#anyways it’s a nice foggy foggy silent hill morning

[deklo]

WALKED😤

[hey-heigo]

MY LEGS HURT

it is ass o clock in the morning and i am abt to drive for 4 hourssss

[riding-alpacas]

Best views ever

El Chalten is a funny little village. Imagine your favourite country-side town. Now imagine there is an event on the weekend, let's say a biker event and the whole place is full of bikers. Let's replace the bikers with hikers who are all wearing their walking boots, convertible Columbia pants & Patagucci jackets and you've got El Chalten!

Totally worth getting up at 4am

It's quite obvious that you come here to do three things only: Sleep, eat and most importantly hike! This place only has buildings where you can sleep in, buildings you can eat in and signs that indicate hiking trails. It's a well-oiled machine and for very good reasons. The hiking is world-class and I totally get why everybody's flocking here. But that also means you need to get a little creative if you are after some solitude.

First things first though. When I arrived here, I actually felt like shit. The cold that I'd been carrying around with me for quite some time turned out to be a bit nasty. So I spent the first three days in bed recovering. Because I was bored (and because the first season of Baby Yoda The Mandalorian was only eight episodes), I decided to visualise my tale of suffering. This is how a typical man flu looks like for me:

A typical man flu

Pretty straight forward. A little headache and a runny nose at the beginning, then gradually transitioning into coughing over a total period of 7 days (with medication I’m usually able to make it a week instead).

But the one I caught here was different:

The nasty Patagonian man flu

As you can see it started off very similar and I didn't think much about it. But then it started to step it up a notch and all of a sudden pretty much every body orifice was affected and it all went crazy and in all sorts of directions. Day 7 was when I left Ushuaia, and on day 8 I took the bus to El Chalten by the way - fun times! This thing clearly tried to imitate a typical Patagonian mountain range, so I decided to name it the "Patagonian man flu". Watch out for it and always wash your hands.

Before we get to the more pleasant sections, I also need to spend a few paragraphs with the place I decided to stay at. I don't know how they did it, but Rancho Grande is clearly one of the most overrated hostels I've ever seen on Hostelworld. It starts by not knowing what it wants to be. It's kind of a restaurant with a hostel attached to it. Or is it a hostel with a restaurant out front? And with everything that tries to be two things at once: It's not good at any of the two.

The dorms were underwhelming as they consisted only of a bed and a locker. The bunk beds were tiny and didn't have any rails, the reading lights were so bright they’d scare away Godzilla in the dark, there were no shelves, the kitchen was a joke and the toilets turned into a steam room in the afternoon due to poor ventilation. I definitely expected a lot more at this price point.

The restaurant unfortunately wasn't much better. The bread was dry and the quality of the dishes very average. The common area of the hostel was above the restaurant with a huge void in the middle. I usually go to the common area to hang out but imagine being in a place with a constant restaurant noise in the background. I couldn't stand this for very long, so I saw myself in my dorm most of the time when I wanted to chill. You check in between people munching their Schnitzel and when you brush your teeth before you go to bed you might stand next to a restaurant guest who had one beer too many because the bathrooms between the two audiences are shared. On top of that a disturbing trend continues: I'm not sure if I'm just unlucky but the majority of the people are just super unsocial. They rather hang out with their mobile phone than with actual people. My room mates were the worst at this place: They didn't even tell me their name when I introduced myself to them and they were all just dead silent all the time. What the actual fuck? Anyway, let's move on to the fun part: The hikes!

The first one I did was the Chorillo del Salto trek. It was a short and easy 4km hike to a cute little waterfall and turned out to be the perfect start after spending the previous three days in bed. I chilled out at the foot of the falls for an hour or so before heading back to town. One thing I will miss the most about Patagonia is the water. It's a nice change compared to Oz being able to just dip your water bottle into the closest body of water and drink from it straight away. I think the last time I drank such tasty water was in the North of Sweden a couple of years ago. Apparently this area has one of the world's largest reserves of fresh water and it makes me wonder why we can lay huge pipelines to transfer dirty oil from A to B but not beautiful drinking water.

I like a good waterfall

The next morning I still didn't feel too great but decided that it's time to give the finger to the cold and just move on. In order to avoid the crowds, I left my hostel at sunrise and tackled the first (easy) day hike: 18km return to Laguna Torre. The first 2km were a bit of an up and down and in between I was welcomed with the following views:

Mount Fitz Roy means "smoking mountain" in the native tongue

Once I got over these initial hills, it was basically just a long walk through a forrest until the Fitz Roy river appeared on the left. One more kilometre and I was standing in front of the lake with a great view of Cerro Torre. There were some little icebergs floating in the lagoon that fell off from the glacier behind it. My plan to avoid the crowds worked out perfectly as I had the whole place to myself for about an hour until the first people dropped in. The fresh air turned out to be perfect medication, too. I felt significantly better when I returned to El Chalten which meant that I felt ready for the next day hike.

Look at all these colours

Acceptable view

I wanted to gradually improve the difficulty of the treks, so the next morning I went off and did the 20km return hike to the foot of Mount Fitz Roy (I still wonder why they named it after a Melbourne suburb): Laguna de los Tres. There are a couple of options how you can do this one. I personally don't like in and out hikes very much and this one had an option to make it sort of a loop. You could take a taxi to a place called El Pilar, then hike to Fitz Roy from the north-east and on the way back take the south-east route to El Chalten. The disadvantage is that you can't really see the mountains on your way in and you'd always turn around on your way back because you missed all the views initially. So I decided to do something else instead. I actually started this hike in the dark. The whole town was still asleep when I left the hostel at 5am in the morning but fortunately there weren't many nocturnal animals to expect (other than the last hike I started at night in Australia where I almost shit myself with that much activity in the bush at that time). The idea was to be at a specific lookout 1.5h later in order to observe the sunrise and see Mount Fitz Roy brightened up in gorgeous shiny orange colours. And as you can see from the first photo above, it worked out and it left me speechless for a minute or two. It was quite a sight and an absolute highlight of my trip so far! I don't think anything will get close to this jaw-dropping moment anytime soon.

Continuing the hike it turned out to be a lot more diverse than the one I did the day before. Having the trails completely to myself, I passed glacial waterfalls, mystic foggy sections and heaps of small creeks with crystal clear waters before getting to a popular campsite very close to the final ascent.

Foggy

The people who slept at the campsite were already on their way down when I tackled the final kilometre of hell. IT. WAS. STEEP. It took me about an hour to get up the last 1000m and I hated every second of it but the reward at the end doesn't need any words:

Does this need a caption?

I ended up staying here for at least 3 hours just taking in the stunning scenery and going up and down and all around the lagoon over and over again. It was absolutely beautiful and I can totally understand why so many people come to this place. Fun fact: If you compare the ridge line with the logo from the Patagonia brand you might discover some similarities.

On the way back I took my time and similar to the day before a crazy amount of people made their way to the top now. I regularly stopped at the river sections, cooled down my feet and also took a little detour to another lagoon that again looked so inviting for a dip. But with water temperatures around 6 degrees it was relatively easy to resist.

Beautiful water everywhere

So clean

The last hike I attempted was the 20km Loma del Pliegue Tumbado. It was supposed to be the hardest hike, but I'd rather put it in the middle between the previous two hikes. Other than the other treks in this area, this one actually went up a hill and didn't lead through a valley. With 1000m of altitude it may sound steep but it was evenly distributed across the whole length, so it didn't feel that bad at all. It isn't a very popular hike and I decided to start it at a decent time in the morning (9am). I actually didn't meet too many other people on the way. It started amid rocky shrubland which reminded me a lot of Australia. If you'd put a wombat right here, it would feel like you're in the middle of Australian bush. After a while, the trail led into a forrest which then turned into this weird rocky landscape that felt like from another planet. Quite fun and entertaining.

I want to be there when this rock loses its balance

What planet is this again?

It ended with an impressive lookout from where you could see the whole mountain range, including Cerro Torre and Mount Fitz Roy. From here I had the option to walk up another very steep hill for another kilometre or so but I couldn't see how the view would change dramatically. Lots of effort, low reward - that math didn't make sense to me, so I decided to stay down, have a picnic and just admire the tranquil scenery for a while. Only to fall asleep and waking up from an asshole fly that made it way into my ear. Yes, similar to Australia the Argentinians use this land partly for cattle and with the cattle come the flies... I didn't expect that I'd have to bring my fly net to this trip!

All together now

I'm such an artist

All in all I had a fantastic time in El Chalten with some of the best hiking I ever did in my life. In terms of food I tried the famous Locro which was surprisingly minty but a perfect hearty dish after a long day out. I also found a place that served a great traditional Goulash and one place where I had Guanaco Goulash. After seeing my first cuddly Guanacos on my way here, I now simply had to taste them.

Locro

Tomorrow I will cross the border to Chile to go on an adventure that I was looking forward to for quite some time now: I will walk the O circuit in Torres del Paine and will completely disconnect for about 8 days.

Last Mount Fitz Roy picture, I promise

[hils79]

Hockey Road Trip - Day 7

It was still foggy the next morning so we had breakfast, loaded up the car and hit the road ready to get back in the US and Pittsburgh. I've been to Pittsburgh before, but it was a couple of years ago before the hockey bug bit me so this was different. I was excited.

We decided while we were packing that if we had time we were going to go to the Pens Gear store at PPG Arena as soon as we got to Pittsburgh so we could avoid the game crowd the next day. This proved to be an excellent idea.

It was even more foggy so it's a good thing we didn't wait to see the falls at Niagra

It was like driving in Silent Hill

Weirdly almost as soon as we crossed the US border the fog lifted. Either Canada is haunted or it was hoping we'd get lost and wouldn't be able to leave

This was weird (and you see what I mean about the lack of fog). It's a place to stop and check your texts. Like it had none of the usual rest stop facilities. There was nowhere to eat, no bathrooms etc, just a bunch of parking bays. This was the only one we saw on our whole trip. Very odd.

YAY!

Yes I got a bit excited when we stopped at an actual rest stop and they had a Pens sign up

There are A LOT of Pens signs on the road running alongside PPG Arena

Hilariously when we were trying to find somewhere to park we just pulled into the nearest garage, which is apparently the official Pens parking?

The promised land

Going when there wasn't a game on was definitely a good idea. There was barely anyone in the store so we could take our time and browse without being crowded. A woman came up to me at one point and asked me where I got my Kessel hoodie because she wanted to buy one (I think for her kid? She was on the phone relaying what I was saying to someone). That was fun.

It also meant that when we were done shopping we could take photos outside without loads of people around. Although we did meet a nice family who took a couple of group photos for us. That was nice.

All things considered I was actually pretty restrained in the Pens Gear store. I bought a couple of t-shirts, a hoodie and a Funko Pop for myself and then some presents for friends.

Oh, don't worry, this was not the end of my Pens merch buying adventures. Just you wait.

Bored in the hotel room while I was waiting for my photos to upload so I wrote this on the hotel notepad

So while we were driving @morganoconner mentioned that Sid likes to take the rookies to the Cheesecake Factory in Pittsburgh to welcome them to the team. Now, I have already mentioned that I love Cheesecake Factory and this, to me, made a compelling case to go to another one :D

My friends at home supported this decision for reasons

So we decided to go. For reasons.

Of course being on vacation I had lost all concept of time and it was only when we got there and were told it was an hour and a half to wait that I remembered it was a Saturday night. Luckily for us there was another Pens Gear store just across the road from the restaurant so we went and browsed to kill some time.

I spotted a sign behind the counter and lost my shit, especially after what I'd written in the hotel. I asked if I could take a photo and they were very obliging :D

The Cheesecake Factory and Pens Gear store is actually in a really nice little courtyard area. If I ever make it back to Pittsburgh (I'd like to but with the current political climate I don't know when or if it will happen) I'd love to go back here too

And it even has this, which I don't think was named after Crosby, but amused us anyway

By the time we had waited for our table and eaten dinner it was pretty late so we just headed back to the hotel and crashed for the night.