My dear camera died during the Nahuel Huapi trek and noone in the whole republic of Argentina can repair it, I am told. What a perfect excuse for spending some money I may or may not have on a new and really good camera. My friends Erna and Mordur in New York are checking if its's possible for them to buy me one there and send it to Ushuaia in Argentina (which is, it so happens, a duty-free zone). A Canon EOS 2000 sounds beautiful. It's a shame though that Fitz Roy will have to be photographed with an instant camera... hope I get a good camera before the boat to the Antarctic!

Ok, we didn't do the hard and exposed part of the Nahuel Huapi trek, even if we spent one whole day (the perfect day I started telling you about in the last post) checking it out. From the mountain pass the day before it looked steep, then in the morning as we were looking at it from maybe a kilometer away it looked definitely doable, and from very close up we saw that the snow was at least 70 degrees steep. And, if you fall, you fall staight down some impressive rock faces into a nice and pretty little lagoon, still frozen with some electric blue water peering out though the cracks in the ice. A few (or many, probably many) dozens of meters. Every fibre in my body said NO. No way I'm doing this with not even an ice axe in my hand. So, we abandoned the try and spent the afternoon enjoying the views and our old bread, with manjar (sweet, condensed milk), cheese and mortadela. Just about everything is good when you're hungry. Absolutely amazing.

Now we're heading south, Fitz Roy in Glaciares National Park is next stop. We is, btw, Arnon and I; we decided to do more treks together and we'll probably be traveling together at least as far as Ushuaia. Which is, probably, the place I'll be spending Christmas. Christmas would be something new for Arnon, he's never experienced Christmas. Can you just imagine that??? I don't want to imagine life without Christmas... A lot of backpackers meet in Ushuaia for X-mas and it's said to be great. Maybe I'll meet a Swiss couple there I met first in Villarrica, it was them who told me about the X-mas gathering. Then again, we may not make it to Ushuaia in time, and then maybe I'll find out what's it like to spend Christmas in Fitz Roy. Why all this fuss about Christmas anyway???

Well, looks like I'll have to be nice now and hand the computer over to Gadi (another Israeli). The Internet is free here at Bolsa del Deporte... they are just wonderful people here. Really feels like home. Arnon and I are hitchhiking down south and the owner's wife, Nery, is going to give us the first ride, to the outskirts of Bariloche. Just like that. It's so amazing that when hitch-hiking, you always meet such incredibly nice people. They feed you, give you a lift (sometimes even much further than they intented to go), they even give you their Chilean road atlas... do we deserve all this??? Life's soooooo good.