A glacier and some snow too

Hello there

So it´s been a little while since I wrote an update, but that´s not because I haven´t been doing anything. In fact, quite on the contrary- I´ve been so busy (and the internet in the hostel is so slow) that I haven´t had a chance to write anything substantial until now. So here´s a quick update as to what I´ve been up to over the last week.

The four boys and me have mostly been in El Calafate, Argentina, which is the town next to Parque Nacional Los Glaciares. This national park holds a major South American attraction- the Perito Moreno glacier, which is the only glacier in the world that is not shrinking in size. You wouldn´t necessarily know that by looking at it, though, because it´s constantly advancing and chunks break off on a regular basis. I guess it´s unclear how consistently the glacier cleaves off walls of ice, but while we were there we saw three whole walls fall, plus lots of other little pieces. From what I understand from the other Israelis who have been there, that´s an unusually high amount of collapses to witness, so we must have chosen the right rainy, yucky morning to wake up at 5 and go see the glacier.

The other main thing that my friends and I have done in the last few days was a 3 day hike to see the Fitz Roy, which is in a town called El Chalten. This trek is about 2 hours north of El Calafate, and can be done as a day trip, with one night, or more. We, of course, chose to hike more than the average backpacker does, but we got stuck in some pretty crummy weather as well. The Fitz Roy is also a series of towers (torres), like the Torres del Paine, but in my opinion these towers are more impressive. As usual, when I get a chance to upload some pictures, I will, and then you can see the difference between the two. Anyway, so we hiked some other trails besides for just the one to the Fitz Roy, but the second day we stayed in our tents all day because it was rainy and windy and cold, and when we woke up this morning there was snow all around us. Pretty crazy, but the Fitz Roy looked beautiful, once the clouds cleared.

The news on the social front is that the boys and I are parting ways, at least for now. They´re going off to road trip up Ruta 40 (part of Che Guevara´s path in the Motorcycle Diaries), and I´m going to a farm in El Bolson to chill out for a few days with a new friend who I made along the way. Who knows what will be from here, but as I like to say, it´s all part of the adventure.

Now, if I were writing a fictional book based on this trip, this would be the end of Part I of the journey. At this point, you would put down the book (which up until now has been a page turner and have you haven´t put it down since you started reading), you´d take a bathroom break, maybe grab something to eat, and start reading about what happens next, in Part II. I´m not sure yet what Part II holds for me, but as soon as I figure it out, I´ll post and let you all know.

Long post, but I had to make up from some lost time. I´ll make sure to update again soon.