7TH - 12TH JANUARY

El Chalten
7th - 9th January

Considering we’d arrived so late and were sharing a dorm with some people who had to be up at 5.45am to catch a bus, we slept really well and were up bright and early in the morning. It was a good job too, as it was an absolutely glorious day, and our first job was to move to our B & B. The dorm was included in the tour down Ruta 40, and was fine for one night, but we were looking forward to having our own room again. Our new place was really nice, but we were very keen to get out into the mountains as soon as we could, so we just dumped our stuff, headed for the supermarket, and we were on our way up the trail to Laguna Torre, the lake at the base of Cerro Torre, a 10,000ft high spire of granite which towers above El Chalten. Along with the impressively shaped Cerro Fitzroy, at

11,300 ft, and a whole host of others, it makes up what is probably the most impressive looking mountain range I have ever seen.

The walk was a bit hard going at first, being uphill for the first hour and a half until we arrived at the Mirador. Those of you who have been concentrating on previous diaries will know that a Mirador is a viewpoint, and this is one of the finest viewpoints we have seen on our travels so far!! Check out the photos to see what I mean!! We ate our lunch surrounded by this wonderful panorama, and then continued towards the lake at the bottom of the glacier. The trail headed back downhill fairly sharply and then gradually climbed for a good while until we arrived at a wall of glacial moraine which we had to scramble up, but were rewarded with yet another fantastic view!! The lake was a wonderful pure slate grey colour with one or two icebergs floating around in it, and