El Chalten, a 3
hour road trip from El Calafate through sparse barren land known as ‘The Steppe’,
punctuated initially by a lake we had to skirt and a river we followed and
criss crossed multiple times. About 130
kms from El Chalten, we had made our first sighting of the already imposing
form of Fitz Roy Mountain.
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| driving across 'The Steppe' - Fitz Roy in the distance |
El Chalten is a
quirky, eclectic, rustic, unpretentious little village situated at the northern
end of Los Glaciares Nat. Park. This
little village, nestled between mountains next to a river with the imposing
form of Fitz Roy Mtn. (3,405m) as the primary backdrop, was founded in 1985 as
a result of a land dispute between Chile and Argentina.
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| El Chalten |
Our initial late
afternoon meander throughout the village uncovered a lot of construction
underway, but most of the existing buildings were in some way unfinished,
irrespective of whether homes or businesses.
Normally it was the 2nd storey still to be completed in some
way, so it was quite normal to say an operating business on the ground floor
and a ladder going to an open window of the floor above. We think there is some form of tax due when a
building is completed, so they simply don’t.
Then there are the
DOGS, many many dogs. We had noticed the
same thing in both Ushuaia and El Calafate, with lots of dogs of all different
breeds, colours and sizes just roaming the streets. They were all quite indifferent to us as we
at times had to walk amongst them, but there’s just a lot of dogs.
After a very nice
dinner at a wonderful little restaurant at the far end of town, we settled into
our equally rustic hotel room. There was
little spare room, old eclectic fittings and both of us had to duck our heads
as we moved around near the end of the bed, which was very comfortable.
Beep… beep… beep! Why do we do this to ourselves, 7am, the
alarm buzzing and pitch black outside.
With camera and
tripod on backs, our warm red jackets on and Rob with her little torch in hand,
we headed out to climb along a small dirt track leading to the top of a hill
behind the Nat. Park building. Should
only take only take about 30 mins one way to the top we thought.
We had been told by
the park rangers when we visited them the afternoon before, that the hill was
the best place to view sunrise on both Fitz Roy Mtn and Cerro Torre (3,102m),
so long as the weather was good and it was.
It is interesting
climbing up a hill following a dirt track using the light of a small torch to
show us the way and the frequent rocky obstacles. At least we weren’t the only ones on the side
of a hill in the dark, as we could see 2 other torchlights jiggling around
above us about 15 mins ahead.
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| El Chalten from the hill, the sun starting to touch Fitz Roy |
Slowly but surely,
those beautiful red colours started to crawl their way down, not just Fitz Roy
and Cerro Torre, but all the other mountains surrounding them. So was our climb into the darkness worth it?
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| Cerro Torre on the left and Fitz Roy is obvious |
Our climb down off
the hill was a lot easier in growing sunlight and soon we were back in our
hotel enjoying a good breakfast because we were going to need a good breakfast
as we learned later that day.
Now the words
‘trekking’ and ‘hiking’ are not ones we use or consider very often, especially
after the “its only a medium trek!” we did in Laos awhile back, which left us
almost scarred forever. But here we were
in El Chalten, the trekking/hiking ‘capital’ of Argentina, so what are people
to do after a 1hr return jaunt up a hill early in the morning, go hiking of
course!
So with backpacks
on and having found the bakery to buy our small lunch to take with us, we
headed out of the village following the track towards our goal of Laguna Torre,
which is a glacier lake near the bottom of Cerro Torre.
The Rangers had
warned us that the first part of this hike was a fairly constant climb out of
the village. Now we don’t particularly
like the words climb and tracks together, but here we were on our way into the
mountains.
The track did level
out, well sort of, actually occasionally, but we walked on through some really
stunning scenery, the form of Cerro Torre jutting into the sky ahead providing
the constant motivation to keep going.
We rested fairly frequently to catch our breath, take in the views or
refill our water bottle form the many crystal clear streams.
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| on the trail to Cerro Torre |
Being the time of
year it was also meant that the colours of autumn were consuming many of the
trees and shrubs, which surrounded us.
The track despite its regular undulations, wound its way like a snake
through thick stands of small deciduous southern beech trees, around a lake of
dead looking trees or followed a fast flowing river.
At times we were in open country then just
minutes later, thick 2-3m foliage brushing our shoulders, our track almost
disappearing from view at each bend.
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| Cerro Torre and glacier surrounds |
Then into view, almost surprisingly, came our complete
eyeful of the jagged rock spire of Cerro Torre looming above the mass of
glaciers feeding the lake at its feet.
What a stunning place to sit quietly, like the few others that had also
reached this point, absorb the views around us and have lunch.
Our trip back, whilst almost a rewind of the outward
journey, was slightly different. Our
bodies were beginning to protest, ever so gently at the start and the need for
rest breaks increased.
We made it back
to the village naturally but the walk back to our hotel seemed to take
forever.
Well it did take longer than
normal because we stopped at one of the microbreweries for an ale and Rob did
something quite different and probably not seen before.
So for those of you wondering, after our early morning
hill climb, the Laguna Torre return journey had taken us 7 hrs to complete the
22 kms and to keep the description simple, at the end of it we were f****d!
We opted for a really simple meal that night; a shared
vegetable soup and chunky lamb stew from a café very close to the hotel. We got chatting to our waiter who spoke very
good English, after 2 years working in NZ.
He told us that we were very lucky with the weather and that it was very
out of character. We also asked him if
there were many animals in the mountains.
“Yes” he said, “there are lots of pumas, I saw one only a few days ago
on the Laguna Torre track”. The looks on
our faces may have suggested we thought pumas were a bit of a myth so he went
off and brought back the photo to prove it.
The long hot showers before dinner were helping but we were keen to see
what our bodies wanted to tell us in the morning.
Well we didn’t feel too bad whilst having breakfast
next morning, so do we do this hiking thing again and back up… yep! So our plan for this day was to head out
towards Fitz Roy to reach 2 locations, the Mirrador (viewpoint) and then the
Laguna Capri. Again this would mean a
constant climb out of the village using a track at the far end of it and 6 kms
to reach the Mirrador, then about another 1 km to reach the Laguna. So off we went… again.
The climb out of El Chalten this time, whilst not
steep was more constant and kept going for about 2/3rds of the 6kms. The track wound itself once it leveled out a
little, mainly amongst beech forest and the colours were great. This hike actually seemed to iron out some of
stiffness from the previous days activity.
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| the view as we climb out of El Chalten |
So this time in front of us stood the magnificent Fitz
Roy Mtn in all its abrupt glory as it did again when we reached the lake and
surrounding autumn colours providing a stunning foreground to rise out of.
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| Fitz Roy Mirrador |
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| Laguna Capri |
So in 2 days we had managed 35 kms of, yes we will use
THAT word, ‘hiking’ and we thoroughly enjoyed it because of everything that
surrounded us as we took each step. If
you like to go hiking, try El Chalten and to think we almost decided not to
come here.
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| In memory of the climbers who have died |
We had one last walk around pleasantly quirky El
Chalten, before heading back to El Calafate, and found a very very small Chapel
of Austrian design called Capilla de los Escaladores, built in memory of all
the climbers who have lost their lives here since 1953.
Back in El Calafate
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| what a steak! |
Don’t normally talk too much about food but we only
had one night in El Calafate so enjoyed a fabulous meal to celebrate our time
in Argentina. Argentinian steak is
simply excellent as was Rob’s superb lamb ravioli accompanied by simple roasted vegetables, all
just delightful.
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| Argentinian BBQ |
Before checking out the next day and flying to
Santiago, we did manage somehow to have yet another amusing experience. We mentioned a bird reserve in a previous
post, so we thought we would try walking to it after an early breakfast to try
and get some shots of flamingos.
There is a short cut Cat & Cal showed us from the
hotel down to the main street, which involves walking down some steps, through
the bus terminal and then down some more steps.
When we got to the bus terminal, we went through the first door, through
the terminal and when reaching the 2nd door to go out the other
side, were greeted by 5 dogs just sitting in front of the door. We gently pushed it open, the dogs all looked
at us, moved and we stepped outside. All
good so far.
Well it must have been those red coats of ours of ours
we were wearing to stay warm, or something else, BUT those 5 dogs started
walking with us and if we stopped, they stopped, if we walked, they walked. No matter where we walked, down the next set
of stairs, across the main street and off down the back streets, they stayed
with us.
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| Darian and his 'mates' |
Interesting! To
add to our experience, other wandering dogs would come out to either renew old
friendships but others would come out to protect their territories. At times there were 8-10 dogs circling us as
we walked. On a few occasions ‘our’ pack
of dogs would all charge off to chase another dog or cat sitting behind some
local residents fence and this would invariably mean that resident coming out
and yelling all sorts of things in Spanish either at the dogs, us or both.
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| in the middle of the main street |
Well we and our dogs did find the bird reserve and
guess what, not a single bird of any description in sight so we re-traced our
steps, our 5 dog pack faithfully keeping company until we reached the bus
terminal and we were able to stop them getting through that first door. What a relief, because we had visions of them
wanting to join us at the hotel.
So we bade El Calafate and its dogs our final farewell
and headed off to the airport on our way finally to Santiago, Chile via one
night in Buenos Aires.
Argentina has certainly provided us with some wonderful experiences.
