I´m in El Chalten!

It´s not a very catchy title, I know, but I´m faced with two weeks of this awesome life to recap, and I am going to have to approach it episodically. Consider this as an introduction, and something of a recap. Amidst all the great experiences I have had, the overriding feat is that I rode to the end of the Carreterra Austral! Through many beautiful sparsely populated places and small towns, crossing two lakes on ferries, smashing some singletrack touring, hiking around another lake, I have come to arrive in Argentina´s frontier town of El Chalten. Among all the Gore-Texed gringos with trekking poles and leather boots there are some serious ice-climbers here, as we are very close to Mount Fitz-Roy and Cerro Torre, two very impressive peaks. This is known as Argentina´s capital of trekking, and I just got back from a four day hike in the rain and cold at the bottom of those peaks. I could not really see the tops of these biggest mountains, but breathing the air, sleeping near glaciars, hiking through the rain while most everybody else was in town was a pleasant and rugged experience. I´m back to the free camping on the outskirts of town, spending my money instead on bife de chorizo, empanadas, cookies and ice cream. I´ve got to bulk up for the next leg of my trip to El Calafate and the Perito Moreno glaciar, which are a few days away by bike. If the weather clears, I may throw in another hike of a couple days to try to see the mountains again. This is marvelous.

Notes: I just waited about thirty minutes to load a few photos of the cloud-shrouded mountains, and me, elated, free of the bicycle on a hike around Lago del Desierto, and found no progress. So, I will count on Flickr later to push through some pictures. Also, as will be recounted in another post, I dropped my camera a couple of times, and while it still takes pictures, the screen is irreparably damaged, and I cannot see exactly what I am taking a picture of until I find a computer. So, some of these pictures may not be impressive. I will be cherry picking, to be sure. (In case there was any doubt, this is still marvelous).