After our day of rest yesterday, we were keen to get back into the hills around El Chaltén. There was a track on the southern side of town, Loma del Pliegue Tumbado, which would give us panoramic views of the whole of the National Park.

The walk started from the National park office and was a steady uphill for the entire 4km track. As we ascended, the landscape kept changing, we walked through steppe, some forest, open fields and finally just rocks.

We were lucky enough to see an eagle on the ground while we were at the intersection of the tracks to Loma and another restricted track to Laguna Toro.

The walk up to the mirador of Loma del Pliegue Tumbado only took us 2 hours and 20 minutes. It was a bit cloudy and there were a few rain drops in the air. We couldn't see the highest peaks, but it was still an awesome view with the mountains ahead of us, the glacier and lagoon to our left, the river valley below us, and Lago Viedma behind us.

Despite the cloudy day, Laguna Torre still seemed to have a sparkle to it, perhaps it's something to do with the green tinge from the glacial water coming from Glacier Grande.

We decided against walking up the last part of the track to the peak. It was a really steep walk up scree and there was even a section crossing through snow. It would probably have taken an hour to get to the top and given the weather probably not offered a better view than what we already had.

So we headed back down the same route which was a lot easier this time, of course, because it was a steady downhill the whole way. The forest section was more annoying though, because the flies seemed to have woken up. It was not quite as bad as the Madre y Hija track, the other day, but still unpleasant.

It only took a couple of hours to get back to the bottom and we'd walked maybe about 20km in total. We're getting quite used to this length of walks nowadays. The sun was shining again by the time we reached the Park Office so we decided to have our lunch at one of the picnic tables.

The remainder of the afternoon was spent on chores, apart from Maria lazing in the spa bath again. We confirmed tomorrows shuttle to El Calafate airport, wrote more of the stories for the blog and settled the bill at the hotel.

With regards to the hotel bill, David had received an email back from Booking.com about the increased cost of the room. The hotel had earlier advised that the agreed US$ rate would be converted to Argentinian pesos at 12 to 1, which is close to the illegal 'blue' rate and a far cry from the official 8.5 to 1. Booking.com advised that the hotel had said it was all a 'misunderstanding' and had since been sorted although the guy admitted he was still a bit sceptical. Our bill was converted at the official rate and we paid with credit card, the first time ever in Argentina. Out of curiosity David checked the Booking.com website and the hotel had increased the cost of its rooms by about 50%, which took the cost in pesos to approximately the same as converting our US$ rate at 12 to 1.

We decided to have dinner at Patagonicus again, because they had really good pizzas. Washed down with cold beer, we left happy to go back to our room to pack our bags for tomorrows flight to Ushuaia, 'the end of the world'.