Finally Patagonian weather

The Patagonian weather was now definatly closing in for the winter so we headed up to El Chalten hoping that we'd still be able to get one last trek session in before it was too late. On the way up the bus broke down leaving us stranded in the middle of nowhere for a couple of hours before help finally arrived! We pulled into the small town of El Chalten in the pouring of rain – all that good luck with the weather at Torres now seems an age ago! Roads looked more like small rivers, the sky was grey and there was no visible sign of the mountain range we'd come here to explore. Rob and Gemma headed off to the campsite (the hardy fools) and we headed straight to the warmth and dryness of a hostal, well ok Shona had some work to finish so we didn’t completely wimp out! Although it did continue to rain for the next 24 hours so I think we were the sensible ones. We finally got out trekking the following day and headed off into the hills hoping that this small break in the weather would last. We trekked straight out to a small lake and very windy glacier, having lunch hiding behind rocks to keep out of the cold before trekking over to the base of mount Fitz Roy where we said hi again to Rob and Gemma plus another couple we'd meet on the way here before setting up our tent. We'd hired a tent in town which we soon realised after clambering in to settle down for the night was broken! The inner zip to the main compartment wouldn't close fully and then if wouldn't close at all after I tried "to fix it" – oh how we laughed!! Well ok there was a small bit of tension first before the laughter! So as the cold night air filled the tent we tucked ourselves into our sleeping bags still wearing all our clothes and tried to get some sleep for the night. Didn't really work though, it was freezing, memories of Aconcagua came rushing back – why do we do these things! Anyway bright and early and with the pressing need for a wee I finally braved getting out of the sleeping bag to be welcomed by a couple of centimetres of snow, was really lovely way to wake up but kind of explained why it was sooo cold in the night! We sat in our broken tent porch munching warm porridge before packing up. We wanted to trek higher and get a better view of the Fitz Roy peaks but the climb up is supposedly dangerous when its raining so we thought it safer to not try in the snow – plus you couldn't actually see them anyway! By mid-morning the snow fall had turned to heavy rain and the lovely white blanket on the floor was being washed away. Wet and cold we decided may be it was best to head back to town again as another nights camping in a broken tent didn't sound that appealing.