Patagonia Part 4: El Chalten

To the ends of the earth would you follow me? There's a world that was meant for our eyes to see - End of the Earth, Lord Huron

El Chaaaalten (26 April - 29 April)

We had a bus day after our Torres del Paine adventure - we traveled from Puerto Natales, Chile back to El Calafate, Argentina. You cannot believe how much more chilled the Argentine border post is than the Chilean one...dis belaglik, net 'n stamp en hola en dis dit!

...Just a small town girl, livin' in a lonely world
She took the midnight train, goin' anywhere...

We arrived in El Calafate just after lunch and went straight to the ticket booths at the bus station to see of we could still catch a bus to El Chalten that afternoon. Fortunately there are multiple trips back forth between the two towns daily so we booked the earliest one at 16:30...

El Chalten is a smaller town and (slightly more) remote so the atm in town is known to be constantly out of cash and card machines are still somewhat of a foreign concept (for tax reasons I'm sure). Thus it's advisable to draw some pesos in El Calafate, which we then did and we reckoned that since we'll be arriving in El Chalten quite late we might as well buy some grub to cook once we get to the Los Condores hostel.

Everything then went smoothly until as many a backpacker would have fond memories of, our bus broke down in the middle of nowhere...no cell signal, nada! It was getting dark and 'blerrie koud', so the mood in the bus was pretty 'neggas' and for some reason the bus driver decided that by taking off his shirt he would somehow convince everyone on board that he was doing everything he can to fix the bus! I'm sure he's in hospital with pneumonia right now. We were eventually saved by another bus, 2 hours later, which was just in time because Kristi nearly died of the cold for the second time in our last 5 days in Patagonia!

Spot the tourists...:)

El Chalten is a very cool little town high up in the mountains, and it's surrounded by the Los Glaciares National Park so we could stay in a hostel in town and do day hikes out to all the amazing spots. It was also nice to stay in a warm room after roughing it out the previous week - plus we spoiled ourselves with a private room with bathroom (moenie sê nie) so it felt like the freakin 'one & only'!

There are two popular day walks to do around El Chalten: Sendero al Cerro Torre and Sendero al Fitz Roy. They both are around 20km's in total but the first one is a much easier hike so it only takes like 6 hours to complete while Fitz Roy takes about 8 hours because there's quite a steep climb at the end (but its so so worth it...los condores!)

It also makes a massive difference not having to trek around with your big backpacks, so the hiking was relatively easy compared to Torres del Paine but just as beautiful and awesome to be out on the trails! If like us you like the great outdoors - look no further that Patagonia, it will blow you away (sometimes literally!).

La Green Puma!

We cooked our own food for most meals at the hostel but decided to treat ourselves to a restaurant on the last night (a habit which will have to dissipate if we are going to last till November!). On the final day's walk of Torre del Paine Kristi and I both agreed that we really miss that Sunday afternoon feeling of complete over-indulgence after a massive meal...please note this is after 1 week of traveling - we're so screwed! ;) Anyway, we definitely got to experience that feeling again after our delicious final supper at the El Guerro restaurant in El Chalten! Muy delicioso!

Next stop on our trip is back to El Calafate where we'll be staying for our last couple of days before we say goodbye to Patagonia!  Can someone say Perito Moreno glacier...