Parque Nacional Los Glaciares

After the 7 day hike in Torres del Paine, we first had a huuuuge asado (the local answer to BBQ) and I took the day off, resting my feet. After that I got myself to el calafate. Yep, Argentina again, I just love collecting stamps in my passport and slow border crossings. The town itself is not that amazing (understatement, it s an ugly town), so I just stayed 1 night. The day after I went camping in lago Roca, one of Patagonias beautiful lakes. We did a hike up to Cerro de los Cristales, an bit of a climb which my feet once again didn´t agree with. Once on the top we were at least rewarded with an amazing view. Torres del Paine on 1 side, Fitz Roy (another mountain in argentina) and Perito Moreno, the famous glacier on the other side. Camping here was amazing (yet cold, tip of the day, fill up a bottle with hot water and put it in your sleeping bag, works like a microwave!).


The following day we visited Perito Moreno. This glacier is a huge tourist attraction, looks a bit like disneyglacierland but it is absolutely worth it as well. The cool thing about it (hehe, many cool things about a glacier bien sur) is that it almost touches a peninsula from where it is therefore possible to see the glacier from the front. Adding the fact that is one the few glaciers that is actually still growing instead of shrinking and that very regular huuuuuge pieces of ice fall of, causing an enormous sound ressembling thunder. Pretty impressive stuff, you find yourself standing in front of a huge wall of ice. It´s very difficult to judge how big the thing actually is, but the walls are about 60 metres high.

From El Calafate I moved on to El Chalten, capital nacional del trekking.

1991: 41 habitants

2001:371 habitants

2009: 600 habitants

The town was created in 1985 as a result of a border conflict with Chile. Argentina´s solution was basically populating the area with Argetineans. In 1994 the conflict was definitively solved when an international jury judged in favour of Argentina. As a result, el chalten is Argentina´s youngest town and it is placed in the middle of a National Park, making it a great starting point for trekking. The mountains surrounding it (Fitz Roy and Cerro Torres) are considered amongst the most difficult amongst rock climbers worldwide. The tops are not that high but the extreme weather and the perpendicular shape make it apparantly not your daily walk in the park.

El Chalten is a bit of a strange place, since only 600 people live there officially but many more come to work during summer and hostels are packed with hikers and climbers. I enjoyed it a lot. The hikes are amazing and I liked the mountain even better than the Torres of Torres del Paine Park. On the downside, one of the muscles on my left leg of which I didn´t even know the existance, got inflamed . A nagging pain that started in Torres del Paine and which I wisely (not!) ignored. The last few hours of a dayhike had been killing me, forcing me to decide to stay in town the day after. Luckily for me, the day after was a very rainy one, so lots of people held a ¨hostelday¨ and we chatted all day long with Marcelo, the hostel owner. The worst news about this all is that I could not cross to Chile the way I originally planned. My idea was crossing a lake by ferry, followed by a 22 km hike, across the border to another lake. I was afraid that I wasn´t really in shape to do such a hike in 1 day with my pack. Besides, it was practically impossible obtaining info on accomodation on the way, it was cold at night, rainy days followed sunny days, my fellow travelers were not up for it and I didn´t feel like camping in the middle of nowhere by myself. So I bailed out and bought a boring bus ticket. Yeah well. Anyway, amazing stuff happened again to me the days after, but next on that in a new post since this pc is not cooperating a lot...
Fitz Roy


El Chalten, 600 people town and they dare to put up a sign saying Chalten North and Chalten Centre! (i stayed in downtown)

El Chalten