Our travels in Patagonia – Torres del Paine and El Chalten

Traveling to Patagonia

• We flew into El Calafate during the evening. We landed around 6pm, the sun was getting lower and turning the world golden, and the airport was surrounded but strikingly blue rivers and lakes. It may have been the most gorgeous airport surrounding I had ever seen.
  • Note: The airport has an exit security which can get really backed up, so I recommend grabbing your bag then immediately going through security. Once you’re on the other side of security you can buy a ticket for a bus to take you to your hostel or you can rent a car.
• We then stayed the night in El Calafate before waking up early the next morning to catch the bus to Puerto Natales.
• It was a 6 hour bus ride from El Calafate to Puerto Natales, which crosses the border from AR into Chile. The border is ~5 hours into the bus ride and the bus will stop twice, once at an Argentine post and once at a Chilean post. WE noticed that Argentina did not stamp passports but Chile did. They check your passport and luggage to make sure we were not bringing anything through.
• We arrived to Puerto Natales, Chile around 2pm and we stayed in hostel Xalpen. It was a really great place to stay, maybe my favorite hostel of all Patagonia.

We ate at a super tasty restaurant in Puerto Natales, recommended to us by the front desk at our hostel, which seemed to have Peruvian influence (based on the Ají hot sauce?). Tyler got lamb that he said was delicious and I got these ribs and potato cheesy balls that I would die for.

We found Puerto Natales to be a nice town and we wish we had more time to explore it

In Torres Del Paine

Hiking to Mirador Del Torres

• We took the bus from Puerto Natales at 7
• Got into the park ~9
• Took shuttle to welcome center, arrived and started hiking ~9:30

• Arrived to Refugio Chileno ~11:45 and ate lunch for ~1 hr. We asked if we could stay here that night, but since they only had platform camping, and all the platforms were claimed, they told us no 🙁

• Made it to Las Torres ~ 2pm

• On the way down Tyler started to feel I’ll from lack of hydration/electrolytes. It got pretty bad so we stopped and ate some salty items so he could make it to camp
  • REMINDER THAT HYDRATION IS NOT A JOKE FOLKS
• Made it back down to Central ~6. This turned out to be my favorite campsite of the whole tek becuase we were actually secluded from other campers. and I thought the vew was gorgeous.
• Recommend staying at Central the first night. That way you can leave your bags at Central. The other option is staying at Chileno and while Chileno is gorgeous it’s a pretty steep hike up to Chileno so you have to carry up your bags up.
• This is the hardest hike off the W trek. Once you complete this, you know you can complete anything else on the trek.

• It was the most alone we felt at our camp site because we could set up tent away from other tent’s, next to a river and have a table. For this reason I really liked it. We were told the dorm rooms here were meh, not recommend

Hiking from Central to Frances

• Slept in this morning
• Tyler peed 10 times in the 5 hour hike, clearly making up for his lack of hydration the day before 😂
• Longer than expected, but gorgeous views of the lake’s and surrounding mountains

• Arrived to Cuernos. It looked really nice, but we did not see any ground camp spots, only raised platforms, so keep that in mind if you want to stay there. Also, keep in mind that Refugio Cuernos closes around the start of April.

• We hiked past Cuernos to Refugio Frances. It is not as nice of a Refugio but we recommend that it is worth it to hike to Frances in order to cut down on how much hiking is needed the next morning to reach Británico.
• We were told the dorm rooms in Refugio Frances were really nice here.

Mirador Britanico, and hiking to Painé Grande—My favorite day

• Woke up at 6 AM and started trekking my 7 AM
• Recommend this because you get to see the sunrise and it’s really gorgeous, plus an early start means you’ll be inns of the ghost to the viewpoint
• Arrived at Italiano around 8 AM as the skies were still pink

• We dropped off our big bags, packed a daypack and headed up
• The hike up to Francis took a little over an hour, arrived at 9:25, and it was gorgeous

• but highly recommend continuing hiking all the way to Britanico, which is about another hour further, we arrived around 10:30

• Once we arrived to Mirador Britanico we spent about 45 minutes at the viewpoint taking photos eating and enjoying it. It got support Windy to the point everyone was putting rain gear On and at some pointers we had to be careful bout to stand anywhere too precarious in case we got blown off
• If you wake up early like we did, you may be able to miss the crowds and see the views with almost no one else around. As we were hiking down there were a TON of people coming up
• Because of the length of the hike, it’s not too steep at any one point
• The view at Británico is a full 360 gorgeous view highly recommend

• We made it back down to Italiano around 1:30, ate lunch and headed out towards Paine grande ~2
• It started pouring rain on the hike. E were told it rains all the tons in Patagonia so we were okay that it rained in this person if the hike cause we had to experience it at some point
• We arrived to pain grande around 430
• Pan grande is possibly the largest place we saw with the huge kitchen, bar and hotel

• The hotel offers two dinner options: a buffet and individual meals from the bar. The buffet looked good but the bar had ribs and pizza so were treated ourselves. Sad to say that for even as starving as we were, the food was underwhelming for us.
• Camped here. Better camping options than Frances
• Weather was ROUGH. All night raining and windy

Hiking from Paine Grande to Gray

• We woke up to sunny skies and a gorgeous view

• Took our time packing up
• They offer breakfast options in the lounge or if you’re camping and want to cook your own food they have a kitchen where you can cook and eat; here people often leave their leftover stove gas (and sometimes food), feel free to check if you’re out
• Hiked to Grey in the afternoon. Sign said it would take us 3.5 hours but it took us a tad longer since we stopped often (our legs hurt after 4 days straight of hiking okay haha)

• Arrived to gray in the early afternoon and set up our tent before heading to mirador gray to see the glacier
• Recommend climbing down to the water to see some of the baby icebergs up close and get some cool photos

• The Refugio also has a mini market where you can buy food or drink and a kitchen where you can cook your own food. If not, there is a lodge with food and drinks you can stay in or eat/grab drinks at (hears there’s a bar inside)
• For us this seemed the most peaceful of the refugios we stayed at
• If we could do the hike again I’d recommend waking up early and hiking from Paine grande to gray, dropping off bags, then hiking past the first mirador of Gray which is just 10 minutes from the refugio, instead go straight and depending on the time of year, you can hike ~1.5 hours north of the refugio, over 2 suspension bridges and get yourself a lot closer to the glacier for some better photos. This trail closes at 3pm. Then come back at night and set up your tent. You can always hop up to the nearby mirador gray the following morning. This will make your following day much less stressful

Hiking from Refugio Gray to Painé grande and back to Puerto Natales.

1. Initially our plan was to wake up early, leave our stuff st the refugio and hike north to get closer to the glacier, then come back, pick up our stuff and hike back to Painé grande to catch the catamaran at 6:30. This would have been a ~7 hour hiking day, excluding stopping for photos
2. For many reasons unimportant for me to explain, our plan changed and we decided to try and catch the 11 am catamaran out of Painé Grande. This meant we woke up at 5 and we were on the trail ~6:30. We hiking in dark until ~7:30/8. We pushed ourselves hard to make sure we made it to Painé Grande in time and we ended up making the trek in ~3.25hrs 🙂
3. Ate breakfast at Paine grande and we still had time to hike up the hill overlooking the lake (highly recommended) before the boat arrived!
4. Caught the catamaran to the Cafeteria Pudeto. We landed ~12 and we were recommended to go check out a nearby waterfall, Salto Grande, and the viewpoint Mirador Cuernos (horns?).
5. Apparently you can pay for a tour to take you to this waterfall and it costs $300USD! I cannot confirm this but I can confirm that if you get to this cafe, you can just walk to the waterfall yourself for FREE.
6. After getting to the waterfall, don’t stop, keep going along the trail towards the lake. It will bring you out to a viewpoint where you can see almost all the W Trek. Also highly recommend this.
7. We did this little side hike in ~1 hour but we jogged a lot so I’d recommend giving yourself 1.5 or a bit more if you can so you’re not stressed
8. We made it back by 2 to catch a bus to Laguna Amarga, the Welcome Center
9. From there we caught a bus to Puerto Natales and stayed the night

El Chalten

Our First Day

• In the early morning we took a bus at 7 am from Puerto Natales to El Calafate, had an hour layover, then bussed from El Calafate to El Chalten. We arrived around 5pm.
• Walked to our Hostel Kai Ken. Owner lives in a house around the corner so we have to knock on his door to get inside. He is a nice mid-age man who speaks a decent amount of English and after we are shown our beds, he takes us to a map where he tells us about different hikes, where their trailheads are, how he’s they are and how long they will take us.
• Laguna Torre
  • 3 hours up, 3 hours back; Moderate.
• Fitz Roy
  • 4 hours up, 4 hours back; Difficult.
• Mirador de Los Cóndores/Aguilas.
  • 4 hrs up; 4 hrs back down; Difficult.
• Owner also recommends 3 restaurants for food
  • Don Guerra
  • La Cervecera
  • Bandidos Patagónicos
• You can find all these places on my google maps page where I have a link for El Chalten
• That night we go to Bandidos Patagónicos. We found the atmosphere (definitely a no frills local place which also has live music in the evenings), the workers, and the food’s presentation to be really nice. But unfortunately the actually flavor of the food was sub par.
• That being said, I got Locro, which is a Argentine local dish that’s a corn based soup and I really want to try it again somewhere with more flavor because I imagine it’s delicious

Day 2:
• Went to PAISA High Mountain Coffee this morning (Google maps link)
• Tyler got an alfajores (yum) and a flat white (reviews say that their flat white is delicious, but tyler who had never had a flat white before, was not impressed)
• I got a Nutella Coffee drink (yum) and the PAISA Arepa (also yum). Aerpas are a Colombian food that is basically a corn/maize tortilla that can either be stuffed, or in the case of what I ate, topped off with different foods.
• We loved this cafe and it also had good wifi
• In the afternoon we went on a Horseback Riding excursion with Bonanza Adventure. I’ll be writing a review of the excursion soon but in the meantime, here are some photos!

• After our excursion we headed to La Cervecera for dinner. Of all the places we went, this one is my favorite (warning, it is also the most expensive).

• Every item they serve is homemade in house and DELICIOUS.
• As a free starter they gave us this tasty carrot hummus with homemade bread that was gahhh delicious and a small thing of homemade vegetable.
• I got their baked squash full of mixed sautéed veggies and covered in cheese. It was SO tasty and also a great break from the meat bread and potatoes of traditional argentine food.
• I also got a hot chocolate there and it was so creamy and warm
• I literally cannot say enough about how much I loved this restaurant
• Unfortunately for Tyler, while I was drooling over my food, he was starting to feel sick. By the time his food arrived he felt too sick to eat. I scarfed down what I could and we got our food wrapped up so we could head back to the hostel
• Tyler spent the rest of the night feeling unwell and I searched the town for Gatorade (found it in the local supermercado, brand name: HYDRA)

Day 3:
• Tyler spent the day in bed, sick
• I felt fine so after waking up I went and hiked to Laguna Torre, a glacier fed lake with mini icebergs

• Read my review of the hike soon

Day 4:
• After taking some Sudafed tyler felt a bit better this morning. My body was in pain from hiking the W Trek + Laguna Torre, so we agreed to give things a rest for the day.
• I worked on researching my thru hike and tyler worked on his job
• This night we went to Lomerita (Google maps link)
• It is a local fast food that serves what basically amount to elongated hamburgers. I recommend the Lomiteria #3; I found it delicious. Tyler got their choripan and said it was okay, but he had had better.

Day 5-Fitz Roy day
• It was recommended to us that we should hike Fitz Roy for sunrise which would require us to either start our hike at 3:30am to hike to the top, or 6am to hike to the viewpoint in time
• With Tyler feeling as he did, waking up that early wasn’t in the cards for us.
• We did manage to leave our hostel ~7:15am which let us start our hike around 7:30.
• We made it to the viewpoint (around km 4) at 8:40am and enjoyed taking photos showing off the patagonia logo

• As we got ready to leave, Tyler decided it would be unwise for him to push himself physically and continue on (it was really cold and there were 6 more km to get to the second viewpoint) so we parted ways and I continued on without him

• Read more on my thoughts of the hike here
• When I returned from the hike I was DEAD (that last km killed me)
• We rested until dinner time when we went to Don Guerra (Google maps link)
• This is my second favorite place in El Chalten
• Also expensive, but the atmosphere and appearance of the place is really nice
• Food is decently good. Nothing over the top stunning but good
• Wrapped up the night by packing up. Then tyler slept (sick) and I hung out with friends in the hostel

Day 6
• We caught an 8am bus to el Chalten where we will hang out until our 6pm flight back to BsAs

Recommendation I was given for El Calafate but did not get to test out myself.

• It’s worth it to go to El Calafate glacier and do the Big Ice Trekking Tour
  • If you have 2-300 (100,000 pesos) you get to go into the glacier and you get taken into a cave and get amazing photos
  • Given the rec that it was the greatest thing they did in Patagonia
  • They pick you up at 6:45, so need to be in el Calafate the night before
  • They take you to platforms for a gorgeous view (may have to pay additional cost for entrance)