Patagonia - March 2024
The Other Side of the World.
Visiting Patagonia had been on my bucket list for only a couple of years. There are certainly other places that have been on the list for longer and we haven’t yet visited - Thailand, Alaska, Singapore to name a few. That being said, Patagonia seemed brimming with excitement and adventure and beauty. All things I live for. I felt like it was one of those once in a lifetime trips - it felt like a dream - and the more I saw, the more I learned, the quicker it climbed the list.
I always underestimate how long it takes to get to South America because I forget about the convexity of Earth. We had several connecting flights, but it took a three hour flight to Miami, followed by a nine hour flight to Buenos Aires, followed by a three hour flight to El Calafate - part of Patagonia.
A few of the reasons I began to prioritize this trip are 1) because of how far it is - the time and distance it takes to get to Patagonia, 2) the adventures are challenging, 3) it is unlike anywhere else in the world. I feel like we are in a good time in our lives to tackle and experience all of these things. Long flights are tough. Long travel days are tough. Long hikes are tough. But at this point in our lives, we are tougher! That being said, I don’t know that we will be able to do trips like this and hikes like this if and when we have kids. At least not to the same extent.
For this trip, I decided to use a travel agency. I’ve never used a travel agency before - not for planning an entire trip, only for organizing day trips/tours. At the time, I was already feeling overwhelmed and didn’t feel like I had it in me to plan the trip entirely myself. Also, after having gone to India, not speaking the language and having difficulty get an Uber from the airport, Kevin (and I agree) didn’t want to deal with the headache of logistics traveling from place to place.
I had reached out to several travel agencies and ultimately decided to go with Say Hueque. They are known for their Patagonia trips, and advertise sustainable travel. The other company I was hoping to work with was Venture Patagonia, a local family in Chile, but their website was unfortunately down during the time I was making inquiries, and I didn’t hear back until after I had committed to Say Hueque. As you will learn as you read through this, if I could do one thing differently, it would be to NOT use Say Hueque. I would have (and should have) booked everything myself. They are extremely expensive (this is by far The Most Expensive trip we’ve ever taken, for an equal amount of days - for reference, just about double of what it cost us to visit Japan for the same number of days just last year, and Argentina and Chile are not expensive countries!) and did not offer the on-ground support that we needed, expected and paid for. We did not meet anyone from the company in person. They contract out to other companies for each segment. Lesson learned! Hopefully, if you are planning to go to Patagonia, you can use our experience and book your trip for less and have a smoother experience!
In the couple months leading up to our trip, I put Kevin in charge of making reservations for while we were in Buenos Aires. Don Julio is “The Place” go to, so he got on the waitlist. We were fortunate enough to secure a dinner reservation at 21:15, especially considering we were only in Buenos Aires for 24 hours. I had also seen the name Fogón Asado time after time on the Facebook groups, so a week or two before our trip, we looked to see if we could eat there too and we were fortunate to secure a lunch reservation as well.
As I was doing research, I came up with a list of our Must-Do’s: hike Laguna de Los Tres, do the Big Ice (only eligible to do under 50 years of age!), hike Base Torres/Mirador Las Torres in Torres del Paine, and kayak with glaciers.
Itinerary
Day 1 (Wednesday 3/20): Off we go!
We left our house at 9:30AM to get to Newark (EWR) for our 12:45 flight to Miami (MIA), arriving at 16:00. We both watched Oppenheimer on the flight - Kevin finished it, but I fell asleep mid-flight for about an hour. We had a four hour layover in Miami in D Terminal. We didn’t need to collect our checked bag or go through security again, so we just wandered around the terminal. Around 17:30, we had dinner at the Corona restaurant using Priority Pass, which gave us a $60 credit for the two of us.
Our nine hour flight to Buenos Aires left MIA at 19:55. We had chosen seats at the back of the plane. We were the second row from the back, where there are two seats instead of three, with empty space between the window seat and the window. Kevin put his backpack under the window seat in front of him, so he had all the leg room! I read for a bit (Unreasonable Hospitality by Will Guidara), finished watching Oppenheimer, then I watched the Parent Trap. They served dinner but neither of us were hungry - and I had already brushed my teeth before boarding. I probably slept for a total of 2-3 hours, though not continuously. They served yogurt for breakfast about an hour before landing. I declined, but since they had turned the lights on, I was awake, and decided to read until we landed. I thought the American Airlines planes feel more spacious than the United planes.
Day 2 (Thursday 3/21): Buenos Aires
We landed in Buenos Aires (EZE) at about 5:45AM, slightly ahead of schedule. Going through immigration was very quiet. It took a while for our checked bag to arrive on the carousel. Customs was easy - just an xray scanner.
It was really nice to have a driver waiting for us, holding a sign with our names. It took a lot of stress out of finding a taxi, fear of getting ripped off, etc. We were in the car by 6:40. I slept most of the way to the hotel, which took a little over an hour because we hit a little bit of traffic heading into the city.
We got to our hotel, L’Hotel in Palermo, at about 8AM. We had declined early check in because it would have cost us $95 extra, but our room was on “priority” so that we could check in ASAP, their guess was 10AM - that gave us time to stretch our legs and explore a bit. We were able to leave our luggage so that we could explore the city. Julieta at the hotel was so friendly and helpful, directing us to the cambio a block away (which doesn’t open until 10AM) and a couple of cafés, only one of which was open that early.
I feel like Argentina opens late - there wasn’t much open at 8AM - they’re our kind of people! We went across the street from our hotel to Amasadero Panaderia Urbana, which seemed to be the only nearby coffee shop open at 8AM. We each got a cappuccino and we got a medialuna to try, which is a pastry that is like a cross between a croissant and bread. It is more moist than a croissant, but still flaky, and sweet like it’d been soaked in honey.
We left the café at 9AM, walked to Plaza Serrano, then Plaza Immigrantes de Armenia. Here, there were a lot of dogs and dog walkers. Granted, there is a little dog park, but also a big fountain and playgrounds. We continued down Armenia Street until the Jardin Botanico, which wasn’t open yet, toward the Ecoparque (opens at 11) and to Jardin de los Poetas. The garden is part of a pretty big park, and lots of people were walking, jogging and biking around the park. There was even a group of people doing a cross fit type workout. By this time, it was almost 10AM, so even though we didn’t get to see the inside of these parks, we turned around. We were thinking we could check in to our room and maybe even take a quick power nap.
Before returning to the hotel, we stopped at Cambio Cryptoverso. We exchanged 200USD for 196,000ARS. We got back to the hotel at 10:40 and we were able to check into our room (lucky #8). We received complimentary bottles of Malbec - one from Say Hueque and one from the hotel - a nice touch. Also glad that we decided last minute to travel with a checked bag, otherwise we wouldn’t have had space to carry the bottles with us!
We took an hour nap before lunch, woke up at noon, got changed, explored the hotel grounds - it’s a small boutique hotel, but the grounds are cute with a pool, outdoor hang out area and an indoor bar in the back.
Fogón Asado is less than a five minute walk away from our hotel. We got there early, but there were already others waiting. From the sidewalk, you can see the chimney and smell the smoked meats. Our reservations were for 12:35 and they open the door right on time. Everyone is seated at the bar, around the asado. The asado has wood burning in the middle - a certain type of red, hard wood that I don’t remember the name of - and as embers fall, they spread the embers under the grills/skillet tops. Martin, one of the chefs, told us that this asado was custom built by an artisan in 2020 or 2021, and he died shortly after. This is the last one he made and is one of a kind. There is another Fogón Asado 12 blocks away, and their asado is different. I can’t speak for the other, but the asado at the location we visited has levers to raise and lower the grill tops - for control over heat and ease of spreading embers. It’s such as interactive experience that we even had to make our own chimichurri! There was a box at our seats with all the ingredients and a recipe rolled up - what a great, fun idea!
The nine course lunch tasting menu is a full three and a half hour experience. It was only $60 per person (prepaid), plus we added on the traditional wine pairing (the lowest of three tiers) for $20 per person. The wine pairing included four glasses of wine, and was all you can drink. Whenever you wanted more, you could place your glass on the bar and they’d come around and refill it. Our first wine was a chardonnay-chardonnay that paired with the first three courses. Our second and third were reds, and the last wine was a dessert wine. Kevin and I both found the dessert wine to be very sweet, we are not accustomed to it. Asado means barbeque, and also short rib - same word has different meanings.
1: seasonal vegetable, ricotta cheese with fresh herbs
2: ironed provoleta cheese, grilled fruit in a torrontes reduction
3: molleja (sweetbreads, thymus), roasted tomatoes and ginger sauce - one of my favorite courses, nice and crispy
4: “The Marriage” - morcilla (blood sausage), quince and apple chutney chorizo, ember-roasted bell pepper, griddle baked bread
5: slow braised asado al papillote (the asado was baked in the oven for hours, then wrapped in paper with sauce and finished on the asado - so tender and juicy!)
6: “The Hunger Killer” - pork flank steak (matambre), yellow chili sauce, lime and cilantro salad
7: pine cone smoked ribeye cap (“The Eyebrow”), creamy cauliflower puree, flame roasted corn
8: ribeye, mashed boniatos, grilled vegetables with chef’s vinegreta (aged but not funky)
9: pancake with dulce de leche, patagonian berries and whipped cream
The team at Fogón Asado works so well together. The experience is like watching an interactive choreographed dance. They would start preparing a course four from now while another is working on the current one and while interacting with all of us, making sure our water was filled and our wine glasses were filled. It was a great pace between dishes. It was a full three and a half hours that we spent, and we were stuffed when we left at about 4PM. Overall, a phenomenal experience and I would highly recommend it!
Before our trip to Argentina, we had a couple ideas of things that we wanted to buy in Buenos Aires, including leather - specifically a new wallet for Kevin - and steak knives. We went to a knife and hide store, but they didn’t have anything we loved. We stopped in a couple of shops, but didn’t buy anything.
We decided to go to the Ecoparque. We got there at 5PM and they close at 6PM. There were lots of peacocks and Patagonian maras, which are like small deer mixed with skinny capybaras. They start guiding people out at 5:30, so we were back at the hotel at 6PM. We napped a little more and showered before dinner.
We left the hotel at 9PM for Don Julio, which was a 10 minute walk from the hotel. The experience started off fine. There were a lot of people waiting out front, but the hostesses were quick to offer sparkling wine, which was quite tasty. We were seated on time, but we were still full from our fabulous lunch, and very tired - it was a long day. We were not impressed with Don Julio. For being “The Place” to go, it was extremely underwhelming, and almost a waste of time. Kevin will say with full confidence that we shouldn’t have gone, and we should have just gone to bed instead; I am partially glad that we went to experience it, and know it was not good, as opposed to wondering if we missed out, had we skipped it.
Service was incredibly slow - I had read this before, but was hoping it wasn’t true so that we could get to bed. I also had to ask for water twice, and we had to pay for it - turns out this is common in Argentina and Chile, but was not something we were used to. We also learned later that there is a “cover charge” for even being seated - this was not disclosed ahead of time, and not something we encountered anywhere else. I am still not happy about that. I ordered half a shortrib (400g) medium rare and Kevin ordered a ribeye medium. We asked our server for a recommendation on veggies and he recommended the heirloom tomato salad. I thought my steak was tough, chewy and hard to eat - it was not enjoyable and I did not finish it. Kevin enjoyed his. We should have gotten one steak to share between the two of us though. The tomatoes were the highlight of the meal. Big chunks, fresh, juicy, with olive oil and onion. The bread was dense and not good. The chimichurri was good. The knives were very dull, which is disappointing considering they also sell knives. Our waiter was confused and twice tried to bring us food that wasn’t ours. He put a flan/dulce de leche on our bill - he zeroed it out - and then reminded us that tip is not included. I just feel for such a “high end” expensive restaurant, mistakes like that should not happen so often. I also got a vibe that they feel like are the best, like when we couldn’t finish our meal, our waiter was shocked.
Don Julio was the single most expensive meal, and also the worst meal. It was more expensive than Fogón Asado, but the experiences couldn’t be more different - like night and day. At Fogón, the quality of the food was significantly better, the staff took pride in every detail, everything was done with intention, passion and they were happy to be there. If we had gone to Don Julio before we had gone to Fogón Asado, perhaps it would have been more acceptable, yet still overpriced. Fogón Asado set our standards high. I had read on Facebook groups that Don Julio is overpriced and overrated, but I’m glad we tried it to see for ourselves.
We were back at our hotel at 11PM. Kevin showered, we packed and went to bed at midnight…
Day 3 (Friday 3/22): Buenos Aires to El Chaltén
….to wake up at 3:10AM for our 3:30AM pick up. Kevin didn’t sleep well. I don’t think I moved at all once I hit the pillow. We realized in the morning that this is the flight that has strict weight restrictions, so we had to repack to redistribute weight. Aerolineas Argentinas has a 3kg max for personal item, 8kg for carry-on and 15kg for checked bag. (We didn’t need to know this at the time, but upon verifying the weight limits for the purpose of my blog, Aerolineas allows alcohol in personal items and carry-ons, 5L per person in 1L containers each).
Our driver was waiting for us outside our hotel prior to 3:30AM when we got to the lobby. Palermo was still very lively - in that people had not yet gone to bed. We were at the airport (AEP) at 3:55 and through security by 4:20AM for our 6:30AM flight to El Calafate. My bag was 13.5kg and Kevin’s was perfectly 15kg. At AEP, there are differently lines for general domestic flights versus all the Patagonia region airports (Calafate, Bariloche, Ushuaia, Mendoza).
Notes about our experience at AEP: 1) unlike the US, you can bring water through security, 2) the guy in front of me had a 65L pack and they let him through, even though the bag was clearly bigger than the carry-on dimensions, 3) Le Pain Quotidien had very good pain au chocolat that hit the spot, 4) there were a lot of other Asians, specifically older couples, at our gate - I suspect as part of a Chinese tour group.
I slept most of the flight, probably two out of the three hours, then read my book. We arrived in El Calafate (FTE) at 9:55AM. Upon arrival to El Calafate, you cannot bring organics, even if coming from another area in Argentina - fruits, vegetables, meats (specifically red meat and sausage) and plants - verified by scanner when leaving the airport. This created a bottleneck leaving baggage claim.
We were met by someone holding our names on a card (turns out he wasn’t our actual driver). FTE is a very small airport, there isn’t much to do or see while waiting for the other people who were on our transport. There were three other girls, I suspect they were Dutch - they spoke a language that sounded kind of like German but not quite. Our van left at 10:48AM for the three hour journey with a 20 minute break.
I suspect I saw a condor and maybe a ñandú, and many guanaco. About half an hour into the drive, I first spotted Fitz Roy.
We reached the rest stop at La Leona at about noon. I think it’s technically a hotel, but the main building is a café which sold pastries, cake, empanadas, teas and coffee, and a gift stop. Supposedly Butch Cassidy stayed here. There were several cats and kittens and a dog that hung around outside and were so popular with the visitors. We continued our drive at 12:20. I slept until Kevin kicked me because the mountains were in view. Our driver was so thoughtful and stopped outside of town for a photo op. We arrived in El Chaltén and were dropped off at Destino Sur at 1:45. Luckily, our room (106) was ready, so we checked in before venturing out to explore.
El Chaltén is very walkable. It’s a very small town, and everyone who visits is either there to hike or climb. There are a lot of restaurants, especially bars/pubs, pizzerias, a few parrillas. Very few souvenir shops, fewer than I was expecting. There are a couple of grocery stores, but small ones. We wandered hoping to find a nail clipper and souvenirs. The streets are lined with lavender, giving the town a refreshing aroma as you walk down San Martin, the main street.
I wanted to try yerba mate (I learned from Huberman Lab that it has health benefits and is very popular in Argentina, so thought where better to try?), so we stopped in Mathilda’s tea house. I ordered a yerba mate, and I also wanted to try alfajore, which I had read about as a “must try” food in Patagonia on Facebook groups. I had no idea what it was but ordered a walnut alfajore when I saw it on the menu. Kevin, of course, ordered a cappuccino. The best way I can describe mate is a cup full of loose leaf tea, and a filtered straw. I was instructed not to move the straw, he emphasized this three times, but I don’t know why (I suspect maybe because by moving the straw, the leaves may clog the holes in the filter, but I don’t know). You pour hot water little by little, starting closest to you (and the straw), drink it. As you add water, you slowly start to moisten leaves further and further from you. This way, you always get some fresh flavor as the leaves closest to you lose flavor. It is quite common to see locals walking around with their mate and a thermos of hot water. It’s like their coffee - for caffeine, but also social, it’s meant for sharing, and traditionally the cups are made from gourds or wood. Mate is very bitter, but paired well with the alfajore. Alfajore is, I guess, a pastry, with light crumbly cookies sandwiching an almost jelly-like, paste-like center, then dusted with powdered sugar. Kevin describes it as “weird mooncake.” This was the best alfajore we had during our trip.
Back at the hotel, and despite having just drank mate which is caffeine, I took a two hour nap. At 7PM, we went to a store that was closed midday when we were shopping earlier. Here, we found gaucho knives and a leather wallet for Kevin; however, she did not accept credit card, so she put the items on hold for us to return the next day with cash. I believe this was the only instance that a store did not accept credit card; however, in paying cash (USD), her rate was better than even than the rate we got at the cambio in BA so we got a better deal. She honored 100,000ARS for $100 (whereas we had gotten 98,000ARS for $100 in BA; for reference, our hotel Destino Sur had 95,000ARS for $100) - perhaps to make the math easy, who knows. We were able to pay in USD and she gave us change in ARS, which worked out for both of us because we were afraid we were going to be just short on ARS.
Anyway, we had dinner at Lito, a cute, small cabin at the end of town. We were the only ones there. We ordered the tagliatelle and lomo, with a glass of Patagonian Malbec from Huellas del Limay in Neuquen, Argentina. First, we were served bread with mashed veggies (probably eggplant). The tagliatelle was homemade fresh pasta in pesto with walnuts and tomatoes- very fresh. the lomo is beef tenderloin wi th mushrooms, roasted veggies, a potato hash crispy pancake. Both dishes were very good. They offer a 10% discount if paying cash (ARS, USD or Euros), but we didn’t have enough cash on us to cover the whole meal. The food was great, we had great service, Julia was very friendly. She recommended crampons for Laguna de los Tres, and her favorite hike is Loma del Pliegue Tumbado. Two other couples came in at 8:30 as we were finishing our meal. I feel like it may be hard for Lito to survive because they are off the main road, but I hope they do because we really enjoyed this meal. This was my favorite meal in Chaltén.
Day 4 (Saturday 3/23): Laguna Torre
We woke up at 8AM and went down for breakfast. The food was pretty good, though a basic selection - a variety of cured meats and cheeses, different kinds of breads, eggs, bacon (panceta), fruits, pastries. I thought the coffee was weak, but Kevin liked it. They didn’t have many lactose-free options for coffee, so I added what they call “vegetable milk” to mine, which really was almond milk but makes me laugh. The orange juice was so good - one of the best juices I’ve had in my entire life. I’m pretty sure I had at least two glasses of that orange juice every morning.
We left the hotel shortly after 9AM and went to Viento Oeste to rent crampons. It’s a relatively large store near the end of town that sells outdoor gear and souvenirs downstairs, and has equipment rentals upstairs. Crampon rentals were around 6,000ARS per pair per day. Once we were fully equipped, we made our way up the hill to the trailhead. Most of the roads in town are dirt roads, so they are uneven (many potholes) and muddy in the rain. We made it to the “first” trailhead at about 10AM. The actual trailhead - the one with the sign listing distances and a map - is over the hill, maybe about a kilometer from the “first” trailhead.
It was rainy as we started. More than a drizzle, but not a downpour either. I was wearing a tank top, my wool base layer, UA ColdGear, packable down and REI raincoat, and my REI Co-op Activator 3.0 pants. My outfit did a good job at keeping me warm and dry (spoiler alert: I would not think this later in the trip).
At first, I did not like that the trail was measured in kilometers. One kilometer out of nine seemed daunting. But, as we kept going, I liked it because we would meet the next kilometer marker quicker and more frequently than we would have encountered mile markers. Coming back, the last two kilometers were brutally long. Our legs and feet hurt - for me, also my toes and right hip.
The trail was mostly flat, although there are a few sections with pretty steep inclines. There is a nice wide, dirt path through a forest that was a nice respite for our feet and ankles. A lot of the trail toward the end is rock and gravel. There’s one section where the trail is rock, but you’re in what is basically a boulder field (small boulders), with waist high bushes with you in the valley, and mountains all around you. Because of the gloomy weather, there were low moody clouds clinging to the mountains. It was beautiful.
We got to the laguna at 1PM. It took us just under three hours from the trailhead. As we ascended the final incline to the laguna, it started raining harder - probably the hardest it rained all day. We ate our lunch in the rain. It was cold and our hands were freezing. I’m actually surprised that it wasn’t snowing. We sat on Kevin’s rain pants so that our pants wouldn’t get as well as if we sat on wet rocks.
Our hotel, as I’m sure many others do, offers lunchboxes - really a brown bag lunch to take with you on your day hikes. We placed orders for our lunchboxes for the next day for 13,500ARS each (need to place orders by a certain time the evening before). I ordered a sweet corn empanada and quinoa/mushroom empanada, Kevin ordered a veal/provolone empanada and sweet corn empanada. They also include a number of other things in the lunchboxes (fruit, cookies, granola bar and trail mix, etc). We learned the hard way that the fruit was banana - it was squished in our bag. It was a lot of food, and we didn’t eat it all. I ate my empanadas and the squished banana (only because it was squished and I didn’t want it getting the inside of my pack all messy). Everything was soaked since it’s all brown paper bags.
Luckily, the rain let up as we finished eating, so we got to enjoy our time at the top. It was still cloudy, so we didn’t get to see the towards, but we could see part of the glacier! The water was silty and looked dirty, probably from all the rain lately. The coolest part of this laguna is the icebergs! There are multiple icebergs floating in the lake. As many glacial lakes as we’ve been to before, this was the first one that had icebergs! How exciting!
We started back down at about 1:30 and made it back to the trailhead at 4, and to our hotel just before 4:30. The last part of the trail and walking in town to the hotel were rough. Every step hurt my toes. The trail wasn’t hard. I’d actually rate it easy, except for the distance. There were a few technical areas, a couple steep but short areas, but it was otherwise mostly flat - but gravel most of the way, and that makes it tough on toes and ankles. The toughest was in the beginning, getting over the initial hill. Around km3, it gets flat in a field. There’s a boulder field around km5 and into the forest. There is a little bit of a gravel incline at the very end, which is exposed and would be hot in the sun. We didn’t see many people on our way up - only a handful of people going up, and a handful of groups coming down - until the forest area (maybe km6 or 7) when we started to see more people.
Once we got back, we found a nail clipper (!) and went back to the store to purchase Kevin’s leather wallet and the gaucho knives. I booked a 45 minute massage for 6:15.
We went to Tapera for dinner at 8PM. It is highly recommended - by Valentina at reception of the hotel, Say Hueque and people on Facebook. It has a pub-like, lodge-like feel. I didn’t think it was worth the hype. It was okay. The thing to get there is beef, so we both ordered the bife de chorizo (sirloin). Both were overcooked (my medium rare was medium to medium-well and Kevin’s medium was medium-well to well done. The chimi was spicy, the potatoes were good, but there were flies flying around us the whole meal. We did, however, get introduced to a band called Gondwana which was nice.
After dinner, we went back, showered and prepped for the next day, and went to bed around 10:30.
Day 5 (Sunday 3/24): Laguna de Los Tres
This was one of my favorite days. And one that I’ve been dreaming about.
We woke up at 6:30AM and had breakfast at 7AM. The day prior, I had inquired at the front desk of our hotel about calling a taxi in the morning to take us to the alternate trailhead, Rio Electrico (was formerly El Pilar). Our hotel actually organized for us to be picked up by a shuttle for 7,000ARS ($7) per person. We were picked up shortly after 8AM. The shuttle leaves from the north side of town, so we were the last hotel pickup. The shuttle was so packed that the last two people sat up front with the driver. The ride was 40 min and the entire road was potholes. I do not recommend if you get car sick; and I definitely recommend emptying your bladder before you leave. If driving yourself, you need four wheel drive. The ride to the trailhead is very bumpy - constant potholes, and given the recent rain, the entire road was muddy and some potholes were deceptively deep, at one point we were sideways.
Sitting on the right side is more picturesque, because it is on the side of the river. Rio Electrico and Rio del Bosque mix to form Las Vueltas River. The Rio Electrico is very blue, Rio del Bosque is brown. We crossed some sketchy bridges that I wasn’t sure could withstand the weight of our shuttle.
The shuttle arrived at 8:51. Even though the road seemed pretty empty, suddenly there were a bunch of shuttles and private cars at the trailhead. No one seemed to know where to go. We were the third group to depart. Head toward the bridge, but don’t cross it. The trail is just to the left of the bridge.
A lot of people start at the same time. Despite this, don’t worry about crowds. We let people pass and still held pretty good pace and solitude. The first part of the trail is sandy and small gravel, with fall colors and mountains surrounding the valley you’re in. It is so pretty and peaceful and relatively easy.
We crossed a bridge to the forest. In the forest, there are some areas that have a pretty steep incline. Here, we encountered crowds, and also pressure to keep pace, because the trail is narrow and not a lot of room to pass. I didn’t realize that this caused me anxiety until we let people pass and had the trail more to ourselves. There were people wearing sneakers, people whose backpacks were Jansports, one guy had no bag or water or food at all, just the clothes on his back. The forest was unusual in that the ground was covered in tall grass. Because of the amount of people, it was difficult to find a place to pee (there were places in the gravelly valley before that looked isolated).
The forest then lost the tall grass and became a normal forest. There were great viewpoints of a glacier that was to the right of Fitz Roy. It seemed to get bigger as we continued - probably due to the perspective and angle from which we were viewing, it was also so blue.
The trail joins with the former El Pilar trail. I suspect that the Hosteria didn’t like people parking on their grounds, so they closed that trailhead and opened Rio Electrico. From the Sendo El Pilar, it is 5km to join the main Fitz Roy trail (the one that comes from Chaltén). The Rio Electrico and El Pilar section of the trail are relatively easy, and pretty too. El Pilar ends in a pretty plains/valley at the end of which is a “meeting point” before heading into the forest, just before Camp Poincenot (8 of 10 km). Just after camp is a bridge (one person crosses at a time) over a river. This open area is also really beautiful.
At the Rio Blanco, you go up in forest for a little while, then the hard part hits. You will know, without a doubt, when it’s the hard part. It looks like it goes forever. If you look up, you’ll see people way high up still on the scramble. There is one sign at the beginning of the hard part instructing to stay on the trail because of erosion and trail restoration. Along the trail there are plenty of signs and blazes marking the trail and marking what is not the trail, signs saying do not pass or restoration area - but people didn’t care. The number of people off trail was disheartening and upsetting. Following the trail was pretty easy going up (it was harder to follow the signs coming down), and can follow the wash/snow melt. So many people took shortcuts on soil (erosion) because yes, the rocky trail is hard (but also, you should know this is a hard trail going into it). It is so disrespectful. One woman even had a blaze pole as her walking stick - I don’t know if she herself yanked it from the ground or she found it laying there, but either way, that is not okay.
The scramble is steep, but it was so much fun. It is exposed, so I imagine in the summer it gets brutally hot. It was sunny as we climbed, but by no means unbearable. We had taken off our outer layers and were wearing our wool. There is a very steep section leading to a ridge, and you can see Fitz Roy peeking above the ridge as you ascend - but that’s not it. It’s a nice place to rest and enjoy the view, but the trail continues. Go down then up again - I thought this was the hardest part because it is all loose gravel and it is steep. From this second ridge, we went down to the lake. There was some snow - enough that it was not easy to traverse confidently, but too little snow for crampons. The clouds cleared as we settled in for lunch. I had veal and corn empanadas. It was perfect weather.
I had read that when you have a good view, the clouds clear, take the picture. Weather in Patagonia changes quickly, so if you want the shot, take it. I did this as I ate, because I wasn’t sure how long it would last. We were so fortunate that once the clouds cleared, it remained clear for the duration of the time we were up there, which was about an hour.
It was 2:30 as we started back own, as mosquitoes were beginning to come out, since it was warming up. Getting down the hard part took an hour and a half. We reached the river, pumped water, and continued onward at 4PM. The trail to El Chaltén was relatively flat. You could see Fitz Roy if you turned around for a lot of the way - I can’t imagine how much of a tease that would have been coming up. There were a lot of people coming down with us. I remember with 5km left to go, I was ready to be done. There is a big descent at the end, back into town. There were quite a lot of stairs. I remember that once I saw town come into view, I was never happier to see town, but it also looked so far away and we were still so high up.
We finished at around 6:30 and went directly to return the crampons (that we didn’t really even use - we had put them on to go down to the lake, but there wasn’t enough snow for us to take more than a couple steps). I thought the last 5km were the hardest. For Kevin, it was his quads. For me: my ankles and feet and hips, and just mentally. We got back to the hotel at 7. I had gotten a little sunburnt on my face.
We were feeling carbs to refuel and looked up pasta. We wanted to go to Maffia, but they couldn’t take us because we didn’t have a reservation. I thought it was hard to make reservations on our hiking days because I didn’t know what time we’d get back, and if we were done early, we’d want to eat early. I also didn’t think we needed reservations considering how empty Lito was the night before. We ended up at Taberna instead, and tried Argentinian pizza. It’s bready: thick crust but not oily at all, pretty good. We got ham on ours.
At the end of the meal, an accordion player (who looked like Prince) came in. He was creepy and stared. When he started playing, the young mom at the table directly in front of him looked into her stroller at her sleeping baby. He didn’t care. Soon after, the baby started screaming. The young mom left with the baby and the dad apologized to the restaurant staff that they had to leave. Their food hadn’t even come out yet. I didn’t get good vibes from the accordion player though.
We got back to the hotel and showered. We saw headlamps coming down the Fitz Roy trail on our way back from dinner. Laguna de Los Tres was challenging but doable. Like Laguna Torre, part of the difficulty is the distance itself. The scramble is steep and strenuous, but I thought it was fun. It seemed really daunting reading about it, watching YouTube videos about it, and seeing how far up the scramble kept going once we had started it, but it really wasn’t too bad if you take your time and go at your own pace. I’m so grateful that we had good weather for this hike - it was one of the highlights of the trip, for sure!
Day 6 (Monday 3/25): El Chaltén to El Calafate
Our day to sleep in! One of the biggest complaints I hear is that I don’t plan enough rest days when I plan our travel. To me, the travel days are rest days - we aren’t exerting ourselves. But I do admit, I often plan to start early to make the most of our days. I don’t always require sunrise activities, but often, getting an early start means beating the crowds. On this day, we woke up at 8:30. We had asked the evening prior about late check out, since we were being picked up at 1PM, and Valentina told us to check back in the morning. We did, and we were granted check out at noon! We had breakfast, and drank as much of that incredible orange juice as we could - we joked about bringing the pitcher of OJ to our table. I miss it.
After breakfast, we finished packing, and just lounged for a while. We walked around town for a little (20 minutes) to soak in the remaining time we had in Chaltén. It was the first time we experienced the Patagonian winds. The air was warm but the winds were strong (little did we know, they would get much stronger). Chaltén is also dead in the middle of the day. Everybody who comes to Chaltén comes for outdoor activities in the mountains, and aside from the wind, it was a beautiful sunny day, so everyone was probably hiking or climbing already. We hung out in the lounge/bar area of the hotel until our shuttle came for us at 12:55, slightly ahead of schedule. We picked up one other person at the Puma hotel (on our walk earlier, Kevin mentioned the Puma restaurant, which is in the Puma hotel, so quite a coincidence that’s where we were headed), and had to wait for her for a while. On our ride back to El Calafate, we did not stop at the rest stop (which was fine), and the driver drove fast. We dropped off that one lady, and we were dropped off at our hotel at 3:30, so the entire trip took only two and a half hours. Our room at Calafate Parque Hotel was also 106, just as it had been in Destino Sur! It was a great location, a block off the main road through Calafate, a quick walk to stores and restaurants.
Calafate is a much more touristy town. It is still walkable, but much bigger, more developed, more lively, more people, more cars. We walked around to find a bathing suit for me (I had missed out on the hot tub at Destino Sur and wasn’t about to miss out again! Plus my legs could use the relaxation after those hikes!) and souvenirs, then we stopped in at Don Luis for a snack since we hadn’t eaten lunch, even though it was around 5PM. I got a calafate flavored alfajore, Kevin got waffles “with dairy” (whipped cream, ice cream, dulce de leche), and we both got drinks called Don Luis, which was espresso, dulce de leche and whipped cream - the coffee was really good, and not as sweet as you’d think. The alfajore on the other hand was covered in chocolate and was very sweet.
Back at the hotel, we picked up our tickets for Parque Nacional Los Glaciares that had been dropped off, and we scheduled jacuzzi time for 9PM. We looked for places for dinner. I called Isabel to reserve for the next day, which came recommended by our driver in Buenos Aires and by Say Hueque, and Mako for 7PM that same night, which was recommended by Say Hueque.
At Mako, we were greeted with sparkling wine. It’s definitely a higher end type of experience and higher prices - catered toward tourists, and likely catered toward Americans - but it was not the most expensive meal we had. The breadsticks are decoration and edible. There was an amuse bouche of pate in phyllo dough, babaganoush and something else that we didn’t understand. I ordered lamb shoulder - lamb is big there, and parrillas will have lamb rotating around a fire. Kevin ordered hake, a fish similar to Chilean sea bass but more firm and more subtle in flavor. We also ordered potatoes and mushrooms as a side, but honestly, should have done without a side - it was a lot of food.
We got back to the hotel at 8:30. Perfect timing for our jacuzzi reservation at 9PM, which was for a 30minute session, on the 3rd floor. The spa had warm wood tones like we were in a lodge. I thought the water could be warmer. There were also a massage room, dry sauna room and wet sauna room.
It turned out to be a pretty nice rest day. Even Kevin agrees!
Day 7 (Tuesday 3/26): Perito Moreno Glacier and the Big Ice
The only reason why hiking on the Perito Moreno Glacier wasn’t on my bucket list prior to planning this trip is because I didn’t know this was a thing. It was certainly something I wanted to do, but I always imagined it would be Alaska or something like that where I would glacier hike. That being said, once I learned about it, of course we had to do it! There is only one tour company that operates for the glacial hiking, Hielo y Aventura. I think it has to do with the strict rules of the National Park. There are several options. The one we did is the Big Ice, a full day excursion, and you’re on the ice for three hours or so. It requires a pretty difficult hike to the area where we get on the ice. There are Mini Trekking options, I believe of different levels, which is less time on the ice and no hike to get on the ice. They are strict about who can do Big Ice: you must be under 50 years old, you cannot be pregnant, and if you struggle during the hike, they will strongly suggest you do Mini Trekking instead.
On this day, we woke up at 5:30 to have breakfast at 6AM. Our pickup was scheduled for 6:45. The tour guide came into our lobby for us at 6:53 and a big coach bus was outside waiting for us. There were only four people on the bus before us. Picking everyone up was much quicker than I anticipated it would be - we were done at 7:13. It is very well organized. Some smaller shuttles met our big bus to drop people off to us too. In total, there were 33 people. I recommend sitting on the left of the bus for the best views of the lake, mountains and glacier.
We drove alongside Lago Argentino pretty much the entire way. Our tour guide told us that it is the largest lake of the Americas - Lake Superior is the largest lake of the Americas, Lake Titicaca is the largest lake in South America, but Lago Argentino is the largest lake in Argentina.
We got to the park entrance at 8AM. Someone from the National Park comes onto the bus to take tickets if you have physical tickets like us ($12 per person, organized by our travel company), or take money if you purchase your ticket when you get there, or verify online purchase if you purchased in advance. There is an option to pay by credit card - a few people did this - you get off the bus to the ticket window. The National Park ranger came back onto the bus after having stamped our tickets. About 3km down the road from the park entrance is toilet services.
Parque Nacional Los Glaciares is Argentina’s largest national park and it protects over 800 glaciers which account for roughly half of the park. Glaciers are climate regulators. In 1981, UNESCO declared Los Glaciares a World Heritage Site because of its impact in climate regulation, the importance of glaciers and the surrounding forests, lakes and mountains.
A glacier is compacted snow that moves. It snows almost all the time in the back of the glacier by the mountains. Over time, the air bubbles between snowflakes is liberated, creating dense ice. The more blue the glacier, the more compact and the less air it has, because it is able to reflect the blue color better. Glaciers also have brown and black lines, which come from sediment. Glaciers erode rock because of its weight, and also the topography of the glacier mimics the topography of the underlying bedrock. To be a glacier, it must move. The Perito Moreno Glacier moves about two meters a day.
We had the opportunity to see Perito Moreno Glacier form the Magellan Peninsula balconies early - we were the only ones there at first. We had an hour to walk around the balconies, from 9-10AM, which really wasn’t that much time. Our guide recommended staying on the yellow “trail” - there are colors on the railings of the balconies. From here, there are many different vantages points of the glacier across the lake, and you can start to appreciate just how massive it is. At the same time though, it’s hard to tell just how tall the glacier is, without something for scale (later, when we were on the boat, we saw other boats and the shear size becomes immensely dramatic).
We drove to the port and boarded the boat. It’s a short 10-15 minute boat ride, passing icebergs, across the Brazo Rico arm of Lago Argentino. Many guides are already at shore awaiting our arrival. They broke us up into English-speaking and Spanish-speaking groups.
By this time it was already 11AM. We had an opportunity to leave things in the shelter/lodge and use the restroom. (Pro Tip: bring comfy shoes for afterward and leave them in a locker in the shelter; we did not do this, but wished we had). There is a short 10 inute walk to a dome where we gear up with harnesses, helmets, ropes and carabiners, and they gave us each a cookie (Vegan and Celiac friendly). From here was a pretty strenuous hike to the area where we would get on the ice. They said it was a 40 minute hike, I didn’t time it. There are some areas that are very steep, some that are gravel and you need to “skate” down. This hike was kind of a test to be sure that we could keep up and were fit enough for the Big Ice. One girl was struggling and she did Mini Trekking instead. We reached another dome, where we rested as the guides go themselves ready. There is a toilet up the hill here and is the last toilet available.
The next part of the hike was the via ferrata - where we used our ropes and carabiners to attach us to the ropes that were bolted into the rock. Honestly, the trail didn’t seem too sketchy here, but the via ferrata was fun. Finally, the last descent - very steep scree to the ice, where we got crampons. It was 12:45 by the time everyone had their crampons. They said the most important thing when wearing crampons is to walk with your legs far apart, so that you don’t 1) cut or snag yourself with the sharp edges or 2) trip yourself (almost happened to us both several times - it’s unnatural to walk like that!). I also found it hard to walk because you need to stomp with every step to really engage the ice. The guides taught us how to walk, how to go uphill and downhill (always keep your feet pointing forward, never sideways so you don’t roll an ankle, use your body weight to lean back when going downhill, little steps) and how to traverse an inclined ridge (one foot forward, one foot facing down the incline). They brought us to different features of the ice - big crevasses, glacial streams, glacial lakes, glacier table, etc. To be honest, we didn’t take as many pictures as maybe we should have or wanted to, because wearing gloves is mandatory (to prevent injury), so taking out and putting away our phones all the time wasn’t easy. I had my koala bungeed to my person for fear of dropping it and/or damaging it.
We stopped for lunch at 14:10, a quick 10-15 minute break. Kevin had brought his microfiber towel with him, so we laid it out for ourselves like a picnic. We walked a little more to our “summit” and turned around to head back at 3PM. We had to now climb the scree to the via ferrata back to the dome. They took us a different route back for the hike that had a lot of stairs. We dropped off our gear and the other dome and made our way back to the shelter for restrooms, and they had coffee and tea waiting there too. Our boat came at 5:20PM. Everyone from all the Big Ice groups were on the boat with us. The guides served us whiskey with glacial ice. The boat was filled with a feeling of accomplishment and pure joy after such a good day. We even saw a rainbow as we rode across the lake back to port. The bus left at 6PM and we got back to our hotel at 7:15PM. We made a couple quick stops along the way for passengers to get off our bus and onto smaller shuttles. The tour company runs like a well-oiled machine and has all these details and logistics ironed out.
We had our dinner reservation for 8PM at Isabel, which was recommended by our driver in BA and Say Hueque. It was 4-5 blocks away from our hotel and off the main road. We ordered a Hunter steak which is two ribeyes in a cast iron with veggies and sauce/gravy - it was so much food, we didn’t finish it all. I also ordered a glass of wine - there was no wine menu, I was asked white or red and then a very large glass of wine was placed in front of me. I was afraid it’d be really expensive because it was a lot and really good to my novice taste buds, but it was only 2800ARS (less than $3)! It was kind of chilly and windy walking back to the hotel. We packed, filled out of Chile immigration/customs declaration form (must be done online within 48 hours of crossing the border into Chile; you need to know points of entry, our travel agency provided us with this info) and slept.
Up until a few years ago (2018 or 2019), the Perito Moreno Glacier was undoubtedly growing. Now, scientists are debating whether it is growing or shrinking, or staying the same. Perito Moreno Glacier is the third biggest glacier in Parque Nacional Los Glaciares, at about 250 km2, which is bigger than the entire city of Buenos Aires (203km2). And then account for its depth: it is 30-60 meters above water, and is 120 meters deep in the south and 160 meters deep in the north. 90% of the glacier is below water.
The Perito Moreno Glacier is one of the many glaciers that make up the southern Patagonian Icefield, which is the third largest ice mass in the world, after 1) Antarctica and 2) Greenland. It is also the last ice of the Ice Age - during the Ice Age, the ice was much higher, covering most of the mountain tops we see today. The mountains with pointy peaks were above the level of the ice, but the mountains with softened peaks were below the level of the ice, and appear smoother because of the movement of ice when it was covered, and the ice eroded the rock.
In 2018, there was a rupture. The glacier was so big that it bumped into the peninsula, acting like a dam in the lake on the Brazo Rico size. Water levels rose and slowly eroded the ice. An ice arch formed, but eventually it collapsed, water broke through and restored flow with the rest of Lago Argentino, and ice exploded everywhere. This one in 2018 happened overnight, but it has happened several other times and is really cool to see (we looked it up on YouTube).
I highly highly recommend the Big Ice if you are able to do it (and if not - Mini Trekking!). It was challenging, but so much fun and definitely the highlight of our entire trip! It was unique and so quintessential Patagonia!
Day 8 (Wednesday 3/27): El Calafate to Puerto Natales, Chile
Another early day - we woke up at 5:30 to have breakfast at 6AM. I asked reception to call us a taxi to pick us up at 6:50, but he didn’t speak English so I wasn’t sure if he understood me. The taxi came at 7:15 (and there was some confusion because another Asian family of four had also requested taxi for a 7AM pick up, but ours was supposed to pick us up earlier and their taxi came before ours came, but it all worked out. We somehow still got to the bus station before them even though we left after them in the later taxi). The bus station is 10 minutes from the hotel. The check in counter was not yet open, so we waited. The worker was a fat, old, grumpy dude with a mustache and was so mean, acted like we should know exactly what to do and what he needed (you need your passport and Chile declaration form). It was more confusing because there were two workers, and two signs - one for the 8:00 bus and one for the 8:30 bus - but they were so strict and the other worker would not help check in people for the 8:00 bus (the mean guy wouldn’t let him). Strange.
The bus station bathroom is not pleasant. There are no toilet seats and no locks on the doors. There was no toilet paper either, but that was not uncommon.
Our bus arrived at 7:45 and our two drivers started loading luggage. Our 8:00 bus departed at 8:24. The bus ticket from Calafate to Puerto Natales was 29,000ARS (approx $30). The two drivers were so nice and gave us snack bags with water, candy and a cookie. Neither of them spoke English. It was a pretty smooth ride down Route 40. We turned onto the road to Rio Don Guillermo, a dirt road and bumpy. We got to Rio Don Guillermo (the immigration point) at 11:50 for the Argentinian side of immigration - passport only for exiting Argentina. There are bathrooms here. We left at 12:12.
Ten minutes down the road, we reached Chile immigration (12:22-12:44), where you need your passport and your declaration. Backpacks are run through the xray scanner, not the big luggage bags. I’m not sure if they checked those separately while we were in the passport line. The bus got to the Puerto Natales bus station at 1:45. We were in a taxi to our hotel by 1:48. There were not a lot of taxis at the bus station. We were lucky that not many people were ready for taxis yet, and one just pulled up. It was 2500CLP for the taxi ride to the hotel, which was maybe 5-10 minutes.
The streets in Puerto Natales were much more like what I think of when I imagine South American (or even Mexican) cities. Mostly 1-2 stories high, a little dingy and dusty and worn down, but not unsafe.
We checked into Kau Lodge at 2PM, our room was called Cerro Catedral. It is really a coffee shop that has five or six rooms upstairs. There is also an outdoor gear store called RKF and supposedly a travel excursion company (never saw anyone there).
We walked around town and bought souvenirs, checked out restaurants. Vinnhaus was recommended by Say Hueque and looked good online, but had closed for low season. We went back to the hotel to relax. One of the restaurants we wanted to try (not recommended by Say Hueque; I had saved it on my Google Maps, I don’t remember how I heard about it) was a couple blocks away from our hotel, and looked really good online. It does a lot with king crab. People suggested going early, when they open at 6PM. Since this was the only day that we would for sure be around at 6PM, we decided to check it out.
Santolla is inside shipping containers, and the entrance is a little tricky to find (if looking at the restaurant, the door is to the left but in an alley). It’s a cute, small restaurant with nine tables. The kitchen is upstairs. There are two servers with the best English we encountered while in Puerto Natales. Going early was great advice - it was packed by 7PM. I ordered a Pisco Calafate sour and Kevin ordered apple cranberry juices. Both were great. Bread came with a bruschetta/gazpacho-like spread that was very good (tomato-y, light and refreshing). We ordered the tapas of king crab with white wine and merken - really delicious, lots of crab and good whole pieces of crab leg! My main dish was the hake with citrus sauce and capers and black bean purée - excellent, light, delicate, the sauce was superb and very refreshing. Kevin ordered the Chilean sea bass - it was baked/steamed in parchment with dill and peppers - he said it was also very good. We decided to treat ourselves with tiramisu for dessert. Our entire meal was 99,000CLP ($100). While we dined, we chatted with an older couple (maybe in their 60s?) from Vancouver who had just finished the W-trek in five days as part of their six week vacation. They were headed to Calafate, Chaltén and then Northenern Patagonia. We also chatted with a young couple from California (SF area) who had just finished the O-trek in eight days. They were headed to Calafate for the Big Ice as part of their two week vacation.
One of the cool parts about traveling this area is seeing similar or the same people throughout the trip. Like Angie from the Philippines - she was at Fogón Asado for lunch when we were, but sitting on the other side of the room, we saw her hiking Laguna de Los Tres, she was originally part of our Big Ice group and she sat in front of us on the bus today from Calafate. Michael from our Big Ice group was also on our bus sitting in front of us (next to Angie), and we saw him and the two guys from China (also part of Big Ice) in a café in town as we were walking around.
Day 9 (Thursday 3/28): Base Torres (Mirador Las Torres, Torres del Paine)
We went to bed at 9:45 last night an slept like a baby. I woke up at 6:15 because I remembered I needed to pack the TdP tickets. We had gotten tickets to Parque Nacional Torres del Paine on our own, not through Say Hueque because by getting them on our own, they were about $30 each. If we had gotten them through Say Hueque, it would have been $80 per person.
The day prior, we saw the weather forecast for this day was going to be raining all day, and the activity we had planned for this day was a 13 mile hike to Base Torres - a strenuous hike with a scramble, just like Fitz Roy. I had messaged Say Hueque asking for alternative options, in case the weather was in fact poor (spoiler alert: it was). Their response was that once we are in the park, we are committed, so their recommendation was to wait and see if it clears. Not helpful. The whole point was to know ahead of time if there was something else we could do or other hikes that wouldn’t be as dangerous. Climbing a steep scramble on wet rocks is a disaster waiting to happen.
Needless to say, the weather was not good in TdP. When Ricardo from Patagonia Planet picked us up at 6:55AM, the air was warm but it was windy with big gusts. As we approached TdP, the cloud cover got denser and denser, and it was consistent rain. Ricardo didn’t speak much English, but gestured to the rain and said “mucho agua” and “es Chile.”
Our hotel packed our breakfast for us (a sandwich with ham and pesto along with a bunch of other things including yogurt and fruit) and Patagonia Planet had brown bag lunches for us too. It was a lot of food, so we repacked and took only what we thought we’d want/need. We stopped at the Cerro Castillo store for a bathroom break - it’s a gift shop and has a cafe, and a very cute fat dog. Cerro Castillo is the small village just after crossing the border into Chile.
We reached the TdP ticket entry point at 8:30. Ricardo personally took us through the line for our tickets to be scanned, and there are restrooms here too. We drove further into the rain to the Welcome Center. According to our itinerary, we had eight hours to hike (I had asked Say Hueque beforehand what happens if it takes us longer because I’m slow and like to enjoy the journey, and the answer was that the hike is doable in eight hours. Didn’t answer my question. I wanted to know if the driver would leave us stranded). Ricardo said to be back by 5, but he would stay until 6. We started our hike from the Welcome Center at 9AM (Ricardo walked us through the shop to the start of the trail. He was so sweet).
In the weeks leading up to the trip, since we had our itinerary, Kevin was concerned about our eight hour window to hike. Realistically, it would take us longer. We could probably do it in eight hours if we booked it the entire way and spent almost no time at the top. Honestly, if we had known this was how the agency planned the day with a time limit (we were informed of this a few weeks prior to the trip), we would have rented a car instead. Anyway, so going into this day, I thought that we should not even do the hike because of nasty weather conditions that would be dangerous, and with the time constraint that we weren’t confident about on a good day, there was no way we’d be able to be back in poor weather. Kevin didn’t feel like we had a choice so we did it.
It was rainy and windy. The hike was tough. Probably tougher than Laguna de Los Tres. It probably wouldn’t have been so hard if it weren’t wet. The first part, to the Hotel and bridge was flat. Then, the majority of the trail was uphill and rocky. It wasn’t too steep, but definitely steep in some sections. The big fist-sized rocks that made up the trail were tough on our ankles. The next section of trail was made of small, loose gravel, with steep inclines and declines that wrapped around the mountain. I wish I had taken pictures of the different types of terrain, but to be honest, I was so focused on getting there.
But we didn’t get there. We made it to Refugio Chileno and decided to turn around. We were miserable. The refugio was packed, like you could barely walk inside. All the seats were taken. On our way up, I had actually made up my mind that we’d get to the refugio, have a cup of hot chocolate and turn around. We did not get the hot chocolate. It was so packed, and everything was expensive (it costs 1000CLP to use the bathroom) and there was nowhere to sit so we decided to head back down right away. It was 10:40. As we made our way down, I said to Kevin, half-jokingly, that since we’d be back in town early, we could go to Santolla again.
We were back at the Welcome Center at 12:15-12:30. I was so cold and soaked - the rain had soaked through my raincoat and my wool, my socks were also soaked even though my boots weren’t leaking. I took off most of my layers - was still cold, but at least I wasn’t cold and (as) wet. I had a hot chocolate (finally) and Kevin had a cappuccino. The tables in the Welcome Center were mostly all occupied by the time we got there. We were lucky enough to snag the last two seats. Everyone else seemed to have just finished the W-trek, and most seemed to be in good spirits - better than us! (Kind of funny that we had hiked the least of everyone there and were probably the most unhappy).
We were both so cold while hiking (not normal for us). Everything in our packs were also soaked (my puffy, my UA base layer, my hat). I’m a little disappointed we didn’t finish the hike and make it to the lake, but it was 100% the right call. We’ve never bailed on a hike before, but there is absolutely no way we would have made it there and back safely, in eight hours. I’m not even sure we could have done the hike in eight hours in good weather. We struggled getting to the refugio. We probably should have bailed sooner. I’ve never been more miserable on a hike before. I often struggle - physically and mentally - but I know I can physically do it, and I tell myself I can do hard things. This time, the mental battle was a losing one, and probably for good reason. I often just want to be done (usually because my feet hurt at the end), but I’ve never felt so defeated, and that’s an understatement. I wanted to teleport to be done, inside and warm.
After we finished our hot drinks and were ready to go, we headed back to the truck, but Ricardo wasn’t there. By now, though, the sun was out. It was still windy and the air was cool, but we sat at a picnic table in the sun to warm up and dry ourselves and our clothes, and enjoy a view of the mountains. We could see the towards from the Welcome Center if the clouds cooperated. We ate lunch (provided by Casa Patagonia - salmon and caper sandwich with pear water!) I saw Ricardo in the parking lot, so we gathered our things and went to the truck - he must have gone to eat lunch at a picnic table at the far side of the parking lot.
On our way out of TdP, he stopped at Amarga Lake - very turquoise, with the towers behind, for a photo op. He slowed and stopped on the side of the road to point out guanaco, condor and ñandú. We joked about trying to see puma next. The “Big Five” wildlife to see in Patagonia are guanaco (cousins of llama and alpaca), condor, puma, huemul (look like deer, we didn’t see these) and ñandú (related to emu). Guanaco can jump over 1.5 meters high. Ricardo was a great driver. Despite the language barrier, I really enjoyed him. He’s from Argentina, was so nice and was so happy.
We got back to the hotel at around 4PM. We hung our clothes to dry and took hot showers. Say Hueque texted (via WhatsApp) to notify us that our Kayak Grey Glacier excursion had been cancelled for the next day due to poor weather. We were both looking forward to it, but understood. We faced bad weather already and had a miserable time. Kevin even said aloud in the car that if the winds are tomorrow like they were today, that we’d get nowhere paddling on a kayak. I responded saying we understood and asked for alternatives. Say Hueque, our travel agency, said to ask the front desk of our hotel what we should do instead. I thought that was weird, but I did and he had no idea and said he isn’t the right person to ask (I don’t blame him). I had the idea of going to Patagonia Planet (they have a storefront on the main street) since they provided our driver to TdP and would be providing our transport to the airport at the end of our trip. Jonathan at Patagonia Planet described a small bus tour stopping at the main lookouts of TdP with no hiking for 55,000CLP per person. Sounded good to us! Sign us up! But there was no availability. I asked if they would be able to organize a private tour, and he said since we worked with Say Hueque, they would need to be the ones to organize it through Patagonia Planet on our behalf. I reached back out to Say Hueque and she tried, but was unsuccessful saying there were no cars for a private tour.
By this time we were at dinner - I wasn’t really joking about going back to Santolla. We got the “crab cake” which wasn’t really a crab cake, but had a lot of crab and a lot of cheese. We also got the crab in white wine sauce tapas again. I got scallops three ways and Kevin got seafood pasta. The crab with white wine sauce is still our favorite. The dishes we had for our mains were good, but we both liked the fish we had yesterday better.
All during dinner, I was still trying to figure out what to do the next day. We got to Santolla at 6:30 and places in town were starting to close. When Say Hueque said Patagonia Planet would not pan out, I asked if they had any other recommendations, and she suggested renting a car. Great idea! However, there were no rental cars to be had. I asked if she knows of any other tour operator and she gave me a name but they were closed. I emailed them anyway (they still have not emailed me back to this day).
After dinner, we stopped at Venture Patagonia. They have a really cute artisan shop in town. Venture Patagonia is one of the travel agencies, local small business, that I had reached out when trying to find an agency to work with. I had heard of them from several Instagram influencers. They were transitioning their website and server when I inquired, so by the time they got back to me, I had committed to Say Hueque. I do wish I had waited to hear from Venture. Anyway. I digress. Venture Patagonia unfortunately does not organize single day, only whole experiences. We headed toward one of the car rental places Kevin had looked up that had no cars but I figured maybe they have cars that aren’t listed online (I was desperate). We couldn’t find that car rental company, but there wasa shop advertising rental cars and excursions a few doors down. They had neither available. I asked if he knew of anyone who might, and the guy was kind enough to walk us another few doors down to Micelio Patagonia.
Micelio offered a similar tour to Patagonia Planet’s full day Paine tour, and for the same price, and they had availability! They also referred us to a small supermarket in town, Don Brusco’s, to pick up sandwiches since lunch was not included in the tour. We went directly to the market, and on our walk back to the hotel, we saw the two people from Micelio, so we must have just made it in before they closed! I felt so lucky. Kevin said my persistence paid off, he had given up long ago. I just did not want to stay in the hotel or in town all day.
Day 10 (Friday 3/29): Kayak Grey Glacier Full Day Paine Tour
It was really cold overnight. The heaters didn’t work in our room. The night before, we asked for extra blankets but they didn’t have any so the hotel guy brought us extra foot blankets (the things that I believe are decorative at the foot of the bed). I’m pretty sure there wa a draft from the winds. Kevin said that as long as he didn’t move from the spot in the bed that was warm, he was okay. Neither of us slept in our pajamas, we slept in long clothes instead. It felt like we were backpacking….except we were in a hotel.
We woke at 6:30 and went downstairs for breakfast. We were served breakfast like an actual meal, and had complimentary cappuccinos. We were picked up shortly after 7:30AM. It was a van, not a shuttle bus, which was okay but made it hard to get in and out of, and we were in the back row. There were 12 people on our tour: two French-Canadian girls from Canada who now live in Alberta, a mom and her two sons from DC (they stayed at the Weskar hotel which looked really nice), an older Chinese couple from Manhattan, a solo woman from Tokyo (travel/tour guide in Tokyo), and a Spanish speaking couple. Our tour guide Romillo was born and raised in Southern Chile and his whole family is in tourism. He used to guide Base Torres hikes 5-6 times a week, now he does it 1-2 times a week.
The tour took us first to Cerro Castillo (to the same shop with the fat dog), then to Sarmiento Lake and Laguna Amarga. Both Sarmiento and Amarga are not connected to the water chain and they do not drain. They both have alkaine pH (Sarmiento is 9.5, Amarga 9.7), and cyanobacgeria and algae which give the lakes their color and create calcium deposits along the border of the lake.
Once in TdP, we went to Cascada Rio Paine (normally the tour stops at Salto Grande but it was closed due to weather). The water of Rio Paine comes from the glaciers and consists of all the water source in the park. All of the glacier sare part of the same ice field, all of which lead to the Rio Paine. Our next stop was Laguna de Los Cisnes to see the Chilean flamingoes.
We spent a while at Mirador Lago Nordenskjöld. The lake is named after the Swedish explorer who discovered the lake, and sits at the foot of Los Cuernos (the mountains hiding in the clouds). Its turquoise waters flow into Salto Grande and into Pehoe Lake. Behind the lake would have been marvelous mountain views, if not for the clouds. When we went, we could see that it was snowing in the mountains. Kevin even captured a photo of a condor flying through the snow and clouds!
Following the flow of the water, we went on to see Mirador Salto Grande, which drains into Pehoe Lake. From the shores of Pehoe Lake you can see the Pehoe Inn and Cuernos del Paine. Pehoe means hidden, as the lake used to not be accessible. The Pehoe Inn was built on an island by bringing supplies by boat. Visitors park their car then walk across a footbridge to get to the hotel.
We had lunch at Rio Pingo which is like a cafeteria. You have to buy something to sit, and we wanted chips anyway (and I wanted hot chocolate again). Over lunch, we chatted with the Chinese couple from NY. They are well-traveled, went to Peru and then spent seven days in the Amazon rainforest, and they loved Morocco.
A short drive from Rio Pingo was Hotel Lago Grey, and they have a lookout overlooking Grey Lake and Grey Glacier, but it was too cloudy to see the glacier well. Finally, we left TdP and went to Milodon Cave, which is another park, like a national monument. Milodon are now extenct, but were found in this area by a German explorer Eberhart, or rather, they found the leather hide of milodon. In a smaller nearby cave, full human skeletons were found. There’s speculation that the humans lived in the small cave.
We almost saw puma. There were a bunch of cars stopped on the side of the road, and our tour guide saw it for a second before the puma went over the ridge. We waited a while to see if it would come back or if we could see it from the road, but we couldn’t. Puma live in the pampa (yellow grass), not the mountains. They feed on guanaco. There are about 70-80 puma in TdP and the guides can recognize the older ones by certain unique characteristics, and they have nicknames for them. For example, one doesn’t have a tail, one has an eye injury so they call it Blinky.
We were dropped off at our hotel at about 5:30, and wouldn’t you know it, went to Santolla again for dinner. I had the guanaco with carrot purée, which was really good but I still liked the hake better. Kevin had the crab legs with wine sauce but the entrée version.
It was still very cold in our hotel room, they gave us a space heater which kind of helped. We packed our suitcases for our departure the next morning. For the first time, maybe ever at the end of a trip, I felt ready to go home.
Day 11 (Saturday 3/30): The Journey Home
We somehow managed to sleep like 10 hours! We woke at 8:30, showered and had breakfast. Our driver picked us up at 10:30 and we had an entire shuttle to ourselves. It only took ten minutes to get to the airport. Puerto Natales airport is very small. We had checked in and checked our bags by 10:50…for our 13:00 flight. Security is fast - there is only one line you can bring water. There is only one gate. The chairs before security are more comfortable than those after security, but there are more seats after security. There is a little cafe after security too.
Sky Airlines is a budget airline, no drinks were served. They sold Cup noodle (pollo or carne) for 3500CLP or $5 - it smelled good that Kevin considered it. We landed around 16:10 in Santiago. Santiago was hot like summer, even in the airport. We took off our jackets and changed into short sleeves once we retrieved our luggage from the carousel.
In the Santiago airport, Terminal 1 is for domestic flights and Terminal 2 is for international flights. It’s a short walk outside from one terminal to the other. We couldn’t check in to our next flight until 17:30, so we shopped until we were able to check in. We checked our bags and saw an ad for McDonald’s as we were waiting to check our bags. Naturally, we were then on a hunt. Luckily, the McDonald’s was in the C-wing, as was our gate. I had a Smokehouse burger which had carmelized onions, crunchy fried onions, sweet BBQ sauce and honey mustard. I asked Kevin what he got, and he said “bacon and cheddar” (but neither of us know what it was called - we just know you can’t get it here). We hung out there for a while to also charge our phones.
Boarding in Santiago, there is a secondary inspection on the jetway, after you scan your boarding pass! They look in your bags and you cannot bring any water at all! Of course, we had just purchased a big bottle, hoping it’d last us until we got home. I also had to squeeze my soap, shampoo and conditioner onto my skin so they knew it was safe (and not a chemical, I guess?). A woman next to us had just purchased three bottles of wine before boarding and they weren’t going to let her take it at all. She said she was able to convince them to put it in cargo, but even that was a difficult sell (lucky for her, she spoke Spanish). The inspector was very nice (didn’t speak English). I just wish I knew about this ahead of time!
The flight from SCL to MIA was eight hours. We took off at 21:30. I watched Barbie (again) and Crazy Rich Asians (again) and slept maybe 3-4 hours.
Day 12 (Sunday 3/31): Home Sweet Home
We landed in Miami at like 5AM. We had to collect our luggage then recheck it, but they had a separate area to check for connecting flights. We also had to go through security again, but it was also just people with connecting flights. There wasn’t a separate PreCheck line, but they did give us cards so that we didn’t need to take off our shoes and whatnot. We had a four hour layover, and landed in EWR at 11:30.
After collecting our luggage, we got a Lyft and we were home around 13:00.
Things I Wish We Did Differently
I wish we had rain covers for our backpacks.
I wish we stayed in a nicer hotel at the end of our trip, at least one with a Jacuzzi. At the end of the trip, it would have been nice to be pampered a little, and be more comfortable - or, in our case, at least warm. In Puerto Natales, the better hotels are located outside of town, so you’d need to get a taxi to go to dinner, and that’s partially why we didn’t choose to stay there. Good more luxurious options are Weskar, Remota Patagonia Lodge and Altiplanico.
I’d consider doing the trip in reverse, ending in Buenos Aires - this way maybe we would have had more time to explore and relax in the city, potentially. We wouldn’t have had to pack two bottles of wine with us the entire trip if we ended in BA.
I wish we had more time. We could have built in proper rest days and would have had flexibility to pivot due to weather. All of our travel days (flying, buses, etc) were days of great weather.
I would not have used a travel agency. It was very expensive and they didn’t help us when we needed it. I felt like they pressured us to book, saying we were going in high season, when in fact it was low season (we were the only ones staying at our hotel, some restaurants had closed for low season). People there book their excursions 1-2 days in advance. If I had booked our hotels ourselves, it would have been cheaper, even when booking ahead of time like when we were planning the trip. Having private transfers to/from the airport was really nice though.
Concluding Thoughts
Favorite “city”: Chaltén
Favorite day/activity: Big Ice
Favorite meal: Fogón Asado
Second favorite meal: Santolla (day one)
Least favorite meal: Don Julio
Favorite hotel: Destino Sur
Least favorite hotel: Kau Lodge
Laguna Torre: 12.64 miles in 6 hours
Laguna de Los Tres: 13.1 miles in 9.5 hours (I drank 1.5L of water)
Big Ice: 7 miles in 6 hours (including hike on land and on ice)
Base Torres: 4.72 miles in 3 hours (only to Refugio Chileno and back)
El Chaltén is a small town. You see the same people on the trail in your hotel, or at the airport and they’re staying the same hotel as you. Not surprisingly, the people who work in town know each other too. The main road is San Martin (for planning where to stay). Chaltén is still being built up, there is quite a bit of construction. There is LTE in Chaltén but it is slow at times. There is no single use plastic in Chaltén. It’s also funny to me that everyone in Chaltén dresses the same. Their (often Patagonia brand) packable down puffies, hiking/climbing pants, a beanie and slides or chacos.
Cash is king. We exchanged $200 in BA for Argentinian pesos. When we were in Chaltén, there was one time when we had to pay in cash (USD, ARS or Euros) and credit card was not accepted, and there was one instance where we could have gotten a 10% discount by paying in cash. A little background about the Argentinian economy and inflation situation. At the time of writing this, and at the time that we traveled, the situation had stabilized a bit because the newly elected Argentinian President, Javier Milei, devalued the Argentinian peso. Prior to this, the official exchange rate was around 400ARS=1USD, and there was the Blue Dollar Rate (semi Black Market) of approximately 1000ARS=1USD, and an MEP rate that was approximately 800-900ARS=1USD. The Blue Dollar Rate is exchanging “new” (crisp, unfolded, not wrinkled) $100 bills with the blue stripe for pesos - the idea being that Argentinians want US dollars or Euros because they are a more stable currency. The MEP rate is the rate that credit cards will give you. President Milei devalued the peso so that there is not such a large discrepancy between the official exchange rate and the MEP and Blue Dollar rate. Today, the official exchange rate is 866ARS=1USD and the rate we received was 980ARS=1USD (Blue Dollar). To get the Blue Dollar rate, you exchange cash at cambios, cash exchange store fronts.
Autumn is Patagonia is rainy season (I did not know this), and is low season - do not let anyone, not even a travel agency (ahem, Say Hueque) tell you otherwise.
In many places throughout our time in Argentina and Chile both, there was not toilet paper in the bathrooms. I had read about this, but didn’t think it’d actually be an issue (and to be honest, I’ve proudly peed and pooped in the backcountry many a time, so that doesn’t bother me the same way it may bother other people). But, have the foresight to bring TP with you, even if you are visiting places that you would expect to have full service bathrooms - yes, even in BA. The toilets are normal toilets like we have here; however, in many places, you cannot flush toilet paper. I suspect their septic systems are not as strong as ours.
Argentinians eat late. By US standards, Kevin and I eat dinner late (usually at 8 or 9PM). This is early to normal in Argentina, where dinner time starts at around 9PM. That being said, they stay up late too and seem to start their days late - not much was open at 8AM in Buenos Aires our first day. We didn’t do this, but there is apparently a big tango culture that goes into the wee hours of the morning. We found that restaurants didn’t rush us, but we did have to deliberately ask for the check - they don’t just automatically bring it to you. Also, tipping is entirely optional! Guidelines say 10% for good service.
Pro Tip: bring a bathing suit - you will want to enjoy the hot tubs after long day hikes! Bring a nice-ish outfit for dinners. Not all restaurants are fancy, but there were a few where I felt we should have been better dressed because the restaurants were nice. Given that the area attracts outdoorsy people, you certainly won’t stand out if you’re in athleisure, but I felt I didn’t match the vibe of the restaurant.
Before our trip, we read about crime in BA - specifically, people’s phones being snatched out of their hands while they were standing or walking on the street. I never once felt like we were in danger. I do feel like as long as you travel smart and are aware of your surroundings, you’ll be fine.
We also read and saw videos about the mosquito problem. Apparently this year, there were swarms of mosquitoes (watch the videos - it’s insane); whereas, normally they don’t have mosquitoes. And the problem was so bad that all the bug spray and deet was sold out everywhere. I was concerned because mosquitoes love me. I’m not sure if we were fortunate, or maybe because it was autumn, the mosquitoes were gone, but I got two bites in BA and that was it - no other bites for the rest of the trip.
Our hotel in BA had air conditioning, but none of the others did.
I highly recommend learning some basic Spanish. Because it is so touristy, most people understand some English, but we did have multiple encounters where they understood us but could only speak back to us in Spanish.
Laguna Torre trail (Chaltén) did have dedicated baños, although we didn’t use them. Laguna de Los Tres did not, neither did any of the other hikes we did.
Sunrise was at about 8AM and sunset at about 8PM.
I found that people were nicer in Argentina. They are just so friendly and hospitable and happy to assist. It’s not that the people in Chile were mean, they were normal. The nicest person we encountered in Chile was Ricardo, our driver to TdP, and he is actually Argentinian.
The best alfajores we had on our trip was at Mathilda’s in Chaltén.
People say that South America is cheap, Argentina is cheap, compared to US prices. I’d say this is only sometimes true. I couldn’t find a pattern. Sometimes I was like, “wow it’s only that much?!” Other times I was like, “that’s a good deal,” and other times still, I was like that’s normal, or dare I say expensive? Our dinner at Tapera in Chaltén cost us $55 for two steak dinners, but our two drinks (one cappuccino, one mate) and a pastry (alfajore) in Chaltén cost us $20. Two cappuccinos and a pastry (media luna) in BA cost us $7. I also feel that prices in Chile are closer to US prices, but slightly more affordable. For example, our dinners at Santolla, when we ordered appetizers and drinks, came out to be about $100 a night. Also, be prepared to pay for drinking water at restaurants.
I know that our experience is biased because we had good weather in Argentina and bad weather in Chile, but we almost wish we skipped Chile this trip and spent more time in Argentina - maybe returned to BA to have more time there because we really only had 24 hours. Who knows, the weather those same days might have been bad in Argentina too. It just kind of feels like wasted time a little bit, but I guess we will have to return to properly experience Chile!
Another reason why our experience is biased is because of the bad taste Say Hueque left in our mouths. Remember how our Kayak tour around Grey Glacier was cancelled due to weather? They said they would refund us. In our emails to our Trip Planner, she said that the tour was approximately $600 per person and that this would be the most expensive item on our itinerary (ie, more expensive than Big Ice). When I inquired about the refund to our “Guest Relations” liaison - yes, I had to remind them about the refund - I was getting back $595. I responded that our Trip Planner told me that it was approximately $600 per person, and the '“Guest Relations” liaison told me that our Trip Planner had made a typo. While this may be true, I just feel like I’m being scammed and tricked and there’s nothing I can do.
Going to Argentina, we left our house at 9:30AM and got to the hotel at 8AM: 21.5 hours, accounting for the time zone difference. Coming home from Chile, we were picked up from the hotel at 10:30AM and arrived home at about 1PM the next day: 27.5 hours traveling.
Even though this trip didn’t totally live up to my expectations, I would go back, but not for a while - it’s just so far! Our trip was 12 days. We had five days planned for activities, and we got to (successfully) do three of them. Even though we got to do the entire hike of Laguna Torre (day 1 in Chaltén), we didn’t get to see the towers. I am disappointed that we didn’t get to do everything we wanted to do, but 1) I knew this about Patagonia weather and 2) I realize and am so grateful that in general, we have such good weather and good conditions when we travel. I suppose I’ve been spoiled. I’d also like to acknowledge that with all of the traveling we did for this trip, all of the actual travel and logistics went as planned. We had a total of six flights, all of which left on time, were smooth flights, and landed on time or early. None of our bags were lost. I may be a little disappointed that we didn’t get to do everything I’d hoped, but it was an incredible trip and I am so grateful for the memories we made and that we were able to make the trip happen at all, and that our minds and bodies were strong enough to take us to see Fitz Roy and across a glacier. We have a lot to be grateful for!