By: MJ + PJ
We spent about a week in Argentina, split into two parts. Five days were in the town of El Calafate on the shores of Lago Argentino, and then a few days were spent transitioning out of Patagonia towards London.
EL CALAFATE!
El Calafate lies in the northern part of Patagonia, near the enormous Perito Moreno Glacier. We had crossed paths with a young Argentinian in Cusco who had told us that the glacier should be high on our list of places to visit in Argentina. We had intended to visit Patagonia and this gave us a specific starting point to target. There are multiple daily flights to and from the regional airport, which is about 20 minutes east of El Calafate. This town served as a substantial delay for our arrival in Chilean Patagonia. Our five day hike and camping dates for Torres Del Paine were at the turn of the month, and we were two weeks early. But also, we wanted to look around!
So lets start with some basics: It is windy in Patagonia. We caught up with our Singapore friends from the Salar de Uyuni tour, who reported that winds in nearby El Chaltén had stolen a pair of sunglasses …off of their face. El Calafate has drivers who use their turn signal when driving (the kind of thing you notice and appreciate when you are walking near traffic with a child). The town has a craft brewery that made us feel like we were back in Colorado for an hour or so. This town is also a long way from anywhere else, which is nice. In November, it is busy but not crowded.
We stayed at an Airbnb on the outskirts of town which was truly awesome. It was an ample sized but detached guesthouse. The owners were very accommodating and as well as collecting us from the airport, made the visit feel like home. This was our second Airbnb experience, with our first being the week we spent in Sucre immediately prior to this stop. Both were excellent and reinforced Airbnb as being a solid short term accommodation option.
We explored downtown, visiting a freezing themed ice bar and the large toy museum where we also learned about Evita. (That is another story you should read up on.) Being able to squeeze in some non-routine exercise was also nice, but we were there to see the main event of the area: Patagonian glaciers!
A few travel blogs had recommended to a) see the glacier on a less windy day, and b) take a lunch that included a bottle of wine. We did neither, saving the least windy day for a bike ride along the edge of the bay, and seeing the glacier via a day boat tour which had lunch and a drink included.
After some consideration of how to see as much as we could, we online booked and then took the Cruceros Marpatag full day boat to see several local glaciers. The boat sailed in the west regions of Lago Argentino. We saw the north arm area and Spegazzini Glacier, took a short hike at Puerto de Las Vacas, had a distant view of Uppsala Glacier, and then a very close view of the north wall of Perito Moreno Glacier. This tour did not include the National Park entry fee, but it did include a boxed lunch and a drink. (See our PHOTOS: Argentina album for some of the amazing things we saw from the boat.) It was a long 12 hour day but totally worth the cost given that this kind of scenery was both stunning and new to all off us.
Our exit towards Chilean Patagonia took more effort than expected. We needed to arrange bus schedules for the transition there and back, but noticed a certain level of ambiguity with the vendors in providing assurances that the transitions would work. Not a good feeling, but we took their word for it.
[See our post for the interim two weeks at CHILE: Mylodons and Wind
TO BUENOS AIRES!
Two weeks later we made a complicated and compact exit from our last Torres del Paine campsite to El Calafate, staying a night at the Glaciar Perito Moreno Hostel. This was the complication: a series of unmissable connections. We had to catch the ferry to the bus to the Park Headquarters, then MJ had to catch a bus from Headquarters to and from the Refugio Central Welcome area to reclaim the bag we had stored there. Back at Headquarters we had to catch a bus to El Calafate, then on the following days catch flights to Buenos Aires and then to London. This stressful scenario was because MJ made a date error in booking the London flight, which should have been booked a day later.
The bus direct to El Calafate is much more expensive than going via Puerto Natales, but a shorter journey by about one to two hours. It did let us bypass making Puerto Natales connections that we did not believe existed. Reread that last sentence. We met a young American traveler waiting for the same ‘we-hope-it’s-just-late’ bus, and once on the late bus had a great travel chat as we were blown around the road exiting Chile. The border town was the windiest place we had experienced to date… and that’s saying something.
We arrived at El Calafate mid-evening, staying one night at our hostel which was right next to the bus terminal. (This hostel was awesome! We had forgotten we had breakfast included, and they were able to help us out in a few ways to make the transition less stressful.) AJ had his tablet case waiting for him courtesy of it being found and dropped off by our local Airbnb hosts. (Do you see why we liked this town and its people!)
Getting our laundry done was the biggest challenge we faced before our flight out at 3pm. We had been in the wild for almost a week and our clothes were the proof! Time was limited but we took a chance on a laundry we did not use previously in the downtown area. We had some interesting cab drivers into and out of town. Laundry done in less than three hours! What a relief for our fellow flight passengers!
Mid afternoon, we flew out to Buenos Aires where we had a stay at the same hotel as on our entry to the country three weeks before. We were able to wander around the downtown area in Buenos Aries and had dinner this time, which made for an enjoyable but late evening. This was the last transition of our tightly scheduled buses and flights to leave South America. We pulled it off, but it was probably more nerve wracking than exciting!
