Autumn at the Fitz Roy National Park

From Torres Del Paine National Park we travelled some 4-5 hours north to El Chalten, a small town at the base of the Fitz Roy mountain peak. While half of the group went on a ice-trekking trip of some 12 very exhausting hours with crampons and hanging cable river crossings, we decided to go trekking up to the Fitz Roy viewpoint - el Mirador Laguna de los Tres. This is marked as a 4-hr trip each way... it got recommended to us from a really nice couple of Argentinians that were staying at the same hut that we hired, so there we went. We missed the 7:30 start that we had agreed with another couple in the group and set off at 8:30 instead, after a nice and for once relaxed fried-egg breakfast. At 10 am we caught up with the same very couple at the first mirador - they had left early but it was dark and they got lost in town and could not find the beginning of the trail for an hour!!! My thoughts had to go back to the delicious eggs I had earlier while being late....

This park, north of the Parque de los Glaciares, which includes Perito Moreno (more south), is almost better than Torres del Paine!! Stunning, very different park, though when we were at the Torres we were sure that was the best park we had ever seen! This one does not have blue lakes everywhere, but has the most stunning autumn trees I have ever seen, just beautiful (the pictures will explain better). Anyways, we climbed up to the base of the peaks, this time to find a very blue laguna and a crazy wind. When we finally decided that it was too cold and windy to stay up and it was time to return and face the other 5 hours on the way back, the wind got us. In order to descend we had to go round a small rocky hill on top of the view point, and this point was hit by extreme wind. Fortunately the wind was blowing towards the mountain and not away from it (if it had, I don't know what would have happened) anyways it was blowing us down onto the ground along with sandblast and for a few minutes I thought we were stuck up there - we had to throw ourselves onto the ground in order not to be flown away and could not move for ages! Well, for a few minutes that seemed ages, but that was enough to really worry us that it might not stop.. We finally managed to take advantage of a minor wind recess and crawled to the base of the viewpoint. From there it was a very steep way down through the rocks and a fantastic view. About an hour away from base, we bumped into a PUMA!!! We were walking and Gregory was in front. I saw the puma walking in front of us about 30 m away, I said to Gregory un puma, un puma!! Gregory turns round and says yeah right!! When he realised that I was extracting my camera and pointing in front of him, Mr Bonds finally bothered to turn and look ahead and realise it was no joke!!! It just looked at us for a few seconds and continued walking down his path, completely uninterested. I managed to take a picture but I moved the image, I guess between the hurry and the fear!! Well I was not sure if I was supposed to be scared or not, the puma was not coming towards us and it is not huge (maybe 150 cm in length?). In fact, I wanted to move up a bit closer for a better picture, very discreetly of course, but I think Gregory guessed my thoughts and yelled not to even think about following the bloody puma!! Well it seems that we were exceptionally lucky, puma sightings are extremely rare.

I am being kicked out of the Internet shop as it is closing