¡Buen viaje!: Trekking in southern Patagonia

Shortly after returning to Ushuaia we headed on a bus with two Aussies (Mike and Kat) back to Rio Gallegos and then west to El Calafate. We spent one quick night there - the hostel only had room in the storage room for us! - and next day went further north to the Parque Nacional de Los Glaciers and the town of El Chalten. Mike and Kat stayed in El Calafate for a few days. El Chalten is Argentina´s trekking capital and we were there during the high season. It was the first time on our entire trip that we had to consider booking hostels and buses in advance, which we´ve had to do since. The park was beautiful however. We spent one night in an El Chalten hostel and next day started off on a 3 night trek through the park - just us and about 10,000 others. The trails were like highways. We spent one night in a tent city at a glacier lake at De Agostini. We counted over 70 tents. Despite all the people it was pretty quiet and clean and you can drink the water out of streams or rivers. Next day we hiked over to another site called Poncenot where we stayed for two nights. The weather had been typically gorgeous with no clouds and hot sun for weeks so we felt pretty confident of seeing the sunrise on Mount Fitzroy one morning. We woke up at 4am and hiked up to a lookout with about 100 other people (the trail of headlamps on the mountainside was really cool) only to see the sunrise in total clouds. Still beautiful, but we couldn´t see the big mountain. The next day was clear skies, go figure. I went on my own to a glacier lake early in the morning to have my breakfast. I was there by myself for a while, until a young frenchman showed up and gave me sh*t for tossing rocks at a piece of ice - "you are destroying nature". I called him ´papa´. That day we hiked back to El Chalten, had beers and wine with two other aussies we met (Ben and Kerryn) and next day on down to El Calafate.

The lake at De Agostini, our first night in the park. There are no entrance fees here...

...which means lots of people come.

No mountain view behind us, but still a pretty nice sunrise at Poncenot.

Mike at a glacier lake just before being accosted by ´Papa´.

The town of El Calafate isn´t anything to write home about but the I Keu Ken hostel was great. The main reason for visiting the town is to see the Perito Moreno glacier. We rented a car and spent the day at the site. If ever in Argentina it would be a real shame to not see this amazing place. It is a huge glacier, some 7km wide and 25km long that is advancing at a rate of about 2m per day - one of the only glaciers in the world doing so, most are retreating. The ice is about 60ft high and massive pieces regularly fall off making huge waves and noise. If you stay long enough you can get a sense of where the next piece is going to fall from, which you wait for with great anticipation. When it finally calves off your heart races a bit -

Sequence of a smaller piece falling. Even the smallest piece of ice would make huge sounds, like cannons. Antarctica was amazing, but we didn´t see anything like this there.

After meeting up with Mike and Kat again we went across the border into Chile to Puerto Natales, where again we stayed one night only and then straight into what the Lonely Planet describes as ´South America´s best managed national park´ at Torres del Paine (literally, ´Towers of Pain´ ha!). Unfortunately in late December some idiot had illegally tried burning his toilet paper in 100km winds only to start a forest fire that burned about half the park (17,000 hectares). We took a bus tour through some of the burn areas, where a chopper was still working putting out smaller fires, and then hiked for 4 days in areas where there was no fire. Again it was packed and we didn´t really enjoy the park as much as in El Chalten. And here we not only had to pay an entrance fee, we also had to pay to camp because somehow there is private land within the park. I think the Lonely Planet should rethink its claim. We did see and hear pieces of ice falling off mountain tops in the French Valley and see a lake get pretty ripped up by incredible winds. It was nice to camp but we´d had enough of the crowds by trek´s end. We stayed three more nights in Puerto Natales at a great hostel (´The Tin House´) waiting until January 30 to board a 4 day ferry headed north to Puerto Montt in Chile. Elise turned 33 on January 28.