Patagonia, Or How Lustin Got Their (Exercise) Groove Back

After a month of full English breakfasts in the United Kingdom, nearly two months of eating mostly pasta, pizzas (SO many pizzas), wine, and gelato in Italy, a month in Spain downing pinxtos and tapas left and right (they were so small, but none of them seemed to incorporate anything resembling greens), and my unexpected hiatus from exercise due to a pesky appendectomy, Laura and I were starting to feel a bit soft in early December. Actually, that’s an understatement; we were starting to feel like the Pillsbury Doughboy, aka Poppin’ Fresh (which would be a great name for a rapper, by the way) and his portly but adorable wife (Mary Poppin’ Fresh?). Anyway, my point is: we needed some exercise, and we needed it bad. Atacama in northern Chile wasn’t the most active start to our two months in South America, and a week of wine tasting in Mendoza – which shockingly also involved some serious consumption of red meat – didn’t exactly scream “back on the exercise wagon”. It was time for some serious outdoor inspiration: hello, Patagonia!

Laura and I planned to spend three full weeks hiking and exploring in some of the most popular destinations in Patagonia: San Carlos de Bariloche (Argentina) in the Lake District of northern Patagonia; El Chaltén (also in Argentina) near El Calafate in the central region; Torres del Paine National Park just across the border in Chile; and Ushuaia (back in Argentina again), the southernmost city in the western hemisphere. When we looked at these places on a map, they seemed to make a very nice counter-clockwise loop starting and ending in Buenos Aires. Unfortunately, it wasn’t that easy. After researching a few of the airlines that operate in Patagonia (including one that’s run by the Argentinian military!), we quickly realized that LAN was the way to go. They fly mostly on time (unlike the national airline), their airplanes are newer, and they’re a part of the OneWorld alliance, which meant the status we’d earned flying on our round-the-world ticket might actually help us. But check out the map (above right) of their routes in Patagonia.

Ugh. In the end, we racked up a LOT of miles flying back and forth to Buenos Aires, usually just to spend one night there and fly out again the next morning. To make matters worse, there are no hotels near the international airport, and the domestic airport was closed for all of November for runway repairs, so we spent way too many hours (and pesos) riding in taxis between the airport and city center, around 25km each way. It was annoying, but we couldn’t complain because in the end, Patagonia far exceeded even our already high expectations!

Off the Beaten Path

Before I jump into the highlights from our time in Patagonia, I would be remiss if I didn’t stop to give a HUGE shout out to Pam Bryan, co-founder and travel advisor extraordinaire at Off the Beaten Path, a company based in Bozeman, MT. When we started thinking about our travels in Patagonia, we realized we were going to need some help, so Laura did some research and found OtBP online. Pam turned out to be an AMAZING resource for us. Not only did she have numerous Skype calls with us while battling a horrible respiratory infection (we had to abort one call because she basically couldn’t speak even though she so wanted to forge ahead), but she spent a ton of time helping us plan and book our lodging, tours, and transportation in Bariloche, El Chaltén, and Torres del Paine. And she helped us without taking a deposit, and in the end she only charged us a few hundred dollars above her costs, basically just barely enough to cover her time and efforts. Thank you, Pam, for making our three weeks in Patagonia so easy and memorable!

San Carlos de Bariloche

Our well-traveled friends Eric and Tanya had recommended the Lake District as a must-see destination, so we spent eight wonderful days in San Carlos de Bariloche getting our hearts and lungs working again. The two big things we noticed when we arrived were the HOWLING winds (Laura had some seriously sweaty palms and white knuckles as our plane was tossed around during the landing) and the blindingly yellow broom flowers that lined the roads in and around Bariloche. As usual, we couldn’t help ourselves and took a zillion pictures of the huge patches of yellow. There were also a few beautiful mountain ranges and gorgeous lakes around, so you know, that was something. :)

The entire town of Bariloche is geared towards trekking and hiking; there are outdoor gear stores on every corner, and the big names (North Face, Patagonia, etc.) are all there. The town itself is pretty touristy, but we stayed at a wonderful little hotel a bit outside of the city center called Las Marianas (recommended by Pam because her brother has stayed there many times). It’s named after the owner (Mariana), her mother (also Mariana), and her two-year-old daughter (you guessed it, Mariana, or Marianita as they called her). The little one was adorable! Mariana (the middle one) and her husband Carlos were so friendly and helpful, and they gave us tons of great tips on nearby hikes, good restaurants to try (and bad ones to avoid), local shops, etc. They were also incredibly patient with our near-total lack of Spanish language skills, although Carlos had spent some time in Italy, so Laura got to practice her Italian a bit.

With a full week to play with, we committed ourselves to getting out and doing some serious exercise everyday, and we pretty much kept to our promise. I’ll let our photo albums (linked in the blurbs below) fill in the details, but here are some highlights:

• On our first day, we took a long, windy walk from our hotel up to Cerro Otto, a nearby mountain that has a rotating restaurant at the top (classy). It wasn’t the most scenic walk we’d ever been on, and the weather was so-so, but the views from the restaurant were pretty amazing. There’s a gondola that takes less adventurous types to the top from town, but it wasn’t running that day due to the wind, so we had no choice but to be adventurous! We did have to pay a ridiculous entry fee just to sit inside the rotating restaurant and eat our sack lunches (which they almost didn’t let us eat), but it was warm and cozy inside, so worth the cost.
• We also did an easier walk up to the top of Cerro Llao Llao (pronounced “shau shau” like the first part of “shower”), where we were treated to more gorgeous views of the surrounding mountains and lakes. We walked through some thick bamboo groves, and the whole trail was eerily quiet as we made our way up. After nearly getting lost on our way down, we took the long way back to our hotel in Bariloche, stopping at a few places along the way to take in some of the classic views. The Lake District really is a beautiful place!
  
• Our longest and most scenic hike was up to the Frey refugio (basically a simple hut for backpackers and climbers) near the top of Cerro Catedral. It was a six-hour hike that covered close to 15 miles, and the beginning and end of the hike was mostly a flat walk around the mountain rather than up or down, but the views from the refugio were spectacular. This was also the day that we finally learned that empanadas make much better hiking snacks than sandwiches. The little corner store near our hotel made some of the best pollo and champignon empanadas we tasted anywhere in Argentina!
• We spent one day white water rafting south of Bariloche with a company called Aguas Blancas Rafting. We got really lucky with the weather, our guides were great, and we met a very nice couple – Dave and Lorica – from Australia who’d been traveling in South America for the previous month. We had a lot of laughs as we made our way down the river (not always gracefully), and we finished the afternoon with a HUGE carnivorous feast of grilled steak, ribs, and other delicious meats. Man, do the Argentinians know how to grill! (Check out the photos in our Bariloche Rafting album.)
• Speaking of food, we managed to find a few more delicious steak dinners in Bariloche, but unlike in Mendoza, we felt like we’d earned them with all of the hiking we had done each day. The bife de lomo at Tarquino was so good that we had to have dinner there twice, but the most authentic parilla (steak house) experience we had was at the famous El Boliche de Alberto. We made the mistake of ordering both the beef AND a half order of the grilled chicken, plus salad and of course the humongous pile of french fries. When in Rome, right? I’ve never tasted a better steak anywhere in my life.
• We spent our last day in Bariloche not actually in Bariloche, but road-tripping down to the town of El Bolsón. We’d covered a lot of the same highway on our way to our river rafting spot, and the scenery was so beautiful that we had to get out there again on our own. We drove our poor little rental car down a VERY rutted and bumpy road to take a short hike around Lago Steffen, but the day was mostly spent stopping and taking a ridiculous number of photos of mountains, lakes, and wildflowers. It was a great way to wrap up our week.
• The other story of our week in the Lake District was wildflowers. Hundreds and hundreds of brilliantly colored wildflowers everywhere we looked. We’re not sure if they’re always out in such force or if we just got really lucky with timing, but their rainbow of color added even more beauty to the already dazzling landscape. We decided they deserved their own special showcase in our Patagonia Wildflowers album.

El Chaltén

Our next destination in Patagonia was the tiny little town of El Chaltén, situated inside the Los Glaciares National Park just a few hours north of El Calafate. The town was only created in 1985, primarily as a hub for climbers due to its proximity to the popular Cerro Torre and Cerro Fitz Roy peaks (all of the hiking trails in the area start right in town). It was also created by Argentina to establish a settlement along the highly disputed border with Chile (read on for a similar story in Ushuaia). Until recently, the road between El Chaltén and El Calafate wasn’t even paved, but fortunately for us they got that job done in the last couple of years, so the bus ride over was relatively painless.

Once again, we arrived in El Chaltén to find some absolutely CRAZY strong winds (like knock-you-off-your-feet strong), along with a weird light rain that never seemed to get the ground wet. It was also REALLY cold. Weren’t we supposed to be in the middle of a southern hemisphere summer?? The nearby mountains and the Southern Patagonian Ice Field (the second largest extrapolar ice field in the world) stir up some very unpredictable weather conditions, so we had to be prepared for pretty much anything.

Which in this case, included… a blizzard. On our first of three days of hiking in El Chaltén, we had booked a guide (another great hook-up from Off the Beaten Path) to show us around before spending the next two days on our own. We met Diego at our hotel the evening before our hike, and after hearing about the various trails we could hike, we decided to take a car north and then do a long one-way hike back to town. When we woke up the next morning, we seriously wondered whether we were crazy for even thinking about going outside: it was blowing like hell (but we were getting used to that), and it was lightly SNOWING. In summer. Thankfully, we decided not to bail, because although it wasn’t scenic in the traditional sense of the word (Us: “Hey Diego, would we normally be able to see something at this overlook?”; Diego (smiling): “You don’t want to know.”), our day of traipsing around in the snow near Lago Capri was really fun, and not all that cold or uncomfortable. It was certainly a memorable introduction to El Chaltén!

Fortunately, the weather improved tremendously for our other two days there. On our second day, we did a LONG hike up to the glacier-fed Lago Torre, where we finally got our first glimpses of Cerros Torre and Fitz Roy. It was a really long day, and legs nearly gave out on us on our way back to town, but it was a great hike.

On our last day, we woke up to perfectly blue skies, so we hoped we were in for some great views of the mountains. We were not disappointed. Our views of Cerro Fitz Roy from the lookout near Lago Capri (the same lake that we’d seen only through blizzard-blinded eyes two days before) were truly stunning. We felt lucky to have caught such an epic peak on such an epically beautiful day (Eric, is that enough “epics” for you?). :)

Torres del Paine

From El Chaltén, we made our way back down to El Calafate (via bus) and then over the border into Chile to visit Torres del Paine. We had such an amazing time in Paine that Laura was inspired to write her own separate blog post about our time there. It’s cued up and ready to go, so keep reading for the full details!

Ushuaia

The last stop in our Patagonian odyssey was the odd little city of Ushuaia, at the far southern tip of Argentina. It was also our first brush with the history of Charles Darwin (which we would hear much more about in the Galápagos Islands): the Beagle Channel – the waterway that separates Argentina and Chile at the southern tip of South America – was named after the HMS Beagle, Darwin’s ship.

We’d heard from numerous people that Ushuaia wasn’t a place to spend too many days, and they were right about that. Being down there is like being in another world, but it’s not exactly beautiful: even though it was the middle of summer (we actually spent December 21st, the longest day of the year, down there), the weather was cold, gray, blustery, and constantly changing. The mountains around the city are beautiful when you can see them, but they couldn’t rival the grandeur of those in Torres del Paine or El Chaltén. Seeing Ushuaia is more of a novelty than a major 

We spent three days in Ushuaia at the quaint Hostería Tierra de Leyendas, a cute little hotel run by a young couple who also traveled the world a few years ago; they have some amazing photographs of their travels on the walls of their hotel. They also served some pretty delicious dinners, considering how middle-of-nowhere we were. The hotel is quite a ways out of town, though, which made for one long walk (not recommended) and some expensive taxi rides to and from downtown. It also meant that their point-to-point wireless internet connection to the central part of town was down often. Actually, it was out almost constantly, which sucked for them as much as it sucked for us.

But like most places in Patagonia, we weren’t in Ushuaia to waste time on the internet. We managed a couple of interesting excursions during our three days in Ushuaia:

• We hiked around nearby Gable Island and visited a penguin colony (awesome!) with a company called Canal Fun. Our guide was fantastic, and the photo ops were pretty amazing (the penguins also made for a pretty fun holiday card, complete with Photoshop’ed santa hats – check out our full Penguin Colony album for more pics). The take-aways: beavers are destroying Tierra del Fuego, penguins are really cute, and it is ridiculously windy in Patagonia.
• We did a “hike” (a walk, really) through Tierra del Fuego National Park, followed by some very leisurely kayaking in the nearby sound. Overall, it was something to do, but there were way too many people in our group for one guide, many of the other clients were incredibly slow, and a few of them were incredibly annoying know-it-alls who spent most of the day trying to teach our guide things rather than the other way around. Ugh. Another lesson in how much your fellow travelers can impact your experience when seeing things in a group.

Final Thoughts

In the end, we were truly blown away by the natural beauty and variety of experiences in Patagonia. One of the first things Laura ever wrote to me in email, long before we were dating or engaged or married (or traveling the world together), was: “I ♥ mountains.” Well as it turns out, we both heart mountains, and Patagonia has more than enough of them, plus some beautiful lakes, a ton of hearty and delicious food, and friendly people that share our love of the great outdoors. It was a wonderful three weeks, and Patagonia is definitely on our “must see again” list. You know, for our next trip around the world. :)