Tronodor, Learning and Relaxing

Pictures first as I can´t seem to move them
And they are out of order
And sideways and upside down
...I am a poor blogger...

Weird forzen dirt! (note: upside down..)

The housemates.

Huge waterfall one of the glaciers makes. When chunks of ice fall off - it makes lots of noise!

More sunrise

More Sunrise

The army´s Helicopter and the Hut

A dude, just chillin' on the Glacier

The Rufuge

HUGE Trees in the forest

April 3rd & 4th I went hiking up Mnt. Tronodor. I went alone, but everyone has to take the same bus from bariloche to the base of it (Pampa Linda), and hence everyone starts trekking at the same time, so I wasn´t really be alone. In the summer apparently it is crazy busy.

Some facts from my guide book and wiki:

Tronador is an extinct volcano on the border between Argentina and Chile. It was named Tronador (Thunderer) by locals in reference of the sound of falling seracs. With an altitude of 3,491 m (11,453 feet) Tronador stands out of nearby mountains in the Andean massif by more than 1000 m making the mountain a popular mountaineering trip. Placed inside two National Parks, Nahuel Huapi in Argentina and Vincente Perez Rosales in Chile (I stayed in Argentina). It hosts a total of eight glaciers which are currently retreating. Refugio Otto Meiling (where I spent the night) is named after a mountaineer who made dozens of ascents and spent years guiding people around it. The hut is located about 1200m vertically above Pampa Linda, at the mountain's base.

The start of the hike is at Pampa Linda, 50 miles south of Bariloche, a 2 hours bus ride. One of the roads we drove on is one way, in different directions at different times. I was asking on of the bus drivers (I was sitting right next to him - the bus was FULL) about how 2 cars drive so fast on such a narrow, twisty dirt road Everyone had to register at the park office before setting off. The hike usually is a path that crosses a ATV road up into the alpine, however, most of the tiny path was fenced off for ´regrowth', and I walked on the nicely switch-backing ATV road. It only took me 3.5 hours to get up to the hut, when it said it could take 4 to 7 hours. I was pretty startled at one point on my wanders, when I looked up and there was 40 Argentinian men from the army marching 2 by 2 down the path. Turns out the army goes and practices on the glaciers up there every year before they are sent out to Antarctica. I ran into 3 other troops on my way up. I arrived early and spent my afternoon drinking tea, checking out the glacier, watching condors, and napping on some rocks in the sun. Made some delicious pasta for dinner, met some German's, and some local Argentinians. The hut was super cozy. They have 4 people working at all times, cooking and cleaning. I think that is more than normal because the Argentinian army was up there camped out for 2 months. we all slept upstairs, there was about 25 of us at the hut. I hear that sometimes in the summer, there can be 50 people sleeping upstairs, which would mean that people would be sleeping on every possible bit of floor space. I got up at 7 am to watch the sun rise. It was gorgeous. I sat outside tucked into my sleeping bag for almost 1.5 hours of solo sky watching. It was super peaceful. The glaciers looked so colourful in the morning light. Ate some delicious oatmeal, then started my way down early. I was the first one to leave the hut. Some super funky ice formed over night, that lifted up the top layer of rock and dirt by about an inch. Walking on it made every step a crunchy one. I took a side trip to check out the waterfalls off one of the big glaciers I slept next to. I think it is called Thunder Mnt., because the falling ice chunks have SUCH a long way to go when they fall, and must echo viciously. I heard some thundering, but I didn´t see anything. Sometimes, I think it was only the glacier groaning, and shifting.

Anyways. Back in Bariloche I continued with some Spanish schooling for a week. Three were 2 other Canadian ladies in my class. Since tourist season is ending, the school was super quiet, only 7 students in total there, while when I was studying earlier, there was about 23. I really enjoyed school this week; i felt like i got over a hump and just started talking! We were all speaking in Spanish for the whole class. Guarantee my Spanish wasn´t fancy or nice to listen to, but we all communicated in Spanish. I really enjoyed going into shops that week and just talking to the store owners, because I could! This week was super chill. I was staying in a host family, that was also hosting a Canadian girl my age (from Victoria, who works for half the year and travels for the other half -wow!), a Californian girl (Massage therapist living in Argentina for half a year), an older man from Vermont (who owns his own apple orchard and makes apple cider and was a elementary middle, secondary teacher and a uni professor), and a very unique dude from South Africa - his stories seem like they came from a different world. All in All we had a good week together. We drank margaritas in the sun and lots of wine to accompany Mara's (our host mom)´s meals. Michele and Liam came down from Mendoza, which was awesome! We visited some ´cold trees´in a bamboo forest, went out for dinner, ate empanadas, hike Cerro companario again, and we hung out on the beach with "john, fred and sam (and antoher...liam do you remember its name?)" a gang of dogs that followed us everywhere. Good thing they were staying in Bariloche longer than I was because I Managed to leave my (read Tim´s) Ipod charging at the hostel. The bad part about that is that I don´t have a plug converter now, and one of my camera batteries is dead now.
So my week ended and I caught a bus to Chile, to Chiloe to meet Jenny :)

the end

El Chalten and the Fitz Roy Range

El Chalten self named it self as the ´trekking capital of argentina´; however, I think bairloche has more trekking. It could be named: trekking capital for people who don´t really like long treks, and like to sleep in thier own bed every night. All of the main lookouts and views we saw were and are easliy do-able in day hikes. We arrived into El Chalten quite late at night. We hadn´t heard back from any hostels about any vacancies, so we went to 2 near the bus station and were turned down by both - the last one called around and found one that had space. I don´t think either of us got any super good vibes from El Chalten. It is nice enough, small, and a ´frontier´town, but it is based almost entirely on touism. It is nestled right along this massive rock face. It´s neato! Our hostel was a HUGE and unfriendly and we were right next to the common area, so we didn´t really sleep well. There was a whole tour group there of old and young people, which were kind of funny to watch. There was an old man who hogged the computer but had no idea how to use it. He re-read the same facebook message 6 times, and attempted to delete some emails, but instead of pressing delete... he would just refresh the page. I had to sit next to him and count down his 20 minutes of computer use, after an hour of waiting for him to get up. he was a grump! He tried to help the next guy use the internet too "what do you use? I use Yaaahoooo... oh Hotmail... yeah I don´t know about that one..welll I guess you can do it yourself". There also was a old american hippi woman, who was drunk wandereing around, and when she was going hiking in the morning, she was wearing a tight stripped skirt that went down to her ankles, a sombreo-sun-hat and a poncho. It was an interesting place if anything. Michele and I spent a day wandering the town, getting food and supplies, checking the internet, getting maps, getting a bus tickets, renting gear, talking to the park office, and we laoded up on Media lunas (half moons = croissantes). Getting food was difficult: the main supermercardo didn´t have a lot of basics, like cereal or chocolate! And we meet with Ana, a friend from Bariloche, who we were going to go trekking with. She is Swiss, but her parents are Swedish, and she is only 19(?) and studies spanish is Bariloche for... 6 weeks (?I am not sure exactly). She´s super sweet, and has definitly picked up the extremely chill latin american attitude. I think El Chalten would be a sweet place to climb. I saw some bolted routes on our trek and lots of climbers around town. there are not too many Argentinian climbers becuase the equipment is so expensive. There are no Argentinain companies that make climbing gear, so all of it is imported, and hence is Taxed A LOT. The gear is way more expensive than it would be at home. Oh! And all the stray dogs appeared well fed in El Chalten - but we discovered why. There are a lot of bakerires there, and we were chatting (more michele was chatting) with a Bakery Employee outside his Panaderia. there was a dog begging, who he called ´chocoalte´. The baker, gave him a large baked good and told him to go away, but Chocolate was back in about 5 minutes. It was a funny moment, seeing a stary dog runnign away with a pristine Factura (like a croissante with extra jam and sugar stuff in it) in his mouth.

March 26th - Day 1 of trekking

We got picked up buy a mini-bus, which farther into the national park, and dropped people off at different starting points. We were the farthest out and we were dropped in the middle of no where - yehaw! We walked from where the road meets Rio electrico, to Rufugio Piedra Del Frailes. It was was an easy walk, and i think it wçtook us less time than the map siad it would. We ran into only one other person, but walked past some ´wild´horses. The managers of the Rufugio were a very nice couple. When we arrived, the husband insisted that we take ff our heavy bags a talka while. He was well informed about our hiking options. We decided to go up to this lookout called Po. del Cuadrodo, which normally gives a great view of the north face of Fitz Roy. The weather sucked and it had snowed up on the galcier we were supposed to traverese, so we weren´t able to go the whole way. The weather really atrated to rain and blow, so we went back down to the campsite, where we played a card game called shithead (Ana taught us) and we ate dinner.

Hiking in (even though technically we werent even in the park for the whole 1st day)

Day 2

Wake up. Eat. Pack up. Head out. We restraced out steps a bit through the forst, then hiked upriver Rio Blanco. We ate lunch right be fore the trail dispeared in boulders. We walkd over some super sketchy boulder slopes, where i shifter some massive rocks. Very sketchy. then Michele and Ana found the trail and we crossed the river. We ditched our big bags and scrambeled over, under and around huge rocks to get to the end of Lage Peridras Blancas, and to see Glacier Fitz Roy o Pedras Blancas. I think it was HUGE ages ago, as around the lake and further out there was like an amphithaçeater rock pile. From far away you could hear when ice chuncks fell off the glacier because it was so amplified. We hopped back to our big backpacks, and continued onto our next campground, Poincenot, and we set up camp. We then hiked up to Lago de los Tres, for a great view of Fitz roy. The weather wasn´t 100 % clear thought, and we didn´t see all of Fitz Roy. We then headed back down for dinner and sleep. In total i think we hiked 6 hours max. Our days we not super long in the Fitz Roy Range.

Rock Hopping

Purdy

Night Things

Day 3

Wake up for early morning beathroom run and the sky was super clear and Fitz roy looked like it was glowing! Beautiful. I hope someone anttempted a summit that day because the weather was amazing. We walked upto Lago Sucia in the morning, then retuned to our campsite for lunch. We packed up and went to our next campsite, Agonstini, which is right next to the very loud Rio Fitz Roy. The trekking was easy, but the surroundings wasn´t super exciting. We kind of just powered through it. We set up camp in a super bright location, played cards, streched, and ate a feast. Yum!

Lago Sucia

Michele and Ana

Day 4
Again the morning sun made everything look golden. The views from our campsite of Cerro Torre in the Am were beautiful. By the time we had had breakfast clouds had moved in. We hiked along Lago Torre, to Mirador Maestri. We chilled on a huge rock for a while, soaking in the Glacier Grande, and the mountians. We retuned to camp, and then headed to town. You can really just walk right into town from the trails. That eveing we had a huge meal. I ate an argentina ´meal´called Milanesa - breaded steak, and we all had delicious apple pie, with vanilla icecream, which was orange in colour.

Chillin´

Lamas on the walk into town

The next 2 days we bused back to Bariloche. We did laundry there, slept ate, wandered, did some window shopping, chocolate sampling, book reading, and meal eating. It was my last 3 days with Michele and they were nice and relaxed. We went out to a famous Grill (parrilla) and ate some delicious meats. We also went for a little walk upto some waterfalls and a lookout. When we were waiting to catch the bus back we met a very veryvery interesting woman. She was English, but hadlivewd in Mexico for the last 50 years, was a writer, and was doing research down here about a ´new race´, and chakra and darkenergy ect. Really nice lady! Well educated, and eccentric. She msut of bought locl bariloche out of its animal print things, and purple nailpolish. It was pretty funny - at one point her hat flew off her head (it was windy) and landed right on my face. We were quite amused by her! Michele left me Friday afternoon, and I moved into my homestay I am doing though my language school. My host is Mara, and she is a great cook! Her home is 30 miniutes away from school and it over looks the lake. You can see both sunrise and sunset from her patio - it's lovely. There are 2 other guys living there (one really reminds me of dad -he fly fishes and kind of talks like my dad), the other dude is from South Africa. I share a room with another girl from Victoria - we are in the same class.

Ok! Time to go outside and enjoy the sunshine!