We spent 3 days and 3 nights in El Chaltén and we stayed busy hiking from the moment we woke up until we went to bed each night. We are quite far South now, and the days are very long. It doesn't get fully dark until after 10. We went on a hike each day that we were there, and we got glorious cloudless skies and no wind which is apparently not so common. There is a downside to this, however, no clouds made it rather hot, as did no wind. But no wind also means you will have an army of enormous horseflies buzzing and orbiting your head most of the time that you are hiking! We did and that part was very unenjoyable!
The mountain range that we were hiking around is known as the Fitz Roy range, which consists of several granite towers which rise out of the flattish surrounding desert land. Since we had cloudless days we had no problem seeing all of the towers and spires of the range and it was amazing hiking scenery, probably never seen better in my life. The range is protected, and all of the hikes are within Parque Nacional Los Glacieres (North).
The town of El Chaltén is the youngest in Argentina and it still quite small, very expensive and strange. It was literally thrown together in 1985 so that Argentina could stake claim on the land before Chile did. It sits in a valley between two glacier rivers at the foot of the Fitz Roy range.
Each day our hikes got longer. We started with a 6 hour day to Laguna Torre, which takes you through dwarf ñire and lenga forests (Southern Beech varieties) and along the Río Fitz Roy to a large glacial lagoon. The greenish waters of the lagoon are from the del Torre glacier which sits at the base of one of the granite spires which is named The Tower. From this place you can see many other towers as well, but not Fitz Roy, the tallest one (3405 m). You can also see several other glaciers.
The second day we did a 7 hour hike up a mountain called Loma del Pliegue Tumbado. It was hot out and it was uphill the whole way, but from the top the views were amazing. Many hikes are described as having 360 views but this one really did. Everywhere you looked there were glaciers, mountains, rivers or lakes to look at. We could see the whole Fitz Roy range and probably 20 glaciers, and again no clouds! It was spectacular! The scenery on the way up was pretty too, we had views of town and we passed through many pretty meadows. One of the meadows had some very happy cows grazing in it! It is strange to me that no matter where we are on a hike, the cows are never far away.
The third day was an 8 hour day to Laguna de Los Tres. This hike was on the other side of the mountain range from our two previous days of hiking, and had fantastic views of Fitz Roy. We took a shuttle a little ways North of town so that we could do a through hike instead of out and back from town. This was nice because it allowed for more downhill than uphill, but we were still ready to drop dead by the end of the day! The downside of doing this was that a million other people started the hike at the same time we did. We walked along the Río Blanco through the nice shade of the forest with many views of glaciers, mountains and river along the way. The highlight of this part of the walk was seeing the Piedras Blancas glacier from across the river. It had a pool of water around it being held in by piles of rocks and there was a huge water fall pouring out the of the glacier. After 2 hours we came to the base of the up portion. It was a very steep, rocky, hot, dusty, shade less hour and a half from there, but it was all worth it when we got to the top. We could see two glacial lagoons, Laguna de Los Tres and a second one that we hadn't expected to see, Laguna Sucia! One was a milky turquoise green color and the other was a clear bright blue that I have never seen in water before! The lagoons were surrounded by a half moon of rocky mountains, tower and spires and blue glaciers. It was absolutely phenomenal. The walk back was nice, very different landscape from the start of the hike. It looked like Utah with red rock and desert plants!
The water in rivers and streams here, and everywhere we've been is so clean you can drink from them. So we've been partaking of the water along the way, it is quite nice because you don't have to carry so much and you can drink as much as you like without feeling like you have to ration it!
The cell phone pictures really won't do justice to the scenery we saw. And for the Laguna los Tres hike the view was so big I had to take separate pictures of each lagoon. You will have to use your imagination to piece them together.
We took a bus last night 2 1/2 hours South to El Calafate where we will visit Parque Nacional Los Glacieres (South). This place is home to the enormous Perito Moreno Glacier! We will be here 3 nights and staying at the America Del Sur hostel.
This scenery is the most spectacular ever! Your pictures are absolutely fabulous. They look like paintings. Route 40 is very interesting. I did several hundred miles around Salta and to the south. You are hundreds if not more than a thousand miles south of that. Route 40 is supposed to be the road that the famous outlaws Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid took from Bolivia down into Argentina. They bought a ranch and lived there for a time. I believe the ranch was in Cholila and it was called El Bolson. These two outlaws are interesting to me, not because they were the subject of my favorite movie, but because they lived in southern Utah for many years and roamed through many of the areas like Brian Head and St. George (where the movie was also filmed). An ancestor of our, James Garrett, was in a posse that got in a shoot out with them in 1905 or so. Fun history!
ReplyDeleteYes we passed by Cholila. It is in between El Bolsón and Esquel. It's a tourist attraction now. You can visit the house and it was recently restored. They were there until 1905.
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