El Calafate Perito Moreno Bus - January 15th

Our extra day in El Calafate has played havoc with our travel schedule.  Getting out of here isn’t as easy as getting in, the main problem being that going north, as we are, the next town, El Chalten, is a trekking paradise akin to Torres del Paine, and with the fire there, everyone has flocked to El Chalten.  So instead we are skipping it, and going further north, but this is where the long gaps between towns really begins to kick in.  And so buses are infrequent, and journeys are long.  All of which conspires to see us on the next available bus out, at half past midnight tonight.

As we have a day to fill we go to a little known part of Parc National Los Glaciers called Lago Roca. This lake is actually part of Lago Argentina, but that lake is so big that all of its bays have their own names.  However we are not actually going to the lake, we are going to attempt to climb our biggest peak so far, Cerro Cristal, which is 1280m high (from a 180m start).  I’m a bit worried because the time on the maps to do it is 4 hours up and 3 hours down, and there are only 7 hours to the return bus.  So there is no margin for error.

We set off from the bus stop which is unfortunately 1.5km away, but we make good time, going up the first 480m in an hour.  That has been fairly steep, but now it gets steeper, yet we still make another 400m in the next hour, so it looks on course.  At this point we see our first fellow hiker of the day, a German guy, who after a brief chat powers on ahead of us.  We go on but only 80m from the top it gets too steep and gravelly for us, especially as we don’t have trekking poles, so we have to turn around.  It’s a pity too because we would have made it inside 3 hours, well faster than the guidebook says.

The whole point of the climb was to see the Torres del Paine mountains again, as at this point we are only 50 km away from them and they can be seen from the top.  So instead of going up we work our way around the mountain to see them from the far side.  The descent is easier, and as we are now looking forward we have great views of the lakes and the Perito Moreno glacier, so it is a lot more enjoyable.  We stop for lunch in the forest and again we meet the German as he comes down.  We start talking to him as we descend and it is only he goes ahead of us that we realise Dorota left her camera at the lunch stop. The man is a jinx.  So we have to trek 100m back up the mountain to get it back.  Still it means we can say we did climb over 1100m on the mountain.

Due to our speed we get down early so we take the chance to visit some prehistoric rock art nearby but this turns out to be very disappointing, there was something there, but honestly I couldn’t make out what it was.  We actually end up having to wait for our bus, and then it is a long ride back to town.  The good thing about our new hostel for last night is that it is right next to the bus station, meaning it is an easy place for us to leave our bags and change for the night bus journey.