After meeting with our group on Monday night, Mike and I headed off to the black market to exchange money at a much better than the official listed rate. Then it was off to find our way to dinner. We went again for steak and malbec; however, they were out of sirloin so we had rib eye. Needless to say we weren’t expecting two full steaks each…
They were delicious and tender, just a lot for one sitting. From there it was back to the hotel and to bed as we were up early to leave for the airport for an early morning flight.
We loaded up with the entire group in a minibus and headed off to the domestic airport before flying another 3 hours (2000km) further south, across the Argentinian desert to the town of El Calafate.
From there we met our tour guide, Neil, a 27 year old short, blonde guy from Toronto… small world. Our tour consists of 13 people, us plus another from Canada, 4 from Germany, 4 from the US, and 2 from Australia, We put all of our luggage in a trailer behind a mini-bus, loaded in with Neil and our driver and started to head north towards El Chalten. Right off the bat we saw a bunch of guanacos near the highway.
Like the llamas, alpacas, and vincuñas that we had seen in Peru they are a grazing “American camel” but unlike the rest they don’t have good meat or wool so they just roam around the desert. Apparently they leap gracefully over the barbed wire fences… usually unless they land on the fence and get caught, becoming food for condors. And unlike other condor populations, these condors are increasing in numbers (thanks to the fences). We stopped at a viewpoint outside Lago Argentino and it was quite breathtaking.
We continued on through the desert and saw a few rheas (essentially 1m tall Andean emus) but none photographed well. We stopped outside Lago Viedma at another viewpoint where we could see the Fitzroy Massif and the trademark view of Patagonia.
We worked our way into the tiny town of El Chalten which houses about 1300 in the winter and 3500 in the summer hiking season. It was in around 25°C, a great improvement on the -21°C back home. We dropped our bags off in our rooms and got ready for a short hike to shake out the legs after sitting all day. It was about 4km and 300m elevation gain going to two lookouts which were both amazing.
It is hard to make out, but there are tiny icebergs that have calved from the glacier floating in the lake.
After our hike it was back down to town for dinner which again was steak and malbec.
The food and wine is of phenomenal quality with a great price with either the official or black market exchange rate. Tomorrow we have a 14km hike through Los Glaciares National Park to see the glaciers and massifs up close.
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