El Chalten
ARGENTINA
Perito Moreno is Radical! And then on to El Chalten...
By AARON
Monday, November 22, 2010
The town of Perito Moreno lies between Bariloche and El Chalten and is not radical. For those not wanting to do a 26+ hour bus ride direct from Bariloche, you can stay there as a halfway point and then proceed on to El Chalten. We actually stayed 2 nights there and it was 47 more hours than we needed in a town that boasts nothing, yet has the audacity to put a huge mural of what I guess is their mayor, hands clasped together in a victorious cheering motion, with the phrase “Perito Moreno es Radical!” underneath. Sigh….. so onwards we go to El Chalten!
After securing our bus tickets in Perito Moreno to El Chalten via Chalten Travel, we embarked on the 14 hour bus journey that would take us down the infamous “Route 40” in Argentina. Mostly a dirt road, the straight, flat, hella-windy road boasts pretty much nothing, but surprisingly our bus driver and his second-hand man actually made the trip interesting, pausing when a (herd?) of guanacos (think vicunas or short-haired skinny llamas) would pass by, stopping at scenic points and even one time jumping out of the moving bus to run after and catch an armadillo for all of us to crowd around and take pictures of. Being from Texas, I tried to act calm and cool as these little armored creatures are abundant in my home-state, but seeing one up close and personal was quite the treat.
We arrived into El Chalten around 10pm, and due to the rains, quickly found a quaint, family owned hostel that would be our base camp for the next week. Located within a minute’s walking distance of Parque National Los Glaciares, El Chalten is the self-proclaimed “trekking capital of Santa Cruz”. That’s like me proclaiming I am the “senior editor of Lyndi’s and my Real Travel Blog”; it really carries no weight, yet through that simple phrase, the town has attracted millions of tourists and has boomed since its inception less than 10 years ago.
To its credit, it does have some fantastic scenery and Cerro Fitz Roy is the highlight- a jutting mass of granite rising out of the mountains with a beautiful glacier lake below. Still feeling the hurt from her blisters, but pushed on by Cal and me, Lyndi and the two of us decided to do a 4 day trek that would involve a walk on the nearby Viedma glacier on day 2.
Our first day was a relatively easy hike to our campsite, where we would meet our tour group for the glacier the next day. Blessed again with nice weather, we set up camp and even had a lack of wind, which allowed us to even get in a game or two of Uno before going to bed.
Next morning we met our tour group who started in town, and started the second half of the hike to Viedma Glacier. The hike proved difficult for Lyndi with her blisters, but it paid off as we were able to not only walk on a glacier, but were also able to see a huge chunk of ice (about the size of a 3 bedroom house) fall off into the lake! Armed with crampons (spiked hiking “boots” that fit over your normal boots), we set off on the glacier and were treated to views of cobalt blue crevasses and what seemed like waves of ice that had been flash frozen for our walking pleasure.
After about an hour on the glacier, we stopped for lunch and our 2 guides started setting up the ropes for our ice climbing! After lunch, each of us got to scale a wall of ice using our crampons, harness and ice picks. Definitely the highlight of the trip. After the ice-climbing, we headed back to our campsite and said goodbye to our fellow tour-goers who still had to hike another 4 hours back to town (suckers!).
Day 3 was a trek that would take us past beautiful lakes and treelines, with a beautiful back canopy of snowcapped mountains and glaciers. We arrived at the campsite around 3pm, which gave us plenty of time to set up camp and walk out to an opening that gave us a nice view of Cerro Fitz Roy in the distance. The hike up to the view point though was about 1 ½ hours, so after resting for a bit we headed up to one of the most amazing views I’ve seen in my time in Latin America.
It sucks because pictures can never do justice to actual experience, and although I snapped away as frantically and methodically as any other tourist up there, I just could not capture the image that stood before and around me.
Standing on what can only be described as a loose-rock mountain, the huge granite mountain of Cerro Fitz Roy towered over and above me, while just in front of it, an almost volcanic, black hill crept up the left side of Fitz Roy, as if trying to one day summit the peak. Directly below me was a glacier lake, covered in snow and if I squinted, I could make out people who had hiked down to it – they were about the size of ants from my vantage point, but from where I stood, it seemed like the lake was so close, mainly due to its size in relation.
To the left and right of Fitz Roy were snow capped mountains with glaciers in the high valleys, and if you turned around behind you, you could see the huge expanse of the green valley floor below, extending for miles on end and dotted here and there with lakes and streams. Luck seemed to smile on us again that day, because the sky was absolutely cloud free, which apparently is rare in these parts, so deciding not to take too much advantage of the weather gods, we headed down back to camp that night.
That night at camp was a special one. Not only were we still reminiscing about our killer Thanksgiving dinner the night before consisting of noodles and a soup packet, but tonight was also the birthday of our fellow trekker, Cal Conrad. Sneaking a candle and a hard chocolate cake-type thing in on our hike, Lyndi and I sang to Cal and he was able to still make a wish on his birthday as he blew out the candle we had placed in the center of the cake. Unfortunately we ran out of gas on that last night of camping, so we treated Cal to a birthday dinner of partially cooked noodles (I prefer to use the term “al dente”) and cold soup. Truly a feast for kings.
We woke up the next morning and packed up camp, which also consisted of taking down our food bags that had been put in our sleeping bag covers and hung from 2 trees by a line of rope. This was not because of bears, but because at each campsite, there was a hawk that would make himself at home, and hop around (yep, he hopped when he wasn’t flying) looking for bags of food left on the ground by unsuspecting tourists. Outsmarting the hawk just as I had outsmarted the rats and crabs on the Corn Islands (see: Corn Islands blog in Central America), we packed up our untouched bags of food, and headed back to El Chalten.
As we said before, the weather gods had been good to us so far, and we couldn’t have gotten any luckier as the rain started to pour in just minutes after we entered the front door of our hostel. Knowing that we had at least 2 more days here to let Lyndi’s blisters heal, it could rain all it wanted from here on out during the rest of our stay in El Chalten. And rain it did.
The next two days were spent cooking, reading by the fire and watching Real Madrid get absolutely schooled by Barcelona 5-0 in what was supposed to be a good match. During this time we also bought our bus tickets to El Calafate, which is another touristy town that has taken advantage of some natural wonder nearby.
What natural wonder you say? The one and only Perito Moreno Glacier, which is one of the main attractions in all of South America and which you will hear all about in the next blog by Lyndi. After senior editor Aaron first proof-reads it and gives it the okay of course.
