El Chalten

From El Calafate we drive another few hours through the barren countryside until reaching El Chalten, the newest city (3000 people in the summer, far less in the winter) in South America, developed in the 1980s to handle tourists hiking in the area.  Along the way we stopped at an estancia, 10,000 acres of land for sheep with each of these estates.  The scenery changed dramatically along the way with sightings of glaciers and the Fitzroy massif range of granite mountains.  We also saw condors gliding along (they have no pectoral muscles so don’t really fly) and guanacos, the larger cousin of the llama. It’s summer here, and high season.  We went for a little two hour hike to check out the area.

The next day we went on a short hike to see a couple of glaciers and the lagoonsbelow and

experience the winds of Patagonia. Gusts can be something like being in a

Saskatchewan blizzard, you are walking but not moving forward, crouching to avoid being

toppled over.

The next morning was our “introductory” hike in Patagonia, 20 km over ten hours!  We trekked to Laguna de Los Tres, to the bases of two small glaciers and the pool beneath them where we refilled our water bottles.  The lagoons have no life in them, no minerals.  The glaciers are white on top from oxygen in the water, while beneath you can see shades of blue where oxygen has not reached.  The last few hours of the hike were tough, downhill and in the rain.  The Brazilian on our trip, who is a great guy but not used to this, wore calf leather cashmere lined gloves, and they were ruined so he was not happy. The trip notes said to bring gloves, so he did!  His water repellant jacket left him soaked.  

I wore my $40 Costco wind and rainproof jacket and it was awesome!  So the hike really was good preparation for our big hike coming up, and it was followed by a great beef meal and malbec wine.

From El Chalten, some of us took a bus then boat to a side of the Viedma glacier, largest in Argentina.  We hiked over smooth rocks to the edge of the glacier which is covered in dirt, where we attached crampons to our boots and climbed on to the glacier itself.

We walked up slopes like a penguin, down like a monkey, keeping feet well apart to not catch the crampons on your pant legs.  We trekked to a crevasse, with a bridge formation, and a huge air hole with a lining of bubbles, fantastic, taking pictures leaning in to the drop with the guides hanging on to you safely.  The finale was glasses filled with glacier ice and a bottle of liqueur.  However our tour leader, who was not with us, had read my welcome survey where I said the experience I wanted to have on the trip was having scotch with glacier ice, and he had sent along a little bottle of good scotch with a note, it was such an awesome surprise!  I of course shared with our handsome guide Mauro and the others.

Later, back at the hotel, Neil our tour leader showed me that he had made a post on the G Adventures intranet about the scotch idea, and took a pic of my survey, his note, and the scotch, and the post went crazy with comments.  He won a gold medal in some contest they were having, cool!  Haha literally, it went with glacier ice!