El Chalten, Argentina

Day 18

We made it to El Chalten! Wooooo – arriving around 7am, we were a little bit weary, excited to go and hike some big mountains & oh so ready to get off the freaking bus! The bus wasn’t as bad as we thought it would be though, once it hit 9pm we slept right through, occasionally getting woken by potholes in the road.

The town of El Chalten is very small, and almost everyone is here to hike, rock climb, bike ride etc. The houses in town are either hostels, airbnbs or cafes/pubs. I would like to know the actual amount of people that live here. Lucky folk! The town sits right on the trails which lead into the mountains so there is no need to catch any public transport or hitchhike to the starting point – so it makes it quite unique.

El & I talked to the information desk at the bus terminal and found out what hikes we wanted to do. We then wandered into town and set up our tent in a campsite which will be our home for the next 4 nights! El Chalten is small but a bit pricy. A double bed in a hostel will set you back at least $100 a night – and there has been a lot of reviews saying bed bugs are around… Yuck! So El & I decided we should make use of the tent we have been carrying around and camp for a few nights. The campsite has good showers & a kitchen/dining area so it would be fine!

We were feeling a bit sick of sitting around, so El & I headed straight off to do the hike to end all hikes – the Senda al Fitz Roy. Fitz Roy is a massive mountain peak that is one of the reasons El Chalten is so popular. The tip of the peak is 3000m+ high. It was a cloudy windy day, but seemed the clouds were parting. It is a 20km out and back hike, with quite a bit of elevation gain to stretch out the legs.

We hiked away for around 1.5 hours and got to about half way. The clouds were parting, sun was coming out. We were thinking oh yeah, you beauty this is going to be sweeeeet! El Chalten says no – we got our first sight of the Fitz Roy peak and there was this huge day grey cloud just hanging over it so we couldn’t see the top. Classic Patagonia weather! We sat around here for a bit, just watching to see if the cloud would part further but it didn’t seem to be. We decided we would try again tomorrow and hopefully we will get some more lucky weather. A bit disappointed we hiked back down, but the scenery on the other side of the mountain was still amazing – it sort of reminds us of Iceland. The same sort of glacier rivers, landscapes & …weather :S

We went to a café for the afternoon, connected to some wifi and booked some buses for the next legs of our trip to the Torres Del Paine National Park. Lucky we did! There were only 2 seats left on the last bus leaving on the day we HAVE to be there! This scared us a little bit so now we have booked every little thing all the way to Buenos Aires 2 weeks away. We still haven’t been stranded so all is good 🙂

We had another burger for dinner & a few happy hour beers! We have had a few nights off cooking at the moment as we are finding the food a bit cheaper to eat out in Argentina. We need to up our vege intake though I think. I have had burgers 3 out of the last 4 nights and feeling a bit heavy :S

 

Day 19

We woke up early and had some breakfast in bed. Cooking oats in our Jetboil just outside our tent. The wind was howling, no chance you would get Ellen outside in that weather!

After much discussion, we decided to just go for the Senda al Fitz Roy hike. The weather hadn’t gotten any better from the previous day but we had no choice but to suck it up and do it in the wind & rain (at times). This time on the hike up we saw a woodpecker bird, going hard at a tree. They are funny looking things – we then started looking at all the trees and lots have holes in them from these wood pecker birds. There are also Puma’s in the area! If you see a Puma don’t run, or turn your back on it. You have to make yourself look really big and ferocious. We didn’t see one though thankgod!

Around about 2 hours in it started raining a little bit, and we still couldn’t see the top of the Fitz Roy peaks due to cloud. Nonetheless we kept trudging along. The last 2km of the hike is a 650m ascent straight up a hill – we battled for around 50 minutes and made it to the top. Boy was it worth it! The top opened up to show a massive clear bright blue lake sitting under a large glacier and peak. From here you could almost fully see the top of the Fitz Roy peaks. Some photos are below.

The size of this place was amazing. There were several huge waterfalls flowing from the glacier and looked like they were falling over 100m into the lake. Apparently when there is no wind, rock climbers come and attempt to climb the Fitz Roy peak which hangs above the glacier. Ahhh I wish we were into rock climbing!

We mucked around up there in the wind & rain for around an hour. We both think this is the coolest scenery we have seen yet in Argentina & Chile, so imagine what it would look like on a clear day! It is now so obvious why El Chalten is so popular!

We heading back down, almost getting blown off the mountain it felt like & arrived back at camp at around 5pm. A good 8 hour hike done and dusted. Easy pasta for dinner and game of cards. Ellen won again! We were in bed early, exhausted but happy with the day even with the crappy weather!

Day 20

The rain has really set in old wild El Chalten! El & I checked the weather forecast and it was due to rain for most of the day and was clearing up at midnight. So we chose to have a rest day today free of hikes and we will hike the other big trek that we want to do the following day. Our legs are a bit sore after the day before anyway!

The weather here is weird. It will be raining where you are standing, but the sun will be also blazing on your back! It is very confusing, however this combination provides more rainbows then we have ever seen. Every day I think we have seen 5+ good rainbows which Elle thinks is pretty cool! The wind also dropped off today and is meant to stay away which is a plus! From what I’ve read El Chalten has moody weather all year round. It would be nice for it to turn the weather on for at least one day we are here!

We went and found a coffee shop and spent a couple of hours on the wifi booking accommodation for further legs of our trip (Go us, we are planning ahead). The coffee here isn’t like Australia’s, but is wayyyy better than North America’s – that isn’t hard though. I realised today I don’t know the next time I will have an Australian coffee. It was a bit of a sobering thought!

In between rain showers we went for a small 2km hike up to Mirador De Los Condores. It is a lookout over the town & the massive mountains it surrounds. On a clear day we would have been able to see the Fitz Roy mountains & glacial peaks in the distance – unfortunately it wasn’t our day! The town looks so small compared to the mountains in sits under, you can walk from one side of the town to the other in less than 20 minutes.

As it started to bucket down again we hiked back to camp, cooked up some dinner & had an cosy night in the tent reading books & listening to the rain.

Day 21

It rained allll night! And the temperature got down to around 3 degrees… annnndd I left my sleeping bag in Australia. Ellen has let me share hers 🙂 But I need to buy a new one today I think before we get down to Torres Del Paine -4 degree weather.

When we woke at around 6:30am, it was so peaceful. No rain, no wind and clear blue sky’s. Hoorayyyy! We could even see some glacial peaks in the distance. We were so excited! Finally we have some good weather! We quickly smashed down our breakfast, thankfully we have a Jetboil so boiling water only takes a minute! And we were out the door and on our way to do the Lago torres trek, a 22km out and back track which heads to the base of some big mountains we could see in the distance.

Elle was on a mission this morning, we got half way down the street towards the start of the track before she realised she forgot her walking poles. We can’t be having that on a 30,000+ step day! Once we finally got going Ellen was setting a cracking pace and would say things like “I’m walking with purpose”. About half an hour in to the walk we could see the huge Fitz Roy peaks in the distance. It makes us look so small – there was no wind on this day either, we were wondering if any rock climbers were going to try climb it today.

We hike and hiked for around 2 hours and reached the Lake which sits under the glacier. It was beautiful. We beat the rush of tourists as well – not many people around at all. We walked around the edge of the lake for a couple of kilometres and got up close to the lake, glacier and mountains. We took some photos, sat for a while and let it sink in.

We then hiked back out which took us around the same time, passing a lot of tourists along the way. We got back with good time and decided to make the most of the good weather and our last full day here and try the 2km hike of Mirador De Los Condores which we did yesterday. Glad we did – the views were much better as you can see below!

We also saw an Armadillo. They are funny looking! We have never seen one in the wild. Ellen let out a scream when she saw it. They are fast too – sort of like a wombat with a big shell for protection!

We then went home, very tired. Had a shower, rest & went out to dinner for some well deserved beers, burgers & hot chips!

Tomorrow we head off to El Calafate. We have thoroughly enjoyed our time here and we would love to stay longer. It was definitely worth staying longer here to ensure we got at least 1 day of good weather!

More photos located here.