Argentine Patagonia

A few weeks ago I diverged from my route South through Chile for one week, crossing the border to Argentine Patagonia with the two Austrians, Elvis and Clemens, whom I had hiked the Torres del Paine O Circuit with. The week was split between two towns: El Calafete and El Chalten. We arrived first in El Calafete, which is predominantly a gateway town (or at least viewed as such by the backpacking crowd) to the second destination, El Chalten, which is an easy nominee for any list of world’s coolest small towns. Here’s a photo that pretty much encompasses the entirety of El Chalten, which can be traversed in a 15 minute walk:

El Chalten has two prevailing types of visitors: serious rock climbers who often stay a full season, and backpackers who stop by and hike a few days while on broader trips through Argentina and Chile. The hiking is unique as the trailheads are literally in the town (the photo above, for example, was taken from a hiking trail). Among the many hiking options is an 8ish hour round-trip trek to the Fitz Roy, which is the mountain of the Patagonia logo. Here are two photos from our hike to the Fitz Roy:

El Chalten also has an après hike scene that is comparable to the après ski concept, so we closed out our Fitz Roy day at a cozy bar in town, playing chess while drinking $3 cocktails. I didn’t take a photo of this particular bar, but it’s one of my all-time favorites, so here’s a photo from the internet that paints the picture nicely. We had a really lovely evening in this bar.

Note the large rock wall in the background of the photo. We could literally watch rock climbers ascend that wall while seated at the bar in town. Hopefully it is now clear why El Chalten may very well be the world’s coolest small town.

Our hostel in El Chalten is worth a mention as well. Hostels are often quirky, sometimes in the best possible ways (like Ventana Sur in Santiago, which I described in a prior post) but other times in just plain weird ways. Our hostel in El Chalten was the latter. The entire place was covered in hand written signs threatening monetary charges. No joke, these were everywhere. Examples:

There were many other types of signs too, like one that just said “SILENCIO,” which for the non Spanish speakers means “silence” and was placed in the common space.

Anyways, apart from the signs the place was good enough for a four night stay, after which we backtracked to El Calafete for two additional days. It was then time to reluctantly bid farewell to Elvis and Clemens. They were headed North to Buenos Aires, and myself headed South back through Chile. We went for ice cream on our last night together, but somehow wound up at a casino instead, where we played Blackjack with the locals while dressed in an unusual mix of pajamas and hiking attire — a pretty significant diversion from the plan to get ice cream. Needless to say, traveling with those two was a lot of fun. The good news is that I will see them again when I transit through Buenos Aires later this month. The other good news is that I’m not traveling alone again just yet, because today I joined up with Nikki, who I also first met on the O Circuit. Nikki is Canadian, has 8 months off work, and is traveling through Chile as well.

Nikki and I convened in Punta Arenas, Chile, where I had arrived late last night after 11 hours of busses from El Calafete. This morning we flew to Puerto Williams, which is located on Navarino Island, has a population of 3,000, and is both the southernmost settlement in the world and the last stop on my journey through Chile. I’ve been on the road seven weeks, and the flight to Puerto Williams was my first transit by plane.

The plan is to spend a few days here and then head back to Argentina via boat across the Beagle channel, although it’s not actually clear how or when we’ll cross the Beagle channel, if at all. At one time there were commercial boats for travelers, but it seems that they no longer operate. I have been told that there’s a local man with a boat who will still take us across the border, so we’ll try and find him and see what happens. I’ll post an update next week, hopefully from Argentina.