Thursday 29th November Torres del Paine A cloudy start to the day. We had considered an early start and guiding ourselves to the 'Torres', as it is the most popular trek and can be very busy, but Val had reassured us that this would not be a problem and even changed her schedule to lead our guiding group again for the day! Another excellent buffet breakfast, and having over eaten once again we met up with the group and were introduced to Pablo, our second guid...

Wednesday 28th November. An early start (again!). We had breakfast and met our fellow trekkers in the 'El Rincon de la Estancia'. There we found only 5 of us signed up for the epic French Valley trek - and we had 2 guides allocated to us - Rodrigo who guided us yesterday, and Valentina, who had booked the excursion for us. The weather was perfect! We were escorted to the minibus with our packed lunches, and set off for Pudito on Lake Pehoe, to catch the first...

Tuesday 27th November An early pick up (6.55) from the shiny clean Patagonia Queen Hotel. Our driver for the day- Damien- loaded our bags onto the minibus and we toured El Calafate picking up Aussies, Canadians, French and Japanese. All seem to have different attitudes to personal space and hygiene... Damien issued us all with goodie bags containing a flask of water, snacks, a pillow and the obligatory customs declaration form. Our roadtrip took us over vast a...

Monday 26th November Today we are a quarter way through our trip. We seem to have been in Argentina for ages, but we are moving on to Chile tomorrow and we will miss the great food and the coffee. The scenery and the people I think will be just as great. The economy in Chile is much more stable than in Argentina so, as visitors, it will be more expensive for us. Checkout today is at 10am so we decided to have a lie in and then run to the waterfall before breakf...

Sunday 25th November Another bright, blue sky day - from our bedroom window we could see the peak of Mte Fitz Roy illuminated by the early morning sun and completely clear of cloud, with the moon alongside. We ate an early breakfast and made a start on the trail. We walked up the Main Street of El Chalten, stopping here and there to pick up some empanadas, a salad roll and snacks from the quaint little vegan take-away, en route to the trailhead. It was still qui...