Day 3 - El Calafate and El Chalten

For all its fanciness and otherworldly beauty our hotel the first night in Patagonia did not have AC. I mean, sure I slept like a baby, but no AC.

What the hotel did have was a killer breakfast buffet. In fact, all the places we stayed at some version of a breakfast buffet, and they all seemed to revolve around the notion that Americans eat sweets for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Who am I to prove them wrong?

But back to Patagonia. We woke up in El Calafate, ate at our hotel (mmmm boy), and walked a few blocks to the meting place for our group. Then we started our journey via bus to El Chalten.

Just found this map off some travel website. It shows exactly where we went! How great is the internet?

Within moments of stepping on the bus Jonathan and I passed out. Our friend Betsy loaned us these pillows and we used them to sleep pretttttty much everywhere. Along with eating a lot and hiking a lot (more to come on that one), we slept a LOT on this trip. 

The first big OOOOO, AAAHH moment of our trip came when we spotted guanacos. 

You can barely see a herd (are they called herds?) of guanacos along the horizon. Guanacos are in the same family as the llama, alpaca, and vicunya, meaning I love them so much it defies logic. After a few days the novelty wore off and I stopped snapping awake at the mention of another sighting. Still, watching them jump from a stand-still to clearing a fence as tall as their necks was a sight I shall never forget. So majestic. So misproportioned.

We stopped at a place called Estacia Estela where a family has maintained the same secluded ranch for decades. Many of Argentina's estancias came about through the country's homesteading movement, which I believe came about around the same time as the US homesteading. I may be wrong on that one. I slept through a lot of the explanations.

Estancia Estela was our official hike, and though it was a quick one it was the perfect introduction to real life Patagonia (at this point you may ask, "Real life Patagonia? Had the past 24 hours been fake Patagonia?" and my answer to that is I don't know what I mean by that, but it's late and I'm tired and Jonathan is too busy doing actual work for me to press him for help thinking of the proper wording).

It was crazy windy that day, the general trend in the region, so that's why I look like Mike Teavee before Willy Wonka shrunk him.

I think this photograph was precipitated by my shouting, "HEY DAD! DAAAADDDDD! I'M GOING TO TAKE YOUR PICTURE! DAAAAAAAADDDDDD" over the sound of the wind.

This first hike began in the desert, as did many of our hikes, and since I had no idea what to expect, I simply thought hmmm, Patagonia looks interesting.

But then something magical happened. . .

As we reached the top of one of those sandy hills and looked out, we glimpsed the first of a week and a half's worth of breathtaking views.

Not to mention the view of Jonathan's windblown hair, which is stunning.

I had to keep reminding myself that this was not the edge of the world. It wasn't even the edge of the country. But it looked like it. This spot along Lake Viedma, a glacier-fed lake, felt like the last stop before Antarctica.

Really freaking cold water. In case there was any doubt.

Really freaking cute parents. 

Speaking of parents, Jonathan's parents were so nice and got us our first grown up camera for Christmas, along with the travel bag Jonathan frequently sports in these photos. He and I took turns with the camera, and when was wasn't pointing and clicking, he or she was snapping iPhone photos. So when it comes to trip photos we have an assortment of his, hers, and ours totaling about 6 or 7 thousand shots of about a two week trip.

Our hike ended as we came full circle and ended up back at the estancia, where we enjoyed a lunch of empanadas and. . . shoot, I only remember the empanadas. 

Even though it was windy that afternoon, I wouldn't trade the weather for anything because the cloud cover was not to be believed. Here we see the clouds rolling in over the estancia, with Lake Viedma in the foreground.

We got back in the bus and drove the rest of the way to El Chalten, where we set out on the hike to the Mirador de los Condores, or Condor Lookout. 

Still cloudy and windy 

We had a beautiful view of El Chalten, a city which, like me, was created about 30 years ago for the sole purpose of travel and has been awesome ever since.

The wind almost knocked us over as we stood atop the lookout. I mean it was seriously crazy up there.

We had a killer view of the valley, along with Cerro (Peak) Fitz Roy and Cerro Torre, which has a fascinating history of climbers reaching (or claiming to have reached) the summit.

Speaking of reaching the summit, about 10 minutes after we reached the top of the lookout we went back down because the wind was beating us up. We hiked down, across to town, and up to our hotel, Los Cerros, which became home base for the next few days as we hiked from El Chalten to the mountains around it.