El Chalten

We spent a relaxing few days at El Calafate, where a lot of time was spent eating the amazing ice-cream and feasting at an all-you-can-eat restaurant (with traditional Argentinian BBQ meat being cooked over a fire in the corner). Anna over did it and ended up curled up on the floor- too full to move! We also discovered it is a pretty comfy ride for Matilda being towed behind Anna in her Bob trailer!

We hired a car and visited the famous Perito Merino glacier. Arriving early in the morning we avoided the hoards of tourists and Anna cooked us a pancake breakfast overlooking the glacier. It was enormous (6km wide, 30km long and 55m tall) and was incredibly active with heaps of creaking, groaning, gunshot noises and constant calving (chunks of ice falling from the glacier face). Only two days of riding since we last wrote- 225km from El Calafate to El Chalten. We had to resort to sleeping in a gravel pit to escape the ferocious winds. Anna and Matilda concocted yet another failed instant pudding. On the second day we battled some pretty strong headwinds across the barren Argentinian landscape- hard work! Sophie worked hard out the front and we sought refuge under a tree for an afternoon siesta. Our spirits were lifted by a group of travellers in a van spontaneously stopping to fill our water bottles and chat. Anna was even more stoked to find a dead armadillo on the side of the road! We were really happy to arrive in El Chalten and we were rewarded with possibly the best lasagne in the world and three perfect days of weather (a rare thing here according to locals). We did two day walks into the national park with great views of Cerro Torre and Fitzroy (3400m).

We are also preparing for Christmas and spent time working on out "Secret Santa" presents- difficult to be too secretive in a small town with five shops! There are no ATMs in El Chalten and we are running a little low on pesos. Luckily we had Sophie´s "emergency" US dollars to pay for our last meal, beers and vino tinto! Hopefully we have enough pesos left for our ferry crossing this afternoon! A fun night ended with a chaotic rumble -Sophie nailed Kate in a prickle bush- there will be thorns to extract for some time yet!

From here we are doing a bit of off-road riding to take a short-cut back back into Chile and onto the Carretera Austral- an isolated 1300km road, that we´ve been told is very beautiful with hardly any wind.

An update on Shane´s knee- it has been healing quite well, but slowly. Despite our perfect suturing Shane has managed to penetrate the wound twice with sticks and it looks like he´ll end up with a pretty meaty scar. No infection though. Other than that he seems to be coping with four chicas and is growing himself an impressive ginger beard.