As we began to learn, Patagonia is generally a small area and all the tourists do similar routes. We were often finding ourselves on the buses with the same folks again and again. It makes it nice and easy to see familar faces. Our bus from Port Natales to El Calafate was full of the same folks from the home stay & the trek in the park. We crossed without incident from Chile to Argentina.
El Calafate is a small town with all sorts of cute touristy shops. It was great fun walking through town and seeing everything. Our hostel was absolutely perfect and we met tons of chatty folks. Of course, they have no website for you to click onto. Everyone at our hostel that we met was surprisingly American. We dont often meet many other Americans traveling. El Calafate is close to a beautiful large glacier. The glacier is one of a few in the world that is maintaining the same size, not getting smaller. We took the bus out to Glacier National Park to see it and opted to pay extra for a short boat excusion to get even closer. The Glacier is amazing and cool, certainly not cheap. It was about $40 for the roundtrip bus ticket, the enterance to the park, and the boat ride. We are over budget, so its not great to be spending lots of money but we have started cooking and making our own food to help us get our budget back in line.
We took the evening bus from El Calafate to El Chalten. Along the 3 hour ride, we stopped at a small farm that had pictures of Butch Cassidy, Ethel (his wife), and the Sundance Kid. Apparently, they were hiding out here before heading to Chile for another bank robbery. That was sort of entertaining place to stop. We arrived to El Chalten at about 9:30 pm and found the first hostel booked out. We were able to find a nice place, very luckily, a short distance away. We walked in to find a friendly couple we had met on our plane to Port Natales. (They were also on our bus to the national park & El Calafate.)
El Chalten is a tiny town, we were warned in the tour book that there are no ATMs in town and to hurry up and get there before they pave all the roads and the town is ruined by tourists. The town is nestled in the base of the Fitzroy Mountain range and has lots of trails that are day hikes from the town. Mike and I were set on the camping bit after our return from the Torres del Paine, so we were happy for easier day hikes. We spent the next two days doing some fun day hikes and returning to town to chill out, cook supper, and drink wine. I love the wine down here and drink it as often as possible. We are able to buy a liter of wine for about $1.50, the same price roughly for Mike to buy a 12 oz can of coke. While it is simple table wine, it is very drinkable and cant be beat for that price. If we werent overbudget, Id be buying the nicer wine that runs $5-$6 and is readily available.
El Chalten was a delightful 2 days and we were able to chat with our reoccuring friends along the way, before heading north.
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