Our days in Chalten and the surrounding Fitzroy Mountains are certainly some of the most wonderful I can ever remember. The town, as I mentioned on our first visit, is small and quaint and charming, but has an edge given to it by the universal passion for adventure. We stay (in between camping on the mountain) at fairly gritty but comfortable enough hostels, where we meet some entertaining people from Canada and Australia. One girl who has just bought a little puppy (interesting choice while backpacking) and another guy from
an unspecified location who is of such an extremist branch of religion (really not sure which) that he can't drive, read, buy groceries, or use a light switch OR (and this led to some
Confusion) ask someone to do any of these things for him. He would come into our room and say I can't turn on the light In the bathroom. 
Would you like me to do it? Casey responded. 
I didn't say that. He snapped. And we eventually figured out what was going on.
There was also an Israeli guy who insisted that traveling solo was better, and persistently tried to convince Casey to start traveling alone. Casey responded that he had travelled
alone and he did in fact really like traveling with his companion. The guy then tried to convince us to travel with him, which seemed a bit hypocritical.  Other than that it was your fairly standard mix of upbeat and interesting hostellers. 
One morning I rose early and thoroughly explored Chalten. A beautiful rainbow (a full arc, so rare!!) crossed the cloudy tempestuous sky, and I wandered through the sleepy village. It had by now (mid April) mostly shut down for the season, but there were some interesting nooks and crannies. I bought a copy of as you like it (amusingly one of the only books in English, but more than adequate for a shakespearophile like me) because I had run out of books. I ended up at the service station (only place with wifi in town, and the satellite was broken) drinking pear juice with a really cool girl from Australia. 
She had come from where we were going to, and vice versa, so we got to exchange advice, recommendations, etc. 
As far as food went, we rewarded ourselves with massive meals after long days of hiking with huge feasts at the Cerveceria (honestly one of the best meals I can remember, due to great beer and food and utter exhaustion) and at a little pizza joint in town, where we consumed enough food to feed about 7 people (we had walked about 15 miles that day to be fair). When we were in the mountains, we traveled light, eating mostly pasta and powdered soup and coffee, and the occasional pastry from La Panaderia Nieve (our favorite pastry shop, and makers of the best alfajores so far). 
But these are all side notes when it comes to Chalten, because 90% of our time there was spent hiking and exploring the mountains, valleys, and lakes of the national park. The first day we hiked up to Laguna Torre, at the foot of Cerro Torre, an incredible toothy crag, which is very hard to spot due to constant cloud cover. The peak was stunning to see, and even more so knowing that it is one of the hardest to scale in the world. The lake at its foot was a windswept icy steel grey mass, and the wind blew directly off the glacier at the opposite end. We camped in a little riverbank glade on the borderline between the wooded valley and the barren rocky mountainside. The campsite was idyllic, and almost deserted, and a glacier fed river swept by loudly and comfortingly at all hours. We ate well despite the fact that i spilled our first attempt at boiling water, and scurried into our tent while it was still light, due to the biting cold. But as we lay in bed that night, our minds flickered with images of the forest we had walked through that morning. It is on of the most beautiful I have ever seen in my life. Along with the alpine woods of ehrwald and the terrain on Stubbs Ranch it is literally the loveliest forest I have known. It is autumn in Argentina now, and the trees have transformed rapidly into blazing reds, oranges, and golds. Really brilliant colors, an aided by the sunshine, and the fact that the small leaves allowed plenty of light to filter through. The trees range in size from tiny dense little clusters of saplings to vast strands that feel as old as time. The only description that seemed to fit was JRR Tolkein's description of the magical wood of Lothlorien. I won't misquote it here, but the essence, of timeless youth and beauty, of still serene perfection broken only by the rustle of a breeze or the gurgle of a stream, and the fierce flames that seemed to burn in the incendiary colors of the leaves as one walked, sun dappled, through soft green grass, was hard not to feel. It was a place of such utter exquisite perfection that we couldn't help but be inspired by it. We wanted to paint, write poetry, compose symphonies, odes, homages to this place. And the light, relentlessly divine, endlessly pleasing to the eye. Taking photos felt futile because once the camera was out everything needed to be captured, everything was photogenic. It was dreamlike, ethereal, something that couldn't possibly be, but was. 

When I woke in the morning I was filled with excitement to be where I was (a good feeling to have in the morning). I climbed up to a rocky overlook just above the campsite and looked up at the mountains and down over the valley. Casey eventually joined me and we enjoyed the sunshine, the panoramas, and the relentless wind (which we have come to recognize as Patagonia's defining feature). After a breakfast of soup and coffee we set off. We dunked our heads in the first stream we came to, then dunked them
again and again, the bitter coldness irresistible. We walked on in sunshine, shirtless, glacial water a respite from the heat, our bags almost weightless as we seemed to glide through the woods "over hill and through dale" taking a different path back to Chalten  (where we would recharge our batteries before being drawn relentlessly back into the mountains). The endless amounts of fallen trees occasionally brought to mind an elephant graveyard, but other than that this was, to us, still pure Lorien. We eventually arrived at a pair of lakes Lagos Madre y Hija, and, drawn by still blazing sun, blue water, and a soft pebbly beach, we threw down our packs and ran into the water, tumbling  off a steep dropoff that sent instantly from ankle depth to about 10 feet deep. The swim, and the sun basking which followed it, were delightful, and then we were back on our way, through the loveliest woodland we had yet seen. We paused by another lake as the day started to wind down, rolled up our jeans and waded around. We ran into a few girls who had been "following" us, or rather had stayed at the same hostel and been on the same trails repeatedly and so we introduced ourselves and made more new friends (Australians, again). Then we sat by the lake in the fading light, almost unable to understand, or come to terms with, the incomparable beauty of our surroundings. 

Our second expedition into the Fitzroys brought us back to Lago Capri (site of my infamous nude snow swim) where there was a nice deserted campsite. We arrived early in the afternoon and then climbed to the top of the hill to have lunch. We settled in a glade, sheltered from wind and bathed in sun that wad so utterly idyllic that we did not move from it, even when the empanadas and pastries were finished, even after mate and a snack of green tea, even after a sweet sunny nap, we did not leave that perfect glen, but sat there, our backs to a tree, writing and reading and talking and basking in the moment. The moment lasted until the sun went down and we retreated to make dinner. The glade, I should add (and I'm not embarrassed by the multiple lord of the rings references) was, if anything, comparable to the spot where frodo sits reading in the heart of the Shire at the very beginning of the story. Yes, that perfect. 
Before making dinner we walked to a lookout rock and watch the sun set of Cerro Fitzroy, famous symbol of the Glacial mountains and another famous conquest for mountain climbers. Fitzroy is incredible difficult to see (always covered by clouds) so we were extremely lucky. Dinner was again, simple and again, delicious. Afterwards we wandered though pitch darkness, letting our eyes adjust, to the edge of the lake, and sat their looking at brilliant stars and the moon-bathed silhouette of Fitzroy, by now like an old friend. Though Casey tried to scare us both with imitations of old Greg coming out of the lake, the whole thing was utterly still and peaceful, and more calming and sleep-inducing than anything I can imagine. 
The next morning we rose late and ate the rest of our supplies, packed up and left our packs hidden in our glade, and hiked (traveling light and quick) to Lago de Los Tres. This is the nearest point to the might Fitz, and the toughest hiking in the park. The first couple hours were standard trekking but the final hour was a steep uphill climb, almost hand over hand over slippery uneven rocks. Signs along the way warned not to attempt unless you were a very experienced hiker with very good equipment. And definitely not to attempt in snow or high wind. Well it wasn't snowing but for wind, well, I can't imagine it getting much higher. But we braved the treacherous climb and finally, after a long slog, found ourselves at the strangely still lake surrounded by looming glaciers, with the mighty mountain rising ominously and powerfully above us. By now it was late afternoon and, after relishing the spot for half an hour, we descended, and returned to lago Capri at forced march pace. And that, considering how fast our normal hiking pace is, is extremely fast. We descended into Chalten that evening utterly exhausted, having hiked what the park estimated to be 8 hours of hiking in a mere 4 and a half. Which is not half bad, in our humble opinion, and certainly deserving of a large feast as a reward. After dinner we hung out at the service station (definitely Not the nicest part of town, but not unbearable) and then got our things together and boarded a late night bus north. As I write this we are on thar bus bumping along slowly on the famous Patagonian Route 40 (which is, for a large part, unlaced). We are making our way north to the cheerful hippie town of El Bolson and from their to the lakeside tourist city of Bariloche. The bus is supremely comfortable and packed with all manner of interesting people, but the long hours are uncomfortably reminiscent of that greyhound trip all those months ago...