Hiking in El Chaltén

At 7:20am, we were picked up at our hostel in a funny-looking, bright yellow bus that resembled a cross between a dump truck and a school bus. We were headed to El Chaltén, which means “mountain of smoke” in the native language, to hike. El Chaltén is about 215km from El Calafate and it took us nearly four hours to get there with a few stops along the way.

The first stop was for a view of Lake Viedma, which is technically the smaller of the two lakes in the area if you count the arms of Lake Argentina although Viedma definitely looks bigger on the map. 

The second stop was at Hotel La Leona where Butch Cassidy, Sundance Kid and Ethel Place hid out for a while after robbing a bank in Rio Gallegos in 1905. The owners of the hotel did not know who their guests were until the police showed up. Now Hotel La Leona is primarily a rest stop.

When we arrived in El Chaltén, we were given a bag lunch and instructed to return at 4:45pm. We headed off to the Laguna Torre hiking trail to hike to the Mirador Las Torres which was three kilometers out. The mirador had a pretty view and we thought we might be able to stop there for lunch, but the wind was too strong. It turns out the idea that the hike in Puerto Natales was the windiest we have ever done was ridiculous; Patagonia is just windy.

Having arrived at our destination after an hour and estimating we’d be back in town by 1:30pm if we turned around, we decided to keep going. At each kilometer marker, the view got better and we decided to continue onto the next one. At 1:45pm and kilometer marker six, we finally turned around.

Unfortunately, despite the wind, we never got a clear view of Cerro Torre which was enshrouded in clouds the whole time. The mountain of smoke name is very apt. Apparently, it often looks like this. By the time we completed the 12 kilometer round trip, everyone’s legs were tired, and Jess did not want to put one foot in front of the other.

On the way home, we all promptly fell asleep and only woke up when the bus pulled over to point out an armadillo that was happily bouncing in the brush. Unfortunately, we were too sleepy to take a picture but very happy we saw it.