Cute Towns and Hiking Captials
The town of El Calafate is super cute. I feel like we've stumbled into cross between Mill Valley and Tahoe. There is a mix of small wooden and metal homes in all different styles, but mostly in harmony with the nature around them. The downtown is a mix of restaurants, artists markets, and outdoor sport clothing stores. Add in the crisp fresh air and blue and green vistas, and it's a lovely little place to spend a few days (or about 36 hours in our case).
The town originally sprung up in 1927 to shelter wool traders, but became much more popular and accessible (paved roads were added) when the area nearby became the Perito Moreno and the Los Glaciares (Glacier) National Parks in 1937.
By wasting a day on the bus to get to El Calafate, instead of waiting for the plane, Em and I were able to rebook our mini glacier trekking tour (if we had waited for the plane we would have run out of time and had to skip it). The only downside of rebooking is that we got in around one in the morning and had to be up and ready to go the next morning by 8; guess it's a good thing we're used to little sleep.
The glacier tour we were booked on was an all day event that was comprised of a few different parts: we drove 80km to Los Glaciares National Park, spent a few hours waking the balconies that give you vistas of the Perito Moreno Glacier, took a boat across Lake Argentina, and finished with a mini ice hike.
Glacier National Park is the largest national park in Argentina and was deemed a UNESCO heritage site in 1981. The park is home to the largest ice cap outside of Antarctica and Greenland. The ice cap forms 47 different glaciers, 13 of which flow out towards the Atlantic Ocean.
The glacier that most tours take you to visit is the Perito Moreno Glacier; the third largest glacier in the park and also the world's third largest source of fresh water. The Glacier has been in relative balance since 1917; expanding and breaking at constant rates, so it appears to always be the same. The Glacier stands between 40m and 70m tall and is approximately 30 km long from its top in the Andes (up near Chile) to the edge we were seeing at Lake Argentino (Argentina's largest lake).
Our tour guide dropped us off at the viewing balconies for the Glacier and essentially said, "Wander. Have fun. Meet me at the parking lot in two hours". We spent at least half of one of those hours standing at one of the lower balconies as the light rain fell, freezing our hands that were holding our cameras, in a vain hope of catching a picture or video of the icebergs breaking off of the glacier edge. As we had been heading down to the balcony, we just caught the tail end of one chunk careening into the water and thought it happened pretty frequently. Turns out that it does and it doesn't. Pieces of the glacier fall into the water frequently, but from different areas, so we kept hearing the giant cracks and plunges, but didn't see them.
In the afternoon, satied from the first decent food we'd had in a day and a half (bus stops don't tend to have great cuisine), we headed to the boat dock for a blistering cold trip across Lake Argentino. Everyone crowded atop the deck, huddling for warmth and stability, as we added a few dozen more photos to our collection of the Glacier.
The boat trip was about 15 minutes and takes you to the shore at the base of the Glacier. From there we hiked 20 minutes through the woods and across the beach to the start of our glacier trek. The company running the tours supplies everyone with a pair of crampons that were probably hold overs from Shackleton's expedition to Antarctica in the 1800s, splits you into smaller groups, and then you're on your way.
We marched up, marched down, and we marched all around the edge of the Glacier; all while our guide explained a little about how it was formed, why we can see areas of intense blues (mineral deposits), and that the water was completely pure (I ended up filling my water bottle twice with its freezing melt). Of course Em and I (as well as an Italian couple) had to maintain our title of "the difficult ones", as the guide was constantly trying to move us along or wait for us to catch back up or yelling at us not to stray from the path. What can I say, it was just so gorgeous and we were all looking for that epic photo (which I'm sure when I get home will just look like another shot of ice). The culmination of the trek was a shot of whiskey over glacier ice and a local chocolate and then the rare treat of seeing a small ice cave that had formed near the base of the glacier. This activity was by far my favorite part of this trip as it is so far and I'm really happy we got to do it.
To be able to get in the other mini adventure in the area that we'd originally planned, Em and I hired a taxi for the next morning to take us to see the Walichu Caves, and then return us to bus station to catch our 1 pm bus to El Chalten. We'd meet a German girl staying at our hostel, who had also been on our bus from Ushuaia, and asked her if she wanted to tag along since she was just exploring the area for a week. She accepted the invite.
Our cab driver was super nice and was asking whether we knew what El Calafate meant. Em told him "Blueberry", which is what someone told us in Ushuaia (it's really the name of the small plant in the area with yellow flowers and small "blue berries"). Since "blue berry" and "blueberry" sound the same, the driver told Em she was correct and then proceeded to stop the car so that he could grab a few off a nearby bush to let us try. Turns out that Calafate is like a blueberry, but not quite the same thing; they're a lot more sour, with a poisony after flavor. If was a nice gesture though.
When we got to the caves, the front gate was locked and no one was there. The driver called the number on the sign and a woman essentially said that she didn't know why it wasn't open and that maybe the ranger had just slept in. The three of us decided to take sad photos in front of the gate to the amusement of our driver. Just when we were beginning to despair that it would be a wasted trip, a car drove up and a tired looking guy got out and opened the gate. Guess opening hours here are just suggestions.
The Walichu Caves are an archaeological site that contains the oldest pictograms in the region. It is believed that the paintings are at least 4,000 years old and are thought to have been made by the pre-Tehuelche peoples.
Your entrance fee gains you access to a short hike around the sandstone cliffs and the ability to play "what do you see?" with the remnants of the pictographs still visible on the walls. The guide in the main office was offering us an audio guide, but through a misunderstanding of whether it cost more or if we'd have time to listen to it, we ended up declining the guide and wandering on our own. I would have preferred the guide, but too late now.
While the importance of the site, makes it so where I was excited to visit, there isn't much actually there. Most of the original paintings are very hard to make out and appear as random colors on the walls. There are however, quite a few more visible and vivid reproductions.
While I thought that El Calafate was a super cute little town, turns out that El Chalten is even cuter. On your bus ride in they have everyone on the bus disembark at the ranger station so that you can essentially be told to pack in and pack out everything that you take into the mountains, drink the water from the glacier and streams and save yourself some money, and respect nature. Once the introduction talk is over, you reboard to go the additional quarter of a mile to the bus station, and then are released to wander the sleepy town.
El Chalten has an adorable main street, lined on both side with shops, restaurants, and a few hostels. Protruding off the main corridor are several smaller streets with other homes and hostels. The town itself is actually located within Glaciers National Park. It was originally built I 185 to fix a border dispute with Chile, but has since become the trekking capital of the country and now exists solely to support tourism. On all sides you can go about half a mile or less and end up on a trail into the woods. It's a nature lover's dream.
Since the hostel I had originally booked canceled my reservation due to the fact that I had missed the fine print telling me to send them my credit card information through email beforehand, I had booked us into a B&B for the one night we had there. Turns out that this was way better. Our B&B was only 2 years old, had 7 rooms, tea available 24/7, and staff that were willing to let us come back and shower the following day after we'd already checked out and before we boarded our overnight bus to Los Antiguos.
One of the main attractions for the visitors is the 20 km (approximately 14 miles) hike from just outside town to the Lago de la Tres (Lake of the Three). This is a 8-10 hour hike that takes you through various different terrains and culminates with a three kilometer hike straight up the side of a rocky mountain. The signs tells you that the distance is only 1km, but I checked it on my Fitbit and it's 3 km.
When we'd checked into our B&B, the receptionist told us that if we didn't want to see the same thing by hiking from town to the Lake and back, we could get a van to a point above the Lake and then hike back. This was supposed to make the hike only 7 hours (instead of 8), had the added benefit of allowing you to get a great view of the glacier (that you can't see from the other trail), and made sure that once we started we had to finish because there was only one way back to town. We opted for this and didn't regret it at all, especially we we got to the last 3 km and realised that since we were hiking down them, we would have had to hike up them at the beginning of our hike if we'd left from town.
While I do wish we'd had a little more time in both El Calafate and El Chalten, so that we might have been able to decompress a bit and not constantly be running from place to place, I have to say I am super happy that even with the delay caused by the airline's strike, Em and I were still able to do all the activities that we'd originally planned for this trip.
The town originally sprung up in 1927 to shelter wool traders, but became much more popular and accessible (paved roads were added) when the area nearby became the Perito Moreno and the Los Glaciares (Glacier) National Parks in 1937.
By wasting a day on the bus to get to El Calafate, instead of waiting for the plane, Em and I were able to rebook our mini glacier trekking tour (if we had waited for the plane we would have run out of time and had to skip it). The only downside of rebooking is that we got in around one in the morning and had to be up and ready to go the next morning by 8; guess it's a good thing we're used to little sleep.
The glacier tour we were booked on was an all day event that was comprised of a few different parts: we drove 80km to Los Glaciares National Park, spent a few hours waking the balconies that give you vistas of the Perito Moreno Glacier, took a boat across Lake Argentina, and finished with a mini ice hike.
Glacier National Park is the largest national park in Argentina and was deemed a UNESCO heritage site in 1981. The park is home to the largest ice cap outside of Antarctica and Greenland. The ice cap forms 47 different glaciers, 13 of which flow out towards the Atlantic Ocean.
The glacier that most tours take you to visit is the Perito Moreno Glacier; the third largest glacier in the park and also the world's third largest source of fresh water. The Glacier has been in relative balance since 1917; expanding and breaking at constant rates, so it appears to always be the same. The Glacier stands between 40m and 70m tall and is approximately 30 km long from its top in the Andes (up near Chile) to the edge we were seeing at Lake Argentino (Argentina's largest lake).
Our tour guide dropped us off at the viewing balconies for the Glacier and essentially said, "Wander. Have fun. Meet me at the parking lot in two hours". We spent at least half of one of those hours standing at one of the lower balconies as the light rain fell, freezing our hands that were holding our cameras, in a vain hope of catching a picture or video of the icebergs breaking off of the glacier edge. As we had been heading down to the balcony, we just caught the tail end of one chunk careening into the water and thought it happened pretty frequently. Turns out that it does and it doesn't. Pieces of the glacier fall into the water frequently, but from different areas, so we kept hearing the giant cracks and plunges, but didn't see them.
In the afternoon, satied from the first decent food we'd had in a day and a half (bus stops don't tend to have great cuisine), we headed to the boat dock for a blistering cold trip across Lake Argentino. Everyone crowded atop the deck, huddling for warmth and stability, as we added a few dozen more photos to our collection of the Glacier.
The boat trip was about 15 minutes and takes you to the shore at the base of the Glacier. From there we hiked 20 minutes through the woods and across the beach to the start of our glacier trek. The company running the tours supplies everyone with a pair of crampons that were probably hold overs from Shackleton's expedition to Antarctica in the 1800s, splits you into smaller groups, and then you're on your way.
We marched up, marched down, and we marched all around the edge of the Glacier; all while our guide explained a little about how it was formed, why we can see areas of intense blues (mineral deposits), and that the water was completely pure (I ended up filling my water bottle twice with its freezing melt). Of course Em and I (as well as an Italian couple) had to maintain our title of "the difficult ones", as the guide was constantly trying to move us along or wait for us to catch back up or yelling at us not to stray from the path. What can I say, it was just so gorgeous and we were all looking for that epic photo (which I'm sure when I get home will just look like another shot of ice). The culmination of the trek was a shot of whiskey over glacier ice and a local chocolate and then the rare treat of seeing a small ice cave that had formed near the base of the glacier. This activity was by far my favorite part of this trip as it is so far and I'm really happy we got to do it.
To be able to get in the other mini adventure in the area that we'd originally planned, Em and I hired a taxi for the next morning to take us to see the Walichu Caves, and then return us to bus station to catch our 1 pm bus to El Chalten. We'd meet a German girl staying at our hostel, who had also been on our bus from Ushuaia, and asked her if she wanted to tag along since she was just exploring the area for a week. She accepted the invite.
Our cab driver was super nice and was asking whether we knew what El Calafate meant. Em told him "Blueberry", which is what someone told us in Ushuaia (it's really the name of the small plant in the area with yellow flowers and small "blue berries"). Since "blue berry" and "blueberry" sound the same, the driver told Em she was correct and then proceeded to stop the car so that he could grab a few off a nearby bush to let us try. Turns out that Calafate is like a blueberry, but not quite the same thing; they're a lot more sour, with a poisony after flavor. If was a nice gesture though.
When we got to the caves, the front gate was locked and no one was there. The driver called the number on the sign and a woman essentially said that she didn't know why it wasn't open and that maybe the ranger had just slept in. The three of us decided to take sad photos in front of the gate to the amusement of our driver. Just when we were beginning to despair that it would be a wasted trip, a car drove up and a tired looking guy got out and opened the gate. Guess opening hours here are just suggestions.
The Walichu Caves are an archaeological site that contains the oldest pictograms in the region. It is believed that the paintings are at least 4,000 years old and are thought to have been made by the pre-Tehuelche peoples.
Your entrance fee gains you access to a short hike around the sandstone cliffs and the ability to play "what do you see?" with the remnants of the pictographs still visible on the walls. The guide in the main office was offering us an audio guide, but through a misunderstanding of whether it cost more or if we'd have time to listen to it, we ended up declining the guide and wandering on our own. I would have preferred the guide, but too late now.
While the importance of the site, makes it so where I was excited to visit, there isn't much actually there. Most of the original paintings are very hard to make out and appear as random colors on the walls. There are however, quite a few more visible and vivid reproductions.
While I thought that El Calafate was a super cute little town, turns out that El Chalten is even cuter. On your bus ride in they have everyone on the bus disembark at the ranger station so that you can essentially be told to pack in and pack out everything that you take into the mountains, drink the water from the glacier and streams and save yourself some money, and respect nature. Once the introduction talk is over, you reboard to go the additional quarter of a mile to the bus station, and then are released to wander the sleepy town.
El Chalten has an adorable main street, lined on both side with shops, restaurants, and a few hostels. Protruding off the main corridor are several smaller streets with other homes and hostels. The town itself is actually located within Glaciers National Park. It was originally built I 185 to fix a border dispute with Chile, but has since become the trekking capital of the country and now exists solely to support tourism. On all sides you can go about half a mile or less and end up on a trail into the woods. It's a nature lover's dream.
Since the hostel I had originally booked canceled my reservation due to the fact that I had missed the fine print telling me to send them my credit card information through email beforehand, I had booked us into a B&B for the one night we had there. Turns out that this was way better. Our B&B was only 2 years old, had 7 rooms, tea available 24/7, and staff that were willing to let us come back and shower the following day after we'd already checked out and before we boarded our overnight bus to Los Antiguos.
One of the main attractions for the visitors is the 20 km (approximately 14 miles) hike from just outside town to the Lago de la Tres (Lake of the Three). This is a 8-10 hour hike that takes you through various different terrains and culminates with a three kilometer hike straight up the side of a rocky mountain. The signs tells you that the distance is only 1km, but I checked it on my Fitbit and it's 3 km.
When we'd checked into our B&B, the receptionist told us that if we didn't want to see the same thing by hiking from town to the Lake and back, we could get a van to a point above the Lake and then hike back. This was supposed to make the hike only 7 hours (instead of 8), had the added benefit of allowing you to get a great view of the glacier (that you can't see from the other trail), and made sure that once we started we had to finish because there was only one way back to town. We opted for this and didn't regret it at all, especially we we got to the last 3 km and realised that since we were hiking down them, we would have had to hike up them at the beginning of our hike if we'd left from town.
While I do wish we'd had a little more time in both El Calafate and El Chalten, so that we might have been able to decompress a bit and not constantly be running from place to place, I have to say I am super happy that even with the delay caused by the airline's strike, Em and I were still able to do all the activities that we'd originally planned for this trip.
posted by Robby @ 5:21 PM
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