El Calafate (Patagonia)!

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There was a lot of debate whether or not we would attempt to get down to El Calafate. It's definitely not the easiest place to get to in Argentina. Our choices were a 36 hour bus ride with 4 different buses, driving down a closed route 40 (like in Motorcycle Diaries) or a dodgy 2 hour flight. We opted to fly.

We arrived in El Calafate around 2 in the afternoon and spotted some other back packers to share a cab with into town. The place is pretty desolate. There's glacier fed lakes and some mountains but it's mostly sand and rock. The stray dogs were everywhere and covered in sand flees. Our hostel was just outside of town but had nice clean rooms and super friendly staff. Once we dropped off our bags we decided to try and walk to the nearby lake. It was a lot further than we anticipated and about half way through, we accidentally wandered through a dump. We'd also picked up a pack of about 5 dogs that thought we were all going on an adventure together. They thought the dump was great! We were not so impressed and turned around to head into town.

Things are certainly a lot more expensive down here than up North. We checked out a few tours and most of them were over $100 cdn for the day. We'd promised Adam and Chris we'd wait till they got there for the glacier so we booked ourselves on a bus to El Chalten for the next day.

We were up early for our 2.5 hr bus ride to El Chalten. This is the location of the Fitz Roy range and Fitz Roy point (considered one of the most difficult peaks to climb in the world). The bus ride was through more of the same rocky sandy terrain and we quickly fell asleep. The bus made one pit stop at a motel pub whose claim to fame was that Butch Cassidy, his wife and the sundance Kid hid out here for several months while on the run. They've got some great stories about the rough and tumble people that wandered through this little corner of the earth in the middle of nowhere.

We arrived at El Chalten around 11:30 in the morning and after a quick briefing from the park rangers on the status of the trails we headed off to climb the base of Fitz Roy mountain. It was a great hike and not too difficult. We were only able to get to the first lookout point as higher up was still covered in mud and snow. We walked to a Lake lookout and wandered around at the top for some time. The pictures will have to describe this area. It was pretty cloudy as well so we didn't get any clear shots of the peak. In all, it took us about 4 hours to get to the first point and back again. The weather was windy and freezing cold although it did seem to warm up later in the day (why did we leave Canada during the summer again???!). We were still able to have a snowball fight. Some of the other tourist there had brought gear to climb up higher and camp overnight. No thanks. Even I'm not into that.

The bus back to El Calafate wasn't until 6 so we killed a couple hours sitting in the one and only open cafe in town which double as the bus station and hostel. On the drive back we were more awake and got to see some of the other glacier fed lakes.

When we got back to town, both Chris and Adam had arrived and told us that they'd been able to rent a car for the following day. It was going to be cheaper than taking any of the tours and we'd be able to stop and drive around wherever we wanted. We were pretty excited about the next day.

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Photos

Fitz Roy Mountain
Can't you see it? It's right there!