more walks

The weather gods really do love me, and now i can see why everyone raves about bariloche. When the clouds go away there are an awful lot more lakes and mountains than I gave the area credit for! Its absolutely stunning and everywhere you look there is a better view. So to take it all in I decided I was going to hike up a mountain today! ha! Unfortunately as I dont do much hiking upwards (and to be fair not much more on flat ground) I am not really sure of my limits. So 800m uphill, with an average walk time of 2.5hrs didnt sound unreasonable. But this was of course with amnesia of my Fitz Roy hike where a rise of about half that nearly killed me.

So off I set today with a girl staying my hostel who i met whilst trying to buy tickets out of calafate and had a lovely bus ride through gorgeous scenery. Then we got to the trail, and within 5 mins i was dying! Didnt help that she was really quite fit and I dont think she believed me when i said i liked to walk slowly. Did enjoy it in a mad, masochistic way, especially coming back down, and the views definately made it worth it. Well, I say made it worth it.....naturally didnt make it to the refugio I was aiming for! After an hour of climbing up we saw it......it wsa a very long way away still and a very long way up, and my legs gave way. So we had our sandwiches and came down again. But still feel glad I did the bit i did....reckon we got up about 500m so am improving!!!!! And have some nice pics which i will post when i get my cable. And of course this did all give me an excuse to eat some of the gorgeous chocolate they make here.

Okay, think there is some communal cooking going on in the hostal tonight which i am meant to be helping with, hope they mean chopping as obviously can do nothing else! Anyway, this all means I have to get back now to pretend to help!