El Chalten, Argentina

I left Puerto Natales with one friend from Torres del Paine, Ruud, and we took a bus back up to Argentina, to El Chalten. It is a tiny town on the Chilean border and only 25 years old. They don´t have a bank or cell phone service, but they are the trekking capital of the country.
The first day I went for a glacier trek-- hiked right from town a few hours in to the Cerro Glacier. We stopped by Lago Torres to get our crampons and harnesses, used the zip line to get across the river, and hiked up a bit more to the base of the galcier. We put on our crampons and hiked around a bit, which was really cool. There were tons of reeeeally deep crevases all over the place, and sometimes you are walking on little slivers between them which is kind of scary because it takes a little bit to get comfortable with the crampons and then the wind comes along and it´s really strong and you feel as though you might actually blow away in a stiff breeze.
We stopped for a picnic lunch for a little and then went over to a part of the glacier where you can ice climb. It looked pretty hard, but I don´t think it´s that much harder than rock climbing (except for the ice axes in your hands), and I was shockingly somewhat decent at it! It was a blast and we had a few races up. The way back was much of the same, zip line over the river again and then hike back to town.
I met Ruud back at the hostel and we went with some others to another local brewery which was tiny and so cozy with fantastic food and beer!
The next morning I had to say bye to Ruud which was sad because we had been 9 days together which is like a lifetime in backpacker world, and I set off to go hike up to Fitz Roy. Most of the hike isn´t too bad, especially after Torres del Paine, but the last hour is just straight climbing climbing and relentless directly up and it was pretty painful. I managed to make it to the top and Laguna de los Tres was spectacular, but unfortunately Fitz Roy was mostly covered in clouds. I could see the outline of it and it was just massive because you are almost at its base, and it just looms above you, but you can´t really see it at all in my pictures. On my way down it started to clear up a bit, but I could not have been paid to go back up the steep at that point.
It was a nice day outside by myself and I hopped on a bus that night back to El Calafate.