El Chalten, Argentina

After the horror stories we'd heard about Aerolineas Argentinas (the Argentinian installment of TAM), we were pleased to see our bags arrive at El Calafate. Although not quite the end of the earth, the south of Argentina is pretty much as south as you can get without going to Antartica (NB. Ushuaia is actually the southern most city, approx 5 hours south-west of El Calafate). As such, it was cold, very cold, and very windy. Walking from the plane to the terminal was an effort in itself. We chose to transfer immediately to El Chalten as it provided a cheaper and more efficient (read: tightass) location for our itinerary.

Three hours later we were there. In the meantime Sam managed to lose her polar fleece jumper - an essential item for the coming days. El Chalten has an alarming amount of accomodation for it's size (the population fluctuates from 300 in winter up to a booming 1500 in summer!). On the advice of others, we didn't book a hostel and decided it'd be easy enough to find it on the fly. Negative. It took about 2 hours, some walking and a few phone calls, but worked out in the end. We settled into a pretty basic hostel adjacent to the central shops which was also home to one of the world's fattest dogs.


The next morning we set off on a hike to Lago Torre, some 11km north-west of the town. Along the way there were plenty of opportunities to take in the surrounding landscape, and as I'm not as fit as I probably should be, take a break and relax. Like with everything else I've written, I don't think the photos do it justice. The remoteness of the location, the valleys, snow capped mountains, the rivers and all the rest really require a first-hand encounter. It was interesting when hiking to note how clean the air was, especially after being in Salvador, Rio, Buenos Aires etc. At times it actually burnt my lungs it was so clean. I guess I'm used to the dirty polluted stuff.




I was pretty certain I would be paralysed the next morning.

The ice climbing at the local tour company was fully booked for the next morning, so Nick opted for the 6 hour ice trekking tour, while Sam and I went cheaper again with just a 2.5 hour boat tour. Nick was back by 11am after his tour was cancelled. When we tried to get a refund for our afternoon boat tour we were told 'it will be going ahead blah blah blah'. We persisted with it the weather thankfully cleared up. We spent about 45-60 minutes at the Viedma Glacier which is the largest in the national park.




We kicked off at 6.30am the next morning for 31 hours of bussing up to Puerto Madryn. Good times!