hey all! Well, we successfully made it through 4 days, 3 nights of backpacking through the Glacier National Park of Argentina near Chalten, the "trekking capitol of Argentina". The park is, again, beautiful. Just like everything down here. Though the last few glaciers we have seen arent as impresive, and more dirty than those prior. The lakes and mountains are impressive, though not as inspiring as torres del paine in chile. We were graced with a lucky streak of good weather, again, just like in torres del paine. We met a swiss guy on the trail who had camped through the park just 2 week prior, and said that it rained and snowed most of the time! An amazing 180 flip from the scortching sun and black flies the size of my fist. That was the only newsance on the trail. The black flies. "they sure do know how to ruin my good time!" says momo, on the bank of beautiful lake capri, overlooking the mountains and sunset across the water.

Its true. Any time I was idol, in the shade, the black flies knew how to ruin my fun. The trick is to keep moving, in the sun, swimming with the ice in the glacier lakes, or be in the tent. The glacier lake under the mountain Fitz Roy is the coldest lake I have ever been in. I worked up the nerve to jump in, while a bunch of middle-aged Americans watched me in disbelief, only to swim for a total of 40 seconds, grasping for air and watching my stinging skin turn bright red. I told them all it was nice and warm, and ran to the trail down the mountain before hypothermia kicked in. To be fair, I had already worked up quite the sweat by that point. That same morning, I discovered that I had left my camera at the viewing point, 30 minuted from the campsite. So I trail-ran (trail running is actually quite fun. It keeps things interesting at the least) through the forest that looks very similar to middle earth from the lord of the rings movies, praying that my camera was still there. Sure enough, no one had taken it. YAY! I ran back to the camp site (grand total of 5 km before starting the real trekking of the day) to grab some things, and started trekking up the mountain (400 meters elevation change over 3 km. pretty steep). In summary, black flies=bad, lake jumps=good, Sun and trees are never a bad thing. Happy travels, Teigan