El Chalten

After sleeping plenty on Saturday night, we headed off early Sunday morning to Chalten.  It was about a 3 and a half hour ride through the barren land of Patagonia (there are plenty of mountains and lakes and stuff there, but a huge amount of this whole country is just empty desert) before we arrived in the quaint village of Chalten.  We received a quick welcome at the Chalten visitors center, then checked into our hostel.  After a quick run to the supermarket to grab lunch supplies, we headed off on a hike that we had chosen to do.

Chalten is the national hiking capital of Argentina, so the entire 200 person village is located at the center of all of the trails spidering out through the surrounding area.  The hike we had chosen for Sunday was supposed to take us 3 hours to a lake at the end of a glacier in the mountains, a place called Laguna Torre, then 3 hours back.  We headed out through some scattered brush and hills, through a valley between some massive mountains.  After passing through fields, marshes, forests, and streams, we arrived at the huge basin of Laguna Torre.  The lake is located at the base of some mountains, with a small glacier at one end of it.  The air was super fresh and everything was absolutely gorgeous there.  We took tons of pictures, ate lunch, and rested our legs for a bit before heading back towards Chalten.  On the hike back we found some really cool gigantic woodpeckers on a tree, there's some pictures of them on my photo page.  That night we were exhausted from the hike, so we just made some dinner in the hostel and took it easy.


On Monday we headed out early once again.  This time, we had chosen a hike to a place called Laguna de los Tres.  We were told it was significantly more difficult and longer than the first day, about 4 or 5 hours each way (we had actually done the first day in about an hour less time than predicted, but we were warned this one actually takes 8 or 9 hours).  We left around 845am, before the sunrise because we were so far south.  The first 45 minutes or so of the hike was super difficult with a lot of uphills and lingering sleepiness.  Eventually things flattened out as we continued through more forest, streams, valleys, and marshes.  About 2 hours in, we saw a huge mountain in the distance with a squiggly looking stripe going up it.  Dave joked saying, "Hey guys, that's where this path ends up, straight up the mountain."  We all laughed at how ridiculous that would be, and kept truckin onward.

Apparently, Dave was right.  About 45 minutes to an hour later, we arrived at a little rest stop at the base of that mountain, a place for the courageous to refill their water bottles in a little stream and for the smart to turn around.  The cool thing about Chalten is that it's very removed from any cities and all of its water is sourced from glaciers, so you can literally drink any water you see- waterfalls, streams, puddles, dew, or lakes- and it all tastes super cold, clean, and delicious.  I didn't carry a waterbottle, so I would just kneel down and drink from whatever water was flowing past me at the moment.  Anyway, after a quick rest we headed up the mountain.  At first it was just an aggressively steep hike for about 20 minutes, then it turned into almost a full-out climb.  The trail disappeared, and using our legs and hands to climb over boulders and huge rock piles, panting the entire time from exhaustion and altitude, we continued.  After about an hour of climbing and literally almost passing out or falling off a cliff or 5, we reached the peak.  But the peak had a little dip and then another peak on it.  We tossed around the idea of stopping there, but decided we hadn't come that far for nothing.

As we crested the second peak, we caught our first glimpse of the coolest place ever.  A blast of cold glacier air met us as we glared in disbelief at a huge lake situated in between several jagged mountain peaks.  The water was unrealistically blue, 2 glaciers converged from opposite sides of the lake, massive teeth-like rocks towered over us, and the snow-capped peaks just higher than us gleamed in the sunlight.  We sat and ate lunch next to the lake, discussing how incredible the place was (we concluded that the words I'm using right now to describe the place with are 100% inadequate, and you can't begin to grasp how breathtaking it is until you're there).  Dave saw a trail running around the lake, so he went to explore.  A minute later he was screaming for us to come over.  As we approached, the sound of water flowing grew louder, and the reality of a several-hundred-foot cliff slowed us a bit.  The lake was pouring over the cliff creating a massive waterfall, which then flowed down to a second, even larger lake a few hundred feet below.  My pictures really don't capture any of this unfortunately, but I can assure that I have never even dreamed of a place as massive, isolated, and peaceful as this was.


We needed to catch a bus that evening, so we started climbing back down the mountain.  A few hours later we arrived at our hostel, where I downed some Advil for my knees and ankles.  We took the bus back to Calafate (Argentina's famous Route 40 is closed in the south during the winter, so we couldn't go anywhere except Calafate from Chalten) and hung out at a hostel for a few hours.  Our 34-hour bus ride (yes 34, as in thirty-four) to Bariloche left at 3am, so we had a few drinks for Max's 21st birthday to get us feeling nice and relaxed before we boarded.  After a day and a half on the bus we arrived in the magical town of Bariloche.  Highlights of that story include chocolate factories, go-karts, paragliding, bicycles, and kittens, so stay tuned.  Click here for pictures!