Torres del Paine to Calafate

Leaving the W trek in Torres del Paine, we headed east along a dusty road, spotting the first guanacos we’d seen in awhile.  The road turned north and we walked up to Lago Azul at the edge of the park, a beautiful little lake that few people seem to realize is within the park limits. The park guard and the campground host, Victor, were friendly and helpful, you could tell they didn’t see nearly as many tourists. As we were making dinner and talking, Victor invited us to have dinner with a group of Americans and their guides who were also staying at the campground and were mountain biking through. One of the guides said, “It’s new year's eve, you should spend it with your people.”

We accepted their invitation and were able to meet an awesome group of friends, mostly from Tennessee, who were on a trip together - one of them even has a good friend from grad school who I know! It again became a small world as we discussed our trips and ate and celebrated. The guides were quite friendly as well as interested in our trip, so much so that Fidgit and I had to sneak off around 1 a.m. to get some sleep.

The next morning we headed off, after Victor made sure our bellies were full and we had made ourselves sandwiches for lunch. We walked and walked, following an older, unkempt road to rio Zamora which we had to cross. Fidgit found a decent place to cross, but it was still thigh-deep and strong. Thankfully, it was warm out. I decided to take my pants off to not get them wet and, stupidly, attempted to get the camera to Fidgit so she could get a photo in between giggles. I failed. We spent the next couple hours up to our crotches in fast moving fresh-glacial-melt water trying to find the camera to no avail. It has since been called ‘the unfortunate river crossing incident,’ and I’ve been working on not being stupid anymore.

What's out of the water is about  70 meters high

Perito Moreno in all its glory

We made our way into Argentina and were just in time to get out to Los Glacieres National Park and visit Perito Moreno glacier for the evening of my birthday. What a birthday it was! I’d never had a summer birthday before, so of course we decided to celebrate it by standing next to a giant hunk of ice and snow. It was amazing! Exhausted from the amount of road walking we did, we then made our way into Calafate to shower and sleep. The owner of the place we stayed was so kind, and when he heard it was my birthday he brought me a small dessert with a candle in it! I went to bed freshly showered and happy.

Happy birthday to me!