After a 3 month break, we are off again to complete our world tour!
After a long ( and delayed) journey from SLC with 3 flights, we arrived over 24 hours later on Sunday in Buenos Aires for our one night stand before our Monday 3-hour flight south to El Calafate (FTE). Our BA hotel was very nice, close to a very active shopping area and, luckily, near a great boutique restaurant that was open on Sunday (most in the area were not). The lamb & fish were delicious.
The Monday mid-day plane to El Calafate was delayed at the last minute (I guess those pre-flight tests work). After a two+ hour delay, we finally arrived in El Calafate. Upon arrival, we stood with two other couples waiting to get our Hertz car rental. When it became our turn, the agent told us that our reservation had been cancelled and no cars were available (you would think that he knew that 40 minutes earlier). Later, on TripAdvisor, we learned that this was not uncommon with Hertz in El Calafate. The airport was empty, we had 23 km to our hotel and our whole Patagonia trip centered around hiking in El Chalten, a 3 hour drive away. All of the national chains had no cars. We finally were able to get a taxi from town to pick us up and take us to our hotel. By 8:00 p.m., all other car agencies in town were closed. The next morning were able to find a car (dented hood – must have hit an animal, scratches & nicks abound!) from a local independent. Our 3 hour drive was tedious (36 mph speed limit) but beautiful as we arrived in El Chalten, a town that is only 30 years old and considered a trekking mecca. El Chalten is pretty much cut off from the rest of the world and is still a wilderness frontier town (with terrible internet service!). The town generates it’s own electricity with a couple of diesel generators and the sewage system is limited which means no flushing toilet paper down the toilet!
The town is the gateway to Argentina’s Glacier National Park, home of Fitz Roy, a granite slab sticking up over 11,000 feet into the sky. This young town is filled with hostels, bars, restaurants and a few hotels as we know them. Most of the visitors are young, don’t have a car and walk everywhere (including in the middle of the few paved roads in town). Credit cards are rarely accepted (didn’t know that in advance) and there is only one ATM that works. Our first dinner out deprived us of all of our pesos except for 4 ($.30) and we had to ask about an ATM. We now visit it daily to retrieve our $75 limit!
As soon as we arrived, we donned our hiking clothes and off we went to hike the Los Condores & Los Aguilas trails – two one-hour hikes that offer fabulous views of the town valley & that of Lake Viedma.
