Meat finally! 12/27
Up at a casual 6:30 in our private room that the hosts were so nice to arrange for us- they kicked out some German dudes so we go could have it. Andy cooked Chorizo and eggs and we drank our bubbly water and yummy milk. We packed all our gear and headed for the 8:30 bus to El Calafaté. The lines to get out of Chile and into Argentina probably took us a couple hours. Now back in the bus for another 4-5 and time for a nap.
I napped most of the way, sweating on Andy as I slept in his lap in the hotbox in the back of the bus. We arrived at El Calfaté around 2 and took a short walk to our hostel, Hospedaje Laurto. We had a private room w bunk beds. The host was extremely nice and she told us bout the town, tried to get us reservations at the fancy famous restaurant, La Tablita. I wasn't down w eating a huge meat meal at 11 since we have a 8 bus ride to El Chatén. No worries, this town is full of parillas.
We headed out to get some money in Ar $ so we were looking for the cambio guys in the street who were supposed to give a good exchange rate. No luck. We tried to withdrawal $ from an ATM, no luck. Ok now what do we do. The lady at our hostel told us there was one ATM we could use in town since we have a Visa. Success, we took out only 800 because I thought the exchange rate was at 1:3.7 from a stupid old guide book. We walked around town and thought the prices were crazy high, even for US standards. This town is even more touristy than PN.
We headed to the nature reserve to look at some Flamingos. Since I still thought the exchange rate was terrible, I couldn't believe they wanted $25 to get in, so we looked from the outside. The sky was clear and blue, the sun shinning bright. We walked along the edge of the town near the reserve and the lake. We saw several horses walking around, free from a being fenced in. We were tired, physically and mentally trying to get $$ and figure out why everything was so expensive. We hit up the grocery store for out trip to Fitz Roy the next day then headed out for dinner.
At 6 we went to the nearby restaurant Zaine and drank some Tempranillo outside in the warm sun. Thinking the wine was $50, and we didn't have much more cash on hand, we drank slowly. We saw the dude from Chicago and he stopped by to chat. He mentioned he was just using USD and getting a 1:10 exchange rate. I didn't know what he was talking about. Finally we headed inside for dinner when the sun was no longer hitting us. Andy was so stoked to eat, he was ready to order. I wanted to see the menu- when I asked the waitress for it I thought Andy's head was going to explode because everything takes longer when eating in a restaurant outside the US. We quickly ordered, I the braised lamb, Andy the churasco Argentino. We started w some fresh bread w lentil dip and drank the delicious wine. Then the food arrived. The lamb fell off the bone it was so tender. Andy groaned w enjoyment w each bite he took, it was everything we had waited and hoped for. I did the conversion calculation for the flights we looked at earlier that day and realized it is a 1:8.3 conversion this whole time and we would better rates in the stores vs the ATM. Dammit! Good thing we only took out $80 instead of the $250 we thought. Haha idiot.
After the best meal ever, we wet back to the hostel to plan the rest of our trip and drink the shitty wine I thought was $12 but was only $3. We wanted to go to Ushuaia but I didn't trust not having a bus ticket back to PA and the flights down there were $300 each. Finally we decided to push out our return from Fitz Roy out an extra day and take the bus back to PA. We were running up against things shutting down on New Years and I'm getting nervous about making our 6:30 plane in PA on 1/2. Lots of decisions to make before we leave in the am.