Day 64 hike to Argentina

Today is one of the highlights of the trip. We are going to cross the border from Chile to Argentina on foot: the only to get further South!

It's 130 km including the following: 7 km on bus, 55km on boat, 22 km on foot, another 8km on boat and finally 37km in a last bus! This map (from villaohiggins.com) shows the way.

Everything starts at 7am with the first boat to cross the lake O'higgins.

There's even a gas heating in the boat because the air is freezing cold.

After a couple of hours on the boat, we start to have views on the glaciers coming from the Southern Icefield: the largest icefield on the continent, and in fact the largest in the world after Antartica and Greenland!

We also have our first glance on the Fitz Roy Mount, which will be our "guide" for the day. It is the spiky mount in the middle of the image.

After going through Chilean immigration, we start our walk to the border. As we don't have that much time, we have to be rushing if we want to catch the last boat.

We can't get our eyes off of the Fitz Roy in front of us over the valley!

The hike is very nice, and in the whole day, we just met another 2 people in the opposite direction.

We finally reach the border (15km) after 3 and a half hours without any break under the sun! As we are ok with time, we allow us a lunch break...

To reach the other lake and the Argentinian immigration, we have another hour downhill through the forest.

Tired but happy, we reach the last bus going to El Chalten, our destination for today.

The contrast with Villa O'higgins is huge, and Jorge from the campsite was right: there was 20 tourists in Villa O'higgins, and here there are at least 2000, although it is a small village! And of course, here you find everything, from internet cafe, to great restaurants!

We were extremely tired after this long journey!

Inside the hostel there was this sign in spanish and "english"... good example of latinamerican english!