February 07
Breakfast was at 8:00am, and it was not ready. It was not much of a breakfast (warm milk, cereal, 2 pieces of homemade bread, 2 pieces of cake, butter, jam, orange juice, coffee or tea). After waiting about 15 minutes to get the items ready, I quickly ate and talked to a lady who had hiked up to the Lago de los Tres yesterday. She indicated that it did rain hard and on her way down she fell and hurt her knee. Her husband, her and baby were doing the same hike I was doing today. I started my hike from the hotel and in about a kilometre was at the trail head.
The first 3 kilometers were up and down and up and down. I was getting tired when I came across a sign that indicated kilometre 1 of 9! What?! I only did 1km?! I looked at my watch and it indicated that I had hiked 2km including from the hostel. I was shocked! It seemed like I had done a great deal of travelling … thinking I had done 3km from the trail head to only be 1km … talk about deflating HaHaHa. I finally got to the 3km mark and the view point had such an amazing view. This spot was called Mirador Cerro Torre and I would walk up to here again tomorrow if the sky is clear. It was about 1 hour hike to this point.
After admiring the view, I got moving as I knew I had 6 more kilometres to travel. The remaining 6km were not bad, most of it quite level considering the first 3km. LOL
I got to Mirador Lago Torres, beside Laguna Torre and admired the view of the glacier. The glacier was still a distance away, but all the icebergs had drifted to the shore where I sat and ate my lunch. It was such a beautiful area.
The sun did occasionally peak through the clouds, but then the dark clouds started to move in. You could see the rain coming down on the mountains and the mountain visibility slowly dissipated.
I packed up my belongings and finished taking a few more photos. I started to head out and when I went over the ridge by the lake, a hawk flew all around me within 15 feet. At some points just hovering a few feet above me. I quickly took out my camera and couldn’t see it in the air. I heard a squawk and saw the hawk having an argument with a condor. The condor flew away and left its prize for the hawk. Then, two of the condors flew down in front of me. I must say that was an awesome moment!
On my walk back out, it was sun around me and in front of me, but when you turned back towards the mountains, it was raining. I managed to stay ahead of the rain and get a few nice photos on my way out.
I really liked the twisted trees with the rocky hills in the background.
Around 6:30pm I decided to go out and get something to eat. I wanted to try this restaurant that was a bar but also sold BBQ food. Outside it was extremely windy and no one was sitting on the deck. I got inside and found the place almost full. I sat down by a couple mid-aged guys from USA. One works in aero technology and the other works for Amazon designing software. They mentioned about their hike today and that it was snowing up by the Lago de los Tres.
I had ordered a chicken sandwich, French fries and a beer. I learned that where it was Happy Hour you get two beer for the price of one … AWESOME! HaHaHa. When they brought the food, I could not believe how big the sandwich was, it was like two large hamburger buns put side by side. And the fries were enough to feed 3 people. The food was very good here … so was the beer.
February 8th
Got up this morning and had breakfast, it was the daughter of the family that was bringing out the food. After the little breakfast, I went to pay for the room and she asked if I could come back later to pay. I told her I was heading to El Calafate right away. She woke her father up and we got the finances straightened so I could get on the road. It was 9:00am and I stopped only once to take a photo of a traditional cowboy in Argentina.
After checking into the hotel, I was going to make my way to the Witchetu Cave but was informed that I had to see a company to get access. I had to wait until 3pm to check into my room so I cooked dinner … what else, spaghetti (LOL). After checking in I walked down to the company to find out that I could drive there and pay just the entrance fee. They stated that it was open 10:00am until 5:00pm every day. They didn’t tell the hostel staff this when she called and now that it was 4:00pm I will wait until tomorrow to go.