In December of 2019 we decide to explore 7th continent of the world - Antarctica (You can read about our experience of lifetime here and how to prepare for it here). To embark on your Antarctic expedition, you need to travel either to Argentina, Chile, South Africa or New Zealand. After doing some considerable amount of research we realized port of Ushuaia in Argentina was the best option available to start our expedition. Since we were going to this new country of Argentina for the first time too, we decided to explore it as well and were glad we did.
Argentina is such diverse country with so much to offer, from snow clad mountains in Patagonia, to tropical rainforest of Iguazu, from vibrant Tango culture of Buenos Aires to Mendoza, the biggest wine country in southern hemisphere, Argentina has got it all.
Day 1,2 Arrival in Patagonia
We decided we would start our trip in Patagonia rather than Buenos Aires, so we had to travel for more than a day to reach our first destination. After 3 flights and long drive from airport to our hotel, we reached town of El Calafate on day two evening. After flights, we were all toasted, so we head out for some leisurely walk on the Main Street of town, had early dinner and went to bed. Being the southernmost part of the earth and summer season, days were super long. Sunset occurred around 11pm and sun rose as early as 4.30am.
Day 3 Perito Moreno Glacier and Mini trekking on glacier.
It was our day one of exploring outdoors. We got up early, had breakfast and headed out to see the world famous glacier - Perito Moreno Glacier. It is 70km away from the town of El Calafate, so you either take a cab or drive up in your car. Since we planned to explore Patagonia on road trip, we got our own rental car. Alternately if you book any guided tours, tour operators will take you there in their coaches.
There are two parts on how to experience this glacier.
Wooden walkways give panoramic view of glacier. You can also see ice calving up close and take beautiful pictures. We easily spent more than couple of hours here. Also, going early in the day makes sense, as it gets very crowded later. Tour company coaches arrive around 10am so its good idea to be there before that.
Glacier mini trek - This is a must do experience here and we booked ours with H&A adventures. You have two choices either do short loop where you walk on glacier for 60-90 mins or Big Ice Trek where you walk on ice for around 3 hours. We did mini trekking and absolutely loved it. They set you up with crampons and then you walk leisurely around glaciers, blue lagoon lakes and see some ice caves too. At the end you have celebratory whisky on rocks (fresh ice from glacier itself!).
Overall both of these expeditions total can take upto 10 hours of the day. At night we started our drive up north, for our night’s basecamp, to our next destination town of El Chalten.
Day 4 Laguna De Los Tres hike
From El Calafate you have two options to explore Patagonia hikes, first one you can either travel south to Torres del Paine, which is part of Chile and you will need to have your visa accordingly. The second option is you can travel to Argentinian town of El Chalten up north, which offers equally breath taking hiking scene.
El Chalten is hiking capital of Patagonia. All hikes literally start from the middle of the town.
It was on our bucket list to stay at famous Eco Domes of Patagonia. These camps are located right at the base of Mount Fitz Roy. In morning you can simply step out of your camp and start the hike, which was our goal.
Since this was just the beginning of our trip, with full energy reserves we decided to do the most challenging and demanding - Fitz Roy hike a.k.a Laguna de los Tres. It is around 20km round trip. Best way to do this hike is rather than starting in town, take taxi till El Pillar, start hike there and end it back in town. This way rather doing the round trip you get to explore 20km of unique wilderness.
Overall first 90% of hike is relatively flat with changing scenery, you will see glaciers, forests and waterfalls on the way. Most of the hikes are pretty shaded so it is a pleasant experience. Weather does get a little tricky, ranging from 58/60 to 70/75, with random drizzles, so one needs to be prepared for the change.
Last 1km is the real deal and it is straight up inclination to the top. No matter how much we thought we were prepared for this, it outdid us. But together we powered through it and view on the top was just amazing with an extraordinary view of the Laguna De los Tres, in backdrop of Mount Fitz Roy.
If you keep walking along the edge of the lake, you will find another hidden gem - Laguna Sucia. It has equally amazing view and we highly recommend going that extra mile to catch this view while up there.
After spending some time on top, taking great pictures and having much deserved lunch, we started our descent and we took different path which lead us back to town. From there we took taxi back to our camp. We were totally spent by night, had wholesome appetizing dinner and Malbec by the fireplace of our dome, before completely shutting off for the day.
Day 5 Chorrillo Del Salto hike, Explore lake Rio Canadon de los Toros
After a pretty strenuous hike on previous day, and another one planned in Ushuaia, we decided to do short hike for this day. We choose easy hike to Chorrillo Del Salto, one of the few beautiful waterfalls in the area.
Later we went for boat ride in lake Rio Canadon de los Toros which had panaromic views of Glaciar Huemul.
Later that evening we drove back to El Calafate for our nights stay.
Day 6 Ushuaia(southmost city), Laguna Esmeralda hike
Next day, we woke up early in the morning and were excited to take flight to our next destination - Ushuaia - the southmost city of the world. After checking in the hotel and having lunch, we headed out for our third hike of Patagonia - Laguna Esmeralda. It is medium difficulty level hike, that goes through untouched lenga forests, culminating in astonishing view of Lake Esmeralda with rugged mountains of the Sierra Alvear and a hanging glacier in the background. This hike is located around 20 mins from town, either you can take taxi or pre book tour from the town. We rented out a car here as well, to explore this pretty little town of Ushuaia and it helped us travel to different spots on our own schedule as well.
Day 7 Tierra del Fuego
We headed out early in morning to visit this beautiful Tierra del Fuego national park. First we visited Tren del Fin del Mundo at Southern Fuegian Railway, its the End of the World train station where a delightful train ride takes you through the part of national park that has some unique native wildlife in their natural habitat, a very serene environment. This place was originally used for other purposes but now its open to tourists where you can immerse yourself in first class experience onboard with fine wine-n-dine and enjoy the panoramic views of the park. Train takes two brief stops to explore waterfalls and trail heads.
After this we visited - Unidad Postal Fin del Mundo - end of the world post office located at the southmost part of the park. You can literally see Chilean mountains on the other side of channel. Bring your passports here to get that iconic stamps of ‘Fin del Mundo’.
There are also multiple trails to explore here, however as we were about to board our expedition cruise to Antarctica, we headed back early to the city with heart full of memories of Patagonia wonderland.
To be continued...
We have another blog for Argentina series - Part 2, exploring Buenos Aries, Igazu Falls and Mendoza wine county. You can read about it here.
Logistics
Season- Being in southern hemisphere, Argentinian summer coincides with Christmas holidays in USA and this makes Argentina a perfect destination to escape the cold up north. Days are long with 18 hours of daylight in Patagonia, and bright sunny days in Buenos Aires.
Visa- You need to go for in person interview at nearest Argentina Consulate to get tourist visa. Appointment can be made via email correspondence and it might take few weeks before slot opens up, so would encourage to start process sooner than later. Some of our friends were able to get the visa via video interview as well, so you might want to check that option with the consulate in advance.
Flights- Argentina is vast country and distances are long so flights are most efficient means of transportation and it has big network of low cost carriers, so definitely take advantage of it. (We got some of the flights for <30 dollars.) They also have first class sleeper coach buses which will drive you overnight to your destinations, so it might be affordable option for certain situations as you can skip booking accommodations during the night transports.
Cars- We highly recommend to rent car in Patagonia as it will let you enjoy the magnificent landscapes and will help you utilize maximum sunlight. However catch here is, its difficult to find rental cars with automatic transmission and stick (manual) will be ubiquitous choice. However roads are well built and traffic is next to none, so it's not that difficult to drive around.
Language- Well if you don't speak Spanish, you are out of luck. Only in Buenos Aires you will find some English speaking people. For rest of the country you will need to rely on some translation app or universal language of hand gestures. Alternately you can pre book English speaking tours which will make your experience smooth.