The Wind & The Rain

On Wednesday we awoke to another windy & rainy day, so we had a slow morning & drank the now-standard two cups of coffee each as we read and did a little organizing around the apartment. After a walk to the grocery, we both packed up our duffel bags a bit and tried to get things in good shape for our eventual departure to Calafate, and subsequent flight to Buenos Aires. During the packing time, Isaac found a boxed cake mix that he & Justin had picked up a few weeks back, adn we decided we'd have to bake it today. We had pretty minimal baking tools (no measure cups, to real baking dish, and were missing some ingredients), but we went for it anyways -- The result was a very mediocre cake, which was slightly burnt due to the finicky oven, but we considered it a success!

After snacking around and trying to pack a little more, we decided to go check out the bouldering gym in the northern part of town! I hadn't been yet and, although I was super sore from the previous day of bouldering, I was psyched to check it out. The gym was awesome -- pretty crusty with old holds & old walls, but such a blast. It's so fun checking out gyms in different places and realizing that the climbing community is pretty much the same everywhere. The kids climbing team was practicing and, similar to in Boulder, the kids were all way stronger than us. We spent a few hours playing add-on and making up routes, taking plenty of rest and just hanging out. Eventually we were super wrecked and decided to head over to Fresco Bar for a burger and a beer.

On the way out of the gym we spotted some birds swimming in a little pond. Since we'd recently watched the birding documentary LISTERS, we now consider ourselves somewhat into the birding scene. The birds appeared to be Upland Geese, which I had already seen and added to my Merlin "Life List" (a Cornell app for tracking bird species) -- Isaac wasn't there when I saw them, so he went over to snag a picture for proof & official identification lol. In classic small-town Chaltén fashion, we heard someone yell our names & looked over to see a crew of familiar faces climbing on a huge boulder just behind the pond! It was Kawika who had hollered down, climbing with Katy, Miles, and a few of their other friends. Kawika was trying a SUPER tall boulder and asked if we could help spot him on his next attempt. He cruised it, and we were all a bit nervous spotting. It was a pretty dynamic boulder with huge fall potential, but he had no problem. We then said our goodbyes and wandered down main street towards Fresco bar!

Fresco Bar is a place I'd heard much talk about, but hadn't been to yet. Isaac told me that it's the classic location for a post-weather-window "spray down", meaning where you go to loudly talk about the epic things you just climbed. "Spraying" is a fairly negative term in climbing, usually referring to someone who non-consenually tells you about how badass the thing they just climbed (or are trying to climb) is. Friend-spray is typically acceptable, as your good pals usually love to hear what you did, but spraying to strangers is looked down upon. So that being said, Fresco Bar is the modern spot to get a beer and talk extra loud about how rad you are (which is kind of a joke, but also seems to have some truth to it). The burger was a pretty awesome smashburger-style & hit the spot after the long bouldering session. After the burger & beer, we went home for the evening to relax, pack a bit more, and finish our current documentary "The Act of Killing" (which is an absolutely insane modern discussion about the killing [genocide/politicide] of around 1 million people in Indonesia in the 1960s).

The next morning, Thursday, Isaac and I separated for a breakfast: he was going to grab some eggs & veggies while I went to get a final batch of chipas from Lo de Haydee. After eating a truly sickening amount of chipas over the past few weeks, like a pound a day some days, we still hadn't decided which ones were our favorite in town. To our surprise, this final batch (fresh and warm in the morning) ended up being BY FAR the best batch of chipas of the entire trip! Warm, fluffy, just chewy enough... I could eat like 10 of these every morning for the rest of my life. It's hard to describe the flavor and texture, but holy smokes I was truly addicted to them by this point.

We ate some breakfast, Isaac did some work, I read some Lonesome Dove, and before long it was time for lunch. Isaac had been wanting to go back to Aonikenk to try there lamb empanadas again and we though that'd be a perfect final lunch in town. These things blew the previous empanadas I'd had out of the water (except for MAYBE the fried guanaco empanada w Isaac's parents) and they actually came with a semi-spicy salsa! Most food in Chaltén is pretty brand, so when you can find some spicy sauce/salsa you gotta take advantage of the opportunity and use it all. Great lunch, and one of my favorite front doors in Chaltén!

We wandered back home after the late lunch to shower & finalize the packing. Our bus to Calafate was leaving at 10am the next morning, so we were hoping to pack & clean & prepare ourselves for minimal work in the morning which was pretty easy. Isaac has to colleague from the New Hampshire in town and, though they'd never met, planned on getting a beer that evening. Sometime around 10pm we walked back over to meet Brady at Fresco Bar and it turns out we'd actually been bouldering with him the previous day! We just hadn't made the connection. Since Fresco Bar is apparently the place to be, we saw some familiar faces: Felipe from CO, Flavie, and none other than Tommy Caldwell himself drinking a beer in the back. Hanging and having a few beers, chatting about climbing & life & whatnot, was a pretty ideal way to spend the final night!

Friday morning was pretty casual -- shower, eat breakfast, take out the trash, and then out to the road for the bus! The bus to Calafate was smooth and absolutely stunning. Clear skis & lots of guanacos out and about. We made a quick bathroom stop at the same hotel we stopped by on the way in and I got to read a bit more about Route 40, the major highway that runs north to south through Argentina (some cool details below). The Calafate airport on the other hand... an absolute nightmare. Apparently there had a been a country-wide transportation strike the day prior, so we arrived to a chaotic scene. Though we'd arrived 3 hours early, we ended up being in line for probably 2 of those hours just to check our bags. When I landed here at the start of the trip, there were about 5 people in the entire airport, so seeing hundreds of people waiting was surprising. We eventually got the bags checked and then only had a short wait until boarding. I slept a lot on the flight, reading Lonesome Dove during my few waking moments, so before I knew it we were landing in Buenos Aires for our 3 days in the city at Paulo's!