Day 71
43,665 – 43,825 160 Miles today (21,125 Miles Overall)
El Calafate, Argentina – El Chalten, Argentina
We got up quite early today and had some breakfast at the hostel. We loaded up the bike and hit the road to El Chalten. I wasn’t sure what kind of roads to expect today once we turned off the main road into El Chalten since the GPS said it would take much longer than expected. It was windy as hell on the ride over and pretty freaking cold. Sameera took it like a champ. We did the 3.5 hour drive in about 2:30. We saw some beautiful mountains that were snow capped riding into El Chalten. It was beautiful. So many glacial blue lakes on the ride over. She was loving every second of it but I was just used to it by now.
We pulled into town and stopped at a nice little restaurant for a big old steak which we have to stop eating because it’s really not sitting well with our stomachs. We talked to the waiter about the hike we wanted to do and decided we would just get a place to sleep here for the night and go smash out the hike in the morning. We found ourselves a nice little hotel for the night in town and then jumped on the bike and headed down a long dirt road to a dead end where there was a nice big lake to hang out at.
The road was pretty shitty and super bumpy so we decided to go halfway and hang out at another lake. I’m starting to get worried about my rear tire because it’s so low on tread I am at a huge risk of getting the tire slashed open by a sharp little rock and I’m not sure if my new one will arrive in Punta Arenas from the bike shop up north. We went back into town and decided to park the bike since it was still quite early and do a 12 mile hike up into the mountains to see another cool view. Halfway up we decided we should turn around because it looked like some afternoon storms were coming in. We scurried back into town and we were pretty exhausted. We took a shower and went back out into town for some dinner which was delicious. We made our way to a small supermarket to get some snacks for tomorrow’s long hike since it was going to be a long long day.
