El Calafate is a town near the mountains.
It is named after these berries
It reminded us of Lethbridge
Being in the foothills
And very windy
And cold
And dry
But it was pretty
They also had an imported Douglas Fir to make it feel like home.
But there weren’t many natural trees around
They have a big glacier museum in the middle of nowhere.
They also have a wooden slide.
Which is an even worse idea than a metal slide in the sun.
It is a pretty town.
Our last hike in El Chalten went up again
On a dirt path
And of course there were views of the spikeys.
And condors
Are you tired of the spikeys yet?
If you get tired of the spikeys
You better leave El Chalten
There was also a lake
But it was way to cold for swimming
We saw a butterfly
And the valley
And the town
Then we walked back to the hotel
And took a picture of the monkey puzzle tree
Which puzzled Kerri
After reaching the alternative spikeys
We climbed up a bit
To get a worse view
Then we went back down.
And back towards town.
Through the woods
And the valley
There was another condor soaring overhead.
And a smaller bird too.
When we got nearer town we could see both sets of spikeys at once.
Plus another snow covered spikey.
And the Margarita waterfall
The spikeys were visible this morning
But we’d already been there
So we took a different path
Through the valley
Because we were getting smarter
Mountains are much nicer when you don’t have to climb them.
This path even has shorter spikeys
They are actually even spikier
But the path to them is level
It’s just a lot of walking
Through a lot of rock
And then you get close to the spikeys
Yay
Spikeys.
This is a caracara
It is a kind of falcon
It should not be mooching cheetos from tourists
It should be hunting small animals
But tourists are idiots
They seem to think that maybe these claws are for opening Cheeto bags.
And this beak is meant for crunching orange cheesy bits
That are definitely not good for falcons
No matter how pretty they are when they beg.
He didn’t seem to like us very much
Because we didn’t share cheetos
We didn’t even have any.
