24th January Day of the Argentinian Strike - El Calafate to El Charlton

We took our time this morning as we believed, having checked yesterday, that we were being picked up at 9 to be driven to El Chalten. However, we hadn’t even finished breakfast when a man came towards us calling my name. It was our driver!! So we had to abandon breakfast, rush upstairs to finish packing, check out of the hotel, and board the bus. We were the first to be picked up so we at least got seats at the front. 

The driver spent quite a while driving around to the various different accommodation venues picking people up. 

We were then on our way to El Chalten past our hotel at about the time that we were told that we would be collected!

An interesting drive with ever-changing features, the countryside is quite barren with no trees but with mountains, valleys, rivers that we crossed a few times, lakes, and the occasional wildlife - guanaco, deer, rhea.

The road surface was in good condition and the roadside was fenced all the way. A thing of note was that there was no litter on the roadside.

Another thing of note was that there were a lot of cyclists

We stopped off along the way for a short while for a rest stop at L A Leona

Continuing the tradition of bouncing rocks over any water we come across!

This flower stinks!!

The driver also pulled in at a viewpoint for us to take photos of the magnificent view of the mountains

Once we arrived at El Chalten the driver dropped people off at their hotels including us at the Hotel Lunajuim. We were welcomed by a very friendly helpful lady that gave us a rundown on our options for walks in the area.

Our rooms weren’t quite ready so we left our bags there and walked to the Curcuma vegan restaurant that was suggested to us by one of the staff at the hotel. Delicious fresh juice drinks but our meals took a long time to come

Back at the hotel after our lunch to settle into our rooms - Tejal and Heidi's view.

We spent a while working out where we were going to walk. Because it had become very windy, the lady at reception helped us with a  sensible plan- to take a taxi out to the start of the waterfall walk, walk to the falls then walk back to El Chalten along the track through the bush.

This worked well for us. We were surprised when we got to the falls that there were so many people there. It was so crowded that we couldn’t hardly get a decent shot of the falls. We did, however, discover a track alongside the river which we followed, for a short way, where there was no one else.

On our return walk, back into El Chalten, it became even windier and the dust kept blowing up onto us. The winds were as high as 32 km an hour 

Impressed by these separated bins at the edge of the park.

Compulsory El Charlton Photo

We decided to have dinner at the hotel restaurant- very delicious