After our big hike through Torres del Paine in Chilean Patagonia we crossed over into Argentinian Patagonia to see how things looked on the other side of the Andes. Our first stop was El Calafate, which was a 8 hour drive from Torres del Paine. The bus didn’t go faster than 60km/h, which made the trip feel like it was taking forever. But this was just the start of our bus adventures, turns out that 8 hours is nothing in Argentina.
Perito Moreno Glacier
So anyway, we finally made it to El Calafate. The main attraction here is Perito Moreno Glacier. It’s one of the few glaciers in the world that is still advancing.
It’s an enormous amount of ice. The ice comes from up high in the Andes, in the Southern Patagonian Ice Field. This is one of the largest ice fields and the third largest reserve of fresh water in the world. We saw the ice field when we flew south to Patagonia, and even from the plane it looks like it goes on forever. The mountain peaks look like they’re drowning in the pure white ice because they don’t stick out very far above the ice & snow.
Because this glacier is still advancing, you still get big chunks of ice calving regularly. If you go there you’re pretty much guaranteed to see something fall off into the lake. We were there for three hours and we saw two chunks fall off that were the full height of the glacier. I should probably mention that the glacier is between 50-70m tall.
We had two “small” chunks fall from the glacier near the view point, and the massive boom that came from it hitting the water was incredible. It sounded like a bomb going off. The whole time you’re there you can hear loud cracks in the ice and you think a giant piece is about to fall off. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn’t. This glacier is very much alive. At least for now. Unfortunately even though the glacier is advancing, the ice field is shrinking. It’s sad to think that this amazing force of nature could retreat and disappear like the rest of glaciers in the world.
El Chalten
This is known as the “Hiking Capital of Argentina”. It’s a bit different from Torres del Paine because a lot of the hikes are only a day long. So you can just walk out your front door, down the street and start hiking.
The two main day hikes go to Las Torres, another set of pointy granite towers in Argentinian Patagonia, and Mount Fitz Roy. We hiked up to Las Torres on a particularly cold frosty morning. But it did mean we got to see the forests of colourful autumn leaves ringed with a crust of white ice.
Even when the frost had melted the sun shining through the leaves of the trees gave the forests a magical golden glow.
Mount Fitz Roy is the more famous hike here because of the unique and spectacular shape of the mountain.
Along the way were lucky and got to see a large group of woodpeckers right next to the path. All busily foraging for food by hammering into the tree trunks.
The last part of the hike up to Mount Fitz Roy was difficult, about as difficult as the final climb up to Las Torres on our Torres del Paine hike. But it was very impressive when we finally made it to the top. There were also a few guys so impressed with the view that they had to take their shirts off and take a bunch of selfies. One guy was at it for a good half hour.
Even when we started to head back it was nice to look back at where we had started and to see how far we had come.
Once again we were pretty lucky with the weather, we had clear sunny days. The day after we did the hike to Mount Fitz Roy the proper Patagonia weather set in. Winds that were so strong that you struggled to walk into the wind. We just had a rest day in town and enjoyed watching bits of trees fly past the windows. People were still crazy enough to try and hike on this day. We chatted to one guy who made it to the lagoon at Mount Fitz Roy. But because the wind was so strong and cold he only stayed there for a couple of minutes and he couldn’t see any of the mountain because of all the clouds.
Bariloche
After a long 27 hour bus ride north from El Chalten we made it to Bariloche, which is still in Patagonia. We probably spent about 48 hours on buses going from the southern to northern parts of Patagonia. In Bariloche the scenery is a bit different with big lakes, pine trees and more mountains. Since we were still sore from all the hiking we took it easy on the outdoor activities this time, just a bike ride and short hike.
There is some very nice scenery there, but you have to share the bike ride / walk with cars on the road. This was a bit of a let down after being in pristine El Chalten & Torres del Paine where only hikers can go. Bariloche also has a lot of Swiss people living there. So it’s main street is just full of chocolate shops handing out free samples. Of course I had to go to all of them to find out which one was the best. 😉 (It was a shop called Rapa Nui).
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