Who needs paved roads anyway? (I do.)

A preface to this story is that when we were in Iguazu Falls, our first stop in Argentina, Matt and I both bought memberships to Hosteling International. We hadn't stayed in many HI hostels in previous countries, but there are tons of affiliated hostels in Argentina and they offer discounts on rooms as well as various activities and bus tickets. We realized we would make up the membership fee by the time we were out of BA and we have been staying at HI hostels ever since. It's been really convenient because they will actually call and book your bed in the next city ahead for you and they have always had internet, free breakfast, though I am fairly certain I will never have cornflakes, bread and Tang again after this trip. At times they have also provided other amenities such as free airport transfers to the hostel and are always able to sell you bus tickets or book day trips without having to go to six different agents around town. Overall, it's been a worthy investment, saved us a bunch of money and made the travel planning itself a lot easier.

Enter: El Chalten. The bus ride was only about three and a half hours from El Calafate. The new paved road to El Chalten is all the rage and everyone keeps saying that “changes are a-coming” now that it takes approximately one-third of the time to get here than it before. Well, not all change is bad, people.

We arrived at the hostel to find out that it was a little more expensive than the last couple. Then we find out that they don't have free internet and they will not give you the Wi-Fi password even though you were intelligent enough to bring your own laptop because it was really important to you to stay in touch with your North American people. They have the audacity to charge three pesos (almost $1) for 15 minutes on the computer, eight of which are spent sitting in total and utter frustration as you wait for a page to load before you give up and let the person in your party with patience take over. In the same breath that I inquired about the internet I asked about getting out of this town. Apparently this hostel is also owned by a travel company and they will only sell you bus tickets that cost 400 pesos and do not go overnight. This is unheard of. They actually stop in a town halfway between here and Bariloche and let you pay another 50 pesos each for a bed. The whole point of a 30 hour bus ride is to do half of it while asleep and also save the money you would be paying to sleep in a bed. She tells us there is another bus company in town but she knows nothing about it. Obviously.

The next morning we wake up bright and early, hungry for cornflakes and Tang since we missed dinner the night before. Only, there is no free breakfast like every other hostel we have stayed at in Argentina, there is only a cup of coffee for 10 pesos and breakfast for 25. At this point we were pretty annoyed with the place so we took our breakfast business elsewhere. Then we went to the other bus station and promptly purchased a ticket to Bariloche for 300 pesos that leaves at 11:00 pm and goes overnight two nights in a row, saving us two nights lodging. Boo-ya. And also, two nights in a row on a bus: yikes. This will be a first, but there was no way the bad hostel was getting any more of our money.

We decide to also spend this day exploring the town of El Chalten. The absolute only thing there is to do here is hike and since this bus only leaves on even-numbered days we had plenty of time to spare. The road, my friends, may have been paved, but from the looks of it, the work was completed the day before we arrived. This is probably the smallest little town we have been to yet which means there are fewer places to stay and those fewer places cost more money or are closed for winter. There are a few restaurants and shops, most of which are closed indefinitely and those that are open close between the hours of noon and 5:00 pm because apparently their business plans did not specify making money as a goal.

After looking at a few of the menus around town quoting ridiculous prices we went to the grocery store to pick up stuff to cook for dinner and also pack for lunch when we go on a hike. The grocery store was a pretty sad little place. All of the fruit and vegetables had sad, rotten looking faces, obviously protesting living in this town as well. We got some (what turned out to be disgusting, watery) yogurt, (what turned out to be disgusting, melted sugar-like) juice and some pasta, canned tomatoes, canned corn, lentils, some suspect sausage and some delicious preservative-filled alfajors. I don't think we have talked much about alfajors yet, but they are the cookie of choice in Argentina and ridiculously delicious. They are cake-y cookies, with layers of dulce de leche in between and covered in chocolate and really what could be bad about that? Nada. There are as many brands of alfajors as you can dream, and we have been working hard to find our favorites (so far, cousin Anna called it with the Havana alfajor, yum.)

I digress. We tried to find a new hostel but the other two HI hostels were booked solid and ever other hostel was a stinky, dirty mess or way out of our price range. Found the one ATM in town, chased some stray dogs, and walked around town multiple times before we gave up and headed back to our abode, whipped ourselves up a decent dinner and planned for a six-hour hike to Lago Torre the next day so far unimpressed with this town, paved road and all.