Los Torres y Fitz Roy

Well, no, this isn´t our photo, but I have about 4 minutes to let you know that indeed, Kellen and I were there, dreaming at the base of the Cuernos del Paine, and during our 10 days in Torres del Paine national park in Chile, we saw many more amazing views. We´ve been part of this tourist circuit by accident for the past two weeks, turns out we´re not the only mid-twenties travellers in this world, and just about every young person from Holland and Isreal is out exploring the same areas as we are, taking the same buses as we are. So as we´ve travelled from big park to big park, we´ve been part of this little cohort of people, and gotten to know some faces and names. It was a little disheartening, briefly, but we´ve come to realize that travelling with good people in really cool places is pretty special.
We moved on from tourist central Puerto Natales in Chile, and thru the Estes Park-like El Calafate (though with better food) in Argentina, and found happiness in El Chalten, AR. Its a very small town, and you can walk to the National Park trails from the free campground at the north end of town, or the panaderia at the south end of town, or anywhere else, or you can gaze at the amazing views of Cerro Torre and Fitz Roy from the street corner if you don´t feel like moving. We did a one night backpack to check out the glaciers and peaks, then enjoyed lots of medialunas in the morning, and finally got out and did some climbing this morning, taking the easiest hitchiking trip imaginable 7km up the road to a newly developed climbing area just out of town. Guys were setting bolts on new routes while one of their sons played with a tonka trunk at the base of the rock all afternoon, and the rock-god locals were all really friendly as we tried to learn strange words like bolt and flake.
We´re making our way north along the border of Chile and Argentina right now, headed toward Puerto Montt to meet up with Kellen´s mom and dad for 10 days. Though without a specific plan on how to get there, we have busses and ferries and hiking and climbing in our future. Though we were a little spent with all the tourist activity in the past couple of weeks, we got to see the sights you´ve got to see down here, and El Chalten has revitalized us.
Off to the tent now, we´ve got a 9am bus north tomorrow.