Let me be clear: I am not a hiker. I am a 64 year old roly poly woman of Polish heritage with short legs. I breathe heavily and walk slowly. Greg’s the hiker, I am a walker. I’ll walk 18 holes of golf. I’ll far outpace Greg on a flat sidewalk shopping in a city whereas he leaves me in the dust, literally, on a mountain. Endurance, however, I can do. Just give me time. And motivation, like, say, an amazing view. Thus, we went hiking in Patagonia. I didn’t review the plans in advance. My bad.
Following our “W” adventure, we boarded the 7:00am bus from Puerto Natales to El Calafate, a 6 hour trip with 3 hours actually on the road and 3 hours for crossing immigration/customs at both the Chilean and Argentine borders. And for stopping several times at various hole-in-the wall rest stops so 60 passengers can file off and on for snacks and disgusting banos (which I used every time. Note: bring your own toilet paper and hand sanitizer. Also note: used TP is discarded into trash bins and not toilets.) It seems the bus driver and the rest stop owners might have an agreement. At the El Calafate bus stop we were picked up by our private transfer bus for another 3.5 hours to El Chalten, our next stop. This time the bus driver stopped at Parador La Leona, a legit rest stop with decent banos and very tasty pumpkin/cheese empanadas and an amazing lemon meringue pie. Also some history: sometime in the 1600’s a ferry was established to cross the Rio Leone, a raging turquoise glacial river, ferrying hundreds of cattle at a time and not without some bandito conflict. There’s a bridge now. We drove on through unvaried desert-like steppes with the ubiquitous fencing and dotted with guanaco and not much else. The snow covered Andes remained off in the distance across a large turquoise colored lake. We were greeted at the entrance to El Chalten with a spectacular view of Mt. Fitzroy while some Andean condors flew overhead.
We checked in at Hosteria Senderos, a cute, older hotel selected by our next tour operator, SWOOP. We dined on lamb and steak and wonderful Argentine wine at La Vineria, a really nice, upscale restaurant in this tiny Patagonian hiking mecca. El Chalten boasts more bars, restaurants, and gear shops per person than we have seen yet streets and sidewalks are often unpaved. And it is surrounded by natural climbing cliffs and mountains with glacial streams running alongside. Two bottles of carmenere later, we hit the hay. The next day, we met with our new guide, Juliana, who will accompany us the next two days for our hikes. We immediately headed out on our first hike, Laguna de los Tres in the Nacional Parc de los Glaciares. Juli, a delightful transplant from Buenos Aires and former mountaineer instructor, had us doing some warmup exercises after we were dropped off north of El Chalten at El Pilar. Then we began walking, first, alongside a raging glacial stream, then up the hillside covered with old trees to a Mirador (lookout) at the mountains, Mount Fitzroy, the tallest, and others: Electrico, Marconi, St. Exupery among them. These are magmatic intrusions, like Paine del Torres in Chile, magma filled pimples of the earth that cooled upright. Surrounding these jagged spires are glaciers that have scraped, compressed, and rounded the surfaces of other, older mountains created by tectonic plate shift. The geology around here is fascinating.
Our destination was Laguna de los Tres, a glacial lake at 3500 ft elevation, surrounded by the three spires including Fitzroy, the tallest. Steve and Andrea opted to bypass this steep climb to protect Steve’s wonky knee. After instruction from Juliana, they headed to the hotel, 6 miles farther. Greg and I continued on and up with Juli. I made it to about 3,000 ft elevation and decided to turn back since the reward didn’t seem worthy of the suffering, plus I also needed to save energy and knees for our return to the hotel. Juli and I headed down, slowly, to a designated meeting point and waited for Greg, who headed up alone. Only 45 minutes after we had arrived at the waiting point Greg showed up, having successfully, and quickly, finished the steep climb and gotten some awesome photos, and hiked back down. We then began the “forced march” through some beautiful country: fields and forests and alongside (and in one instance, into) glacial streams and kettle lakes. Turns out numbing your feet in frigid water can be very restorative. Walking back through town Greg and I stopped at La Zorra, a local microbrewery, and then we dined with Steve and Andrea again at La Vineria and went to bed early, exhausted. Total distance, over 13 miles, 3000+ ft elevation, 9.5 hours.
Next day, new hike. Juliana took us on an “easy” hike to Laguna de los Glaciares, “easy” being a relative term. Don’t listen to hikers. They love things being difficult. We walked directly from our hotel to the trailhead, up a set of stairs and then up and down through the valley to the Mirador which is basically the first moraine pushed by the glacier 24,000 years ago (2.4×10*4 for my science friends). Then more walking in a very flat field and wooded section with very old, gnarled trees, over another moraine formed 17,000 (1.7×10*4) years ago. Finally we climbed over the last moraine, formed 7,000 years ago (0.7×10*4), to see the Laguna de los Glaciares, a small lake with icebergs that have calved off the glacier. The wind here was gusty enough to knock you off your feet so we found a protected boulder to hide from it and eat our boxed lunch. The mountains in the distance were somewhat shrouded by clouds but the view was stunning. We watched as an iceberg rolled over in the water, the smaller underside now exposed. I had had a meltdown about halfway in (“f’ing mountains”) but the sight of the lake, icebergs, and mountains rejuvenated me. We walked back rather quickly considering our sore feet and legs, like horses back to the barn. Rain caught up to us at the very end of another great hike. We said goodbye to Juli and had enough time for a beer at the El Chalten Cerveceria. We purchased some snacks and cans of beer, got on the private transfer bus, and slept most of the way back to El Calafate. In the end we hiked 15 miles in 7.5 hours this last hike. Total for the trip these past 6 of 7 days: 64 miles. It wasn’t the Appalachian Trail or the Pacific Rim Trail, but it was enough.
How did we come off an epic hiking adventure and rest our weary bodies? We took a glacier cruise on Lago Argentina from El Calafate, the largest lake in Argentina and a turquoise glacier lake as well. This whole adventure has been 4 years in the planning so some details were forgotten with excursions that had been credited to us. Our tour agency, SWOOP, booked the cruise and bus transfers so we arrived at the dock and boarded the large sight-seeing catamaran. Expecting a box lunch, we were directed upstairs to the premium lounge with just 18 or so passengers, a nice surprise. And weren’t we even more surprised to see, once again, our Indian friends Nimi and Vatson from the Stella Australis cruise sitting in the lounge. We had already run into them once before while hiking the ‘W’! It was a beautiful sunny day to see immense blue glaciers and icebergs and mountains. We had drinks made with glacial ice and a fantastic lunch of lamb chops. A perfect day.
Our trip is winding down. Two stops left: Bariloche and Mendoza. Next blog.
My new reality 