Butch Cassidy’s Hideout

After an interminable day of hardly moving in airline terminals, we finally got to Hotel Sierra Nevada in El Calafate, after dark. The flight was only 3.5 hours.

But the hotel is sublime. It has 2 pc’s nearly always free and free push bikes, but a little more modern than Butch Cassidy’s. It’s the first place we’ve stayed where it’s absolutely quiet while sleeping.

We had rescheduled our excursion to Perito Moreno glacier so we could squeeze in the Mount Fitzroy NP at El Chalten. We had a four hour hike in wondrous beech forest covered mountains with lakes, snow capped peaks, valleys, autumn leaves, wow. My back was fine, even when Tricia turned me into pack mule on our race back so we didn’t miss the bus. It was all ascending on the way in and all descending on the way back. My knees now hurt much more than my back.

We had a brief restroom/restaurant stop at La Leona. It turns out that Butch and Sundance hid out in this very building for a while.

We got back to El Calafate after dark so we still have little idea what this place looks like.

We were exhausted but had to walk to the ATM for more cash. Tricia made a valiant bid to avoid by remarking “You know how challenged you are at the ATM normally, how are you going to be when you’re drunk?”. Each step was torturous for our knees.