and then hot again! Crazy.
There´s a reason I haven´t been camping in 8 years - that´s because it sucks! Well at least it does when it´s freezing cold and raining. And you´ve been walking for hours on end to get to the campground with all your camping gear. (Although, I have to admit, Zac did carry pretty much everything - nice brother!)
We managed to walk all the distances well under the time they suggest you need, so we were pretty happy with ourselves. Zac has some sort of super fitness thing going on, he was always way ahead of me!
The hardest part of the walk was our last night at the "three towers". You literally have to climb over big boulders, sometimes scrambling on your hand and knees. But it was one of the most spectacular sights I have ever seen. I was speechless, it was so beautiful. Zac managed to get up early the next morning to see it at sunrise...I stayed in bed!
It was pretty interesting sharing a tent with my brother for four nights. Yes, apparently 30 year old men still find it funny to fart in confined spaces. I think it was all the dried fruit we had brought along...

The spectacular setting for our first night camping. We managed to pack a "box" of wine, so we would settle in each night with a mug or two and some lovely pistachio nuts!!


Zac and his "wide load"!!
A Chilean cowboy - they all wear berets and scarfs!


the three towers

The sight I missed, the three towers at sunrise

We were pretty damn happy to finish, I´m suprised we even had the energy to do this photo!

What a cool little town. We only had three nights here unfortunately, as we both fell in love with this little place and could have easily spent a couple of weeks here just hanging out with all our new amigos! We stayed in a really cool hostel called Casa Margouya run by a french guy, Nicolas. So there was lots of french guys staying there, a couple of Chileans and us. There was a really cool bar called the Garage that plays live music. We had two very large nights there. We also managed to get some white water rafting in - yep, have spent half the holiday in a helmet so far! I´ll let the photos tell the rest of the story...

This band is called "Tommorrow, I will stop" as in, tomorrow, I will give up...smoking, drinking etc. They were really good, a bit like the cat empire, so naturally, I loved them!



Our white water trip. It was quite mellow, but beautiful surroundings. The rafts flipped before we even made it to the water! On the way to the river, the trailer flipped over, it was almost a disaster as there was a car right behind.

Alfonzo (an argentinian we met at the hostel who used to live in Sydney) me and Zac at the Garage.

Attempting to salsa with Alfonzo, he was very good, me not so good!