We have started our long journey through Patagonia. This involves hours of bus time. We spent a total of 22 hours on a bus traveling south down the legendary Ruta 40, from Bariloche to El Chaltén, over two days (thankfully). We left Bariloche in the early a.m., with the city still asleep. Right out of Bariloche, the scenery was dramatic. Big mountains, deep blue lakes, rushing rivers, that sort of thing. We were treated to that scenery for a few hours, then things changed. It got flat.
An early morning leaving Bariloche
Mountain peaks greet us as we head south
Dirt roads and mountain tops...we felt fortunate for the cloudy sky since it made things more interesting to look at
And the flat begins!
Our charriot for the day, complete with angry eyes on the front!
Big sky Patagonia
Turns out that Patagonia isn’t just the landscape that you see in the Patagonia clothing company catalogs, with craggy peaks and thick forests. Most of Patagonia is flat and windswept. It’s a lot like Bolivia and Peru’s Altiplano, but at lower elevation and a bit more vegetation. The stuff that tourists visit is along the edges. On the west side, mountains and glaciers. On the east side, marine preserves. In between, it’s windy BFE, baby.
Day 2 starts and ends with more flat scenery
The bus ride was a mix of paved road and gravel road. Argentina has big plans for paving all of Ruta 40, and construction has begun on that. It shouldn’t be too long before it’s paved. The fact that the president of Argentina is from this area is definitely helping push construction along.
Going south!
The bus was pretty empty, probably only half capacity. And all tourists. We get the impression that most Argentinians think it silly to travel so far on a bus, just to gawk at some mountains and glaciers in the deep southwest. We kept ourselves occupied during the ride by reading books (Dave – “The Story of Edgar Sawtelle”, a good one; Morgan – “A Fine Balance”, engaging but not a page turner), staring out the window, listening to podcasts, munching on Christmas cookies, that sort of thing.
We stopped in Siberia (see truck) for a while. It could have been Siberia for all we knew.
We got to the Rancho Grande hostel at around 11:30 pm on Christmas Eve, and the place was hopping. Tourists of all ages were eating dinner, drinking wine, talking loudly – it was a really festive scene. We joined in for a bit, then retired for the evening with visions of sugar plums dancing in our heads.
El Chaltén is a teeny town that seems to be solely devoted to trekkers, or as we call them in the States, backpackers. Not the town-to-town-on-trains style of backpacking, though, but wilderness backpacking. El Chaltén is nestled in a river valley among gobs of mountains, with gobs of trails to hike. The scenery is breathtaking, and the hiking possibilities seem endless.
This dog belonged to the hostel and was well received by everyone staying there!
We celebrated Christmas by joining in the spirit and going on a little hike, up towards Laguna Torre. We’re sure more than one backpacker was scratching their head when they saw us leave the hostel for the hike wearing Crocs. But, they held up well for our three hour tour – they didn’t slip too much, and our feet felt fine afterwards. Our hike led us to a mirador (lookout) just north of the hostel, where we gawked at a glacier and mountains for a bit.
Dave modeling his Patagonia clothes IN Patagonia!
A lovely view on Christmas day
Views through the valley to the mountains were breathtaking in El Chalten
Morgan was unable to model as she was mostly wearing Icebreaker...
The snow-domed Cerro Solo (2,248 m) on the left, Glaciar Grande in center, the rocky Cerro Fitz Roy (3,405 m) on the right.
Our first glacial sighting in Patagonia
More gorgeous valley views as we hiked back down to El Chalten
The view over El Chalten
Food carts aren't just for Portland it seems!
It’s Dec 26th, at about noon, and we’re about to board a bus to head south to El Calafate, a small town that sees lots of tourists due to the nearby glaciers. Patagonia’s glaciers have not retreated as much as most other glaciers in the world in recent times – they’re still going strong.
Filed under: South America, Travel |
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