Christmas in El Chalten!

It was pretty surreal to wake up Christmas morning in Patagonia!  With mountains beckoning outside our window, we got our stuff together and went on a Christmas hike.  Our destination was Laguna Capri.  The weather was...variable, but about as good as it gets in Chalten:  partly sunny, VERY windy, and a few drizzles that didn't seem to last.  The initial climb gets you to a great view of this incredible valley, where we stopped to take a few pictures (some of the best pictures, like this one, were from the way down, but who's counting).

We continued along a very windy ridge and around a loop, until finally reaching Laguna Capri.  We were a little disappointed that some clouds kept lingering around our views of the Fitz Roy, but the other scenery was pretty great too.  Here's Kate enjoying the lake:

On the way down, we stopped for a group photo:

We continued on towards our hostel and prepared for Christmas!  The restaurant we intended to go to for Christmas had lost electricity and appeared to be filling with smoke (?) so we aborted that plan and found another restaurant close by.  We enjoyed a wonderful dinner of Patagonian favorites like Lamb and of course, Malbec.

We headed back to the hostel for present opening time, where we also got to enjoy some delicious Christmas cookies, brought with much love and care with Kate from Utah!  Special shout-out to her for helping make my husband's Christmas dreams come true.  He really loves the specific cookies that are a tradition in the Youmans family and this made it feel a little more like home!

We actually had quite a lot of presents to open, considering being thousands of miles from home! Special thanks to the Youmans parents and grandparents for remembering us and sending presents via Kate!  And to my parents for their gift to us. We certainly missed celebrating with you all.

As for the gifts we got each other, well....let's just say, we definitely made the most of what we had. Sample wrapping paper included pages of ski magazines, grocery bags, and airplane barf bags.  Some of our favorite gifts included the sweet white hats we got for Kate and Kate and Scott's recorder.

We had a very memorable Christmas in El Chalten, and looked forward to more hiking in the days to come.