Last night after the epic bike journey and half an hour´s quick internet session I realised when I got home that I´d left my camera in the cafe at closing time. I´d been warned to make sure I always disconnected the cable as soon as I´d finished using it as it´s easy to leave behind. So I disconnected it and left it, attached to the camera, next to the keyboard... Somehow I couldn´t really get that bothered about it as I was fairly sure I would get it back. And sure enough when I went in this morning at about 11.30 (there were no opening times in the window and no sign of life at 9 so I went to the museum first) the girl behind the counter (who wasn´t even the same person who was there last night) presented me with it before I´d even finished my sentence. (´Ayer noche, a dies oras, me olvidé...´). I love this place. Ordered a cappucino to celebrate and she explained that I had to connect my camera to a thingy at the back as the ones at the front don´t work. I´d got that far last night but after finding the usb poort at the back I´m still not getting the right programmes to appear to upload the latest photos so I´m afraid you´ll just have to wait for the scary cave pics (and even scarier ones of me in my desertstorm sunglasses :-)
After consulting various maps and travel agents windows (and a very helpful woman at the more organised hostel next to my anarchic one) I think I´ve just about worked out what I´m doing over the next few days. There´s a Refugio Grey on the Rio Grey next to the Glacier Grey and the Glacier Perro (Dog) so I think I´m going to take the bus into the national park tomorrow and spend a few days there. Including a boat trip over Lago Pehoe and a walk on the glacier. It all sounded horribly expensive when I heard the price in Chilean pesos but when I´d calmed down and converted it more or less to euros it´s much more managable.
But first I want to go to the free orientation trekking lecture which is on at 3 o´clock every afternoon. I had actually made a note of this on one of my earlier wanders through the town but had forgotten about it till I was talking to a very organised Scandinavian last night who had his trip planned down to the last second and who said it was very useful. He´s also going on a boat trip up the coast for 5 days later in the month with his girlfriend which I may see about doing too. I was planning on going to El Calefate (back in Argentina) next but actully I think I´d rather stay in Chile a bit longer. The coast is very like the fjords of Norway (I think, haven´t actually seen much of it yet). It´s probably better to not do too much crossing back and forth over the border as it just costs time spent at check points which I could better spend elsewhere. He also told me that his phone works in Chile whilst it didn´t in Argentina. So tried mine, just for the novelty of being able to send a text from here, but no signal.
