We awoke to a even better day than yesterday. We decided to do the other trek fearing probable bad weather for tomorrow.

Our legs were saying otherwise, they were still pretty sore from yesterday and Liz's knees were in bad shape. The trek was 17km in length with a height gain of 400m. The height gain was pretty irrelevant based on all the ups and downs the route had.

The trek started off pretty standard, but ended with some redeeming features. Firstly an area with dead looking trees that had turned almost white gave some much needed photo opportunities. Further on we noticed a couple of guys crouched by a glacial river taking photos. In the middle of the river surrounded by fast moving torrents was a couple of rocks with a duck sat on top.

Take photos ask questions later is my moto with wildlife. With some photos in the bag I was then told what I was taking a picture of. It was the rarest bird in these parts going by the name of 'Torrent' duck. On que the bird demonstated this by jumping into the torrents and swimming effortlessly upstream to the other rock (with a 'that was easy' look on its face). The twitchers were having a good day, a guide that passed by earlier said he hadn't seen one of these in the four years he was a guide in this area.

The main focus of the walk however was the view from the end. The weather had another plan, as we approached the finish it started snowing effectively scuppering any chance of having a view. We could see the lake below with some iceburgs, a glacier and mountain looming up but that was about it. The wind was getting up and the temperature was dropping rapidly, we are not stupid we decided their was little point going to the very end.

We were tired, after an hour or so walking back we saw the sign saying El Chalten was 2 hours 30 minutes away. We were suspicious all the signs that we had seen so far had the same time estimates, making us think that they had a 2h 30m sign job lot done. After another 1h 30m of fast walking overtaking other people we saw the sign saying El Chalten was now 2h away.

As it turned out we were only 30m away. We picked the bags up and moved back to the lodge. We homed in to the bed and fell asleep like yesterday.

Liz woke me up in order to have something to eat at a vegetarian restaurant we noticed earlier. It was a little slice of hippy heaven, the owner had obviously done the pilgrimage to India going by the wall hangings.

Liz went to bed whilst I had a blog catch up not getting to bed until 2am.