We've just spent 3 nights in El Chalten at a wonderfully warm and comfortable hostel with hot water!!!  It wasn't flash but sure beat sleeping in a tent in this freezing cold weather at camp sites that often have no hot water :-(

Most people come to El Chalten to either enjoy the national park or climb Mt Fitzroy.  You can also do day trips from here to the Viedema Glacier to float past it, hike on it or climb the walls of it. 

I flagged the Viedema Glacier which some people in the group did the ice climbing at and loved, and instead did a hike with some others in the National Park.

We had a 30 minute transfer to Hosteria Pilar and from there made our way to Laguna de los Tres. This is the  base of theMt Fitzroy towers and was a hard slog to get to the 1km high above sea level vantage point.

Once again views were beautiful and have lots of pics.

From there it was another 12km walk back to El Chalten, and all in all another 8.5 hour day of hiking!

Not a whole lot else to do in this two ATM town but eat and drink ... 

Had a great night out for Megan's birthday - sampled the local Argentinian steak then headed out for drinks with the locals ... 

Ordering shots was fun as needed to scan the rows of alcohol and point out the drinks we thought were the ingredients we needed in them (wasnt too sure how to ask for a 'quick f#%k' in Spanish nor the response I'd get?!).

Staggered home at 4am very proud of ourselves for finally having our first big night out of the trip!

Backed it up again the next night heading to a local annual climbers fiesta. It was held in a big dark field at the back of the town, and really enjoyed standing around with a couple hundred other locals & travellers, all decked out in our best Gore-Tex gear, standing around barrels of fire and enjoying the chilled out atmosphere.  

The band playing was local and mostly did songs in Spanish that had the crowd moshing, also did a few English favorites cranking out some Red Hot Chilli Peppers and Pearl Jam - yay!

Drinks were cheap at the make shift bar - $15 pesos (approx $4) for a Cuba Libre (Bacardi & coke) or a Fernet and coke.

Stars are amazing here so staggered back at 2am using them to light the way as didn't feel it was cool to venture out with the head torch (although head torches, hiking boots and Gore-Tex ended up being the main fashion theme!).

Hiked the next morning so only quiet one last night - a few vino tintos with the group and then a couple of American gals we met along the trail joined us ... Too exhausted from hike to chat so uploaded blogs and went to bed!

Heading now for El Calafete and hanging up the hiking boots for at least the next couple of days!!!