El Calafate and El Chalten

After spending so much time in Torres del Paine, I needed to work my way up to Bariloche. That meant a couple days in El Calafate and El Chalten, which worked out very well as both were small towns geared to tourists. One never knows what one will see along the way. Our first stop had us dividing a herd of goats and cows, and seeing a persistent male trying to have a way with a particularly pretty and clean female, the male being particularly dirty. It was definitely to action people were drawn to, but alas we left while the pursuit was still on.

El Calafate was the base for those who wanted to see the Moreno Glaciar. I took this in, had a nice day, but of course after seeing what I’d seen in Antarctica, it was hard not to draw comparisons. We did get close up and personal with the glaciar, and everyone who spends even 15 minutes there will see some calving. It creeps down the hill quite fast, even on a daily basis. Of course, we’re talking maybe 4 cm. a day, but that’s a lot for a glaciar. I walked around town, had my fill of salads after having been camping without greens for about ten days.

El Chalten is a very rustic town, almost how you would envision a cowboy town. That means no paved streets, some horses along the streets (though those are devoted to tourists or for backpacking) and no sidewalks. It rained all morning, and so I was glad my sightseeing trip had been delayed to the afternoon through unusual circumstances. By the time I was to be picked up, the sun finally came out, showing the mountains’ reflections in the myriad puddles along the way. We hiked a bit to a lookout and were greeted by a smallish glaciar very high up, no calving to be seen in this rather brown looking glaciar.

I’ve been staying in hostels, though the one in El Chalten was definitely geared to 20-somethings. They did have nightly movies, so that was nice, though I wonder what the world thinks about the US based on the movies and TV shows that make it to other countries. My roommates were two guys from Sweden, who I ended up rooming with on my way up to Bariloche. Another was a French woman traveling on her own. She headed back to Bariloche for tango lessons. What a combination—trekking and tangoing.