Here, as before, a reposting with pictures to illustrate: Days 39–42: Monday April 4 – Thursday April 7: Mountain Mellowness, Gastric Distress The Islandsis Hostel in El Chalten, where we were staying, was a modern and friendly place. We freshened up the evening we arrived and headed out for dinner.Since it was Tikka and Dario’s last night with us, we toasted them off and gave them our thanks. Then we returned to the hostel. In the morning,masked by an eye-popping display of morning alpenglow over Fitzroy, our troubles began. Earlier that week, when we had sighted the first family of rheas running across the steppes, there had been some jokes – well, yes, perhaps tasteless – made about possible names for the Rhea family members. One of the so-named sisters, Diar, had already visited Bram, and now in Chalten she was going to visit more of us. Joe and John were taken out the morning after we arrived, which cut down the number of hikers to five. The hike was beautiful, but the team was ailing. Late the next day Greg began to complain of lower gut trouble. Another beautiful hike that day too, with only four hikers. The last day even Steve Jones manifested early signs of Diar-Rhea’s effects. And so we lived in the shadow of the valley of the Rio de Las Vueltas, day to day, three or four of us curled up in bed nursing our ailment, the rest being treated to extraordinary mountain scenes – high lakes with hanging glaciers, changing colors below the snowline, skyline vistas that beggar the Alps. Let the pictures tell the high life story. And so the experience of the team in El Chalten was mixed, and after three days and four nights it was time to move on to El Calafate, where our luck might change. In any event the adventure was nearing its conclusion.
