A Gluttony of Views: The Fitz Roy Hike

Sangre!

We crawled back to the hostel with an enormous sense of accomplishment. Just a few hours ago, we had woken up before sunrise (albeit a much later Patagonian sunrise), and rode along the majestic Routa Cuarenta to arrive at a desolate town, and now with a pink sunset looming ahead of us, we were returning from one of the most scenic hikes we had ever experienced. Europeans be damned! We were proud.

So, of course, even before we had a chance to wipe the snow from our shoes, we heard a chorus of singsongy voices coming from above.

“HI!!”

We looked up and there on the duplex were our European friends, all smiles, all showered and clean. They were fluttering their three mid-fingers at us and sporting goofy grins.

“Holy shit, when did you guys get back?” Allison asked.

“Oh, about five hours ago,” Justin said in his trademark deadpan voice, making to look at the pretend watch on his wrist. You could never tell when he was kidding or not.

He was in flip-flops and shorts, holding a mug of the chocolate caliente that I had noticed earlier. I could smell the good shampoo smell, spot the wet toe-hairs, and feel the steam rising from his pores.

“We lapped those Danish girls twice – once on the way and then back!” Kristina beamed.

“Yeah, and they’re still not back!” Seamus chuckled, and we all joined in.

All bragging aside, even they couldn’t take away from the euphoria of our adventure. They scampered down the staircase and began to speak simultaneously.

“Noticed how it cleared up right when we got there?” “Did you guys see those puma footprints near the second lake?” “Um, did you see Seamus’s footprints leading us off the edge of a CLIFF?”

The hostel owners, Eduardo and Maria, watched us from the bar like proud parents. This was their land. They lived here! Behind them stood a menagerie of alcoholic beverages and Argentine beers, happiness conserved into 1-liter bottles just waiting for a moment like this to be consumed. All over the world people were in quest of this — and they were right there, sparkling and glistening inside of a small clear-doored refrigerator in near clusters and rows.

We excused ourselves for showers and agreed to meet back up for dinner.

***

Carnivores that have had the pleasure would agree that steak is good. Add to it, Argentine steak is very good. But Argentine steak at the end of a long day of hiking in the Patagonian wilderness is something else entirely. We ordered the biggest cut on the menu. We weren’t ordering from a famous steakhouse in New York City or Paris or even one of many notorious parrillas in Buenos Aires. We were only at a simple hostel in Patagonia, in the only restaurant in the entire town that was even open. But we ordered like kings. When the waiter/bartender/receptionist/concierge/laundryman asked us how we wanted it, we didn’t hesitate.

“Raro!”

“Como raro?”

“Raro!”

“Ahh… Sangre!”

It was enormous. It was mindblowing. And it was cheap as hell. Served with two fried eggs on top, we savored every juicy strand of meat and sopped up every drip of sangre with chunky potato fries. I even chewed the small strands of fat to suck out the flavor and then spat it out. Never had a table full of barely legal meat been consumed as fast, and as heartily, as ours went down. Beers helped. As we cleaned house with our battle-axe utensils, we almost didn’t notice the vegetarian German girl who was unexcitedly shaving off a block of cheese onto her spaghetti.

Justin was the first to finish. He was first at everything. Throwing down his napkin, he yelled three ceremonious words to sum it all up: Bloody. Fucking. Hell.”

In each episode of the great Food Network series “A Cook’s Tour,” the famous chef and writer, Anthony Bourdain traveled from city to city “in search of the perfect meal.” His observations were that a perfect meal wasn’t the most expensive, most elaborately prepared, or one cooked by the most famous chef. The perfect meal was what you would crave moments before you were to take a sit on the electric chair. The perfect meal could be your mother’s macaroni and cheese or an oyster from the sea. Or it just may be a very good piece of meat in the emptiest — but by far not the loneliest — town in the world.

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