"We all love the mountains, but the mountains don't give a fuck about us."

We parked the car up at a friend's house who lives near the start of the five hour hike up to the Hielo Azul refugio, it was a fine day with just a few clouds covering the sun that left alone would definitely have made us too hot. Christian and Mariana came with us about an hour up the mountain where we shared some mates before they went back home and we continued our never ending struggle of carrying ourselves and our twenty something kilos of gear.

We got to the refugio - supposively meant to be a mountain shelter - about three or four hours later, it was getting cold and the night was setting in, as we arrived a woman came out to charge us for our stay and it was fifteen pesos just to set up at a tent. That price didn't include anything at all, not even a cold shower or some dry firewood - it sucked.

We spent about two hours trying to make a fire which when started would just be consumed by the humidity and cold (well below freezing). We cooked up some rice and sausages and crawled into our tents, we decided we were going to leave as soon as we got up, going to the mountain was meant to be an escape from money and the system, but had just been charged for fuck all.

We went down to town that next morning and spent the day in El Bolson, we decided to climb the local C. Piltrikitron which is about 2260m asl and offers the best view of the town almost directly above it, as we had a fine day with literally no clouds we could also see a few peaks that were further away such as C. Tronador (3400m and about 100km away).

That night was spent at the local cervezeria drinking some of the local brews with some other people we met on the summit, they were traveling by bus and sleeping in hostels, but we found enough in common to keep the conversation up.

I wanted, before we headed back to Bariloche, to climb C. Perito Moreno, this is a mountain that was pretty much facing my front gate when i was nine or ten years old and i've always wanted to climb it, we headed down to the base and woke up nice and early for the at least 10 hour climb, but we were faced with a miserable sky covered in heavy rainclouds. Now back at El Bolson the WiFi at the YPF gas station is telling us the weather won't improve until next week, so we will most probably head back today and enjoy the comfort of a nice bed.

Although we didn't fulfill our intentions of visiting more of the refugios around the area, i found out these are left inhabited in the winter, and they have to leave them open to the public. I plan to head to one of them and spend a nice week chilling in a winter wonderland come July or August.

That's all for now,
Santiago.