Shorthand Patagonia - Day 11

January 26

8:30am – sleeping-in is sweet. So...Mt. Fitzroy? Sure, something like that.

9:00am – turns out cold oat bran mixed with Nesquik doesn’t quite live up to the cold oatmeal...it was all they had in El Calafate.

9:30am – on trail, kind of sleepy.

9:33am – this trail has a lot of up to it. I don’t think our knees like up very much anymore.

9:45am – I feel cranky; so do my knees.

11:00am – arrive at look-out point; this is good enough, right? Besides, it’s cloudy and cold—the world is telling us to go back to town and hole-up with our tía. Gras agrees. We take pictures.

11:30am – detour to nearby lake; run into Itai and friends—they’ve already gone up and come down from Fitzroy. Again, nobody likes a show-off. Pretty lake.

1:30pm – lunch time in rancho grande! Turns out argentinian tuna tastes different from chilean tuna. Also turns out that eating tuna out of a can while inside a warm hotel/local hang-out is somehow less satisfying than eating it in the shadow of the torres. La tía has a way of making up for it, though; shall we christen it? Commence with the veging as well as the stealing of hostel kitchen priviledges to make our coffee...this time it’s not even our hostel. Karma prevents me from being able to go up or down the stairs that lead to the kitchen without limping. La tía has a way of making up for this as well.

6:30pm – turns out spending an entire afternoon relaxing on a cute little couch bathed in sunlight coming in from the window that has a lovely view of the now-clear Mt. Fitzroy is pretty amazing. Dinner? Mmm...paninis and smuggled Nalgene water in the café nextdoor.

9:30pm – back at rancho grande, making british friends who make fun of the fact that we carry a bottle of tía maría with us wherever we go.

11:00pm – we’re not lame; we trek on glaciers. Who says you can’t go back to your hostel at 11pm? Plus, our bus leaves at 6:30 tomorrow morning.