Breath-taking hikes in El Chalten!
It has now been five days in Patagonia and we love it!
We and our friends (the Australians we met in Puno, Peru) arrived in El Chalten, in the Andes, and it’s tiny (10 blocks long) The city is mainly hotels and restaurants filled with hikers with all the gear you need so next to them we looked quite unprepared, but you know, you can’t bring everything on a round the world trip! I was immediately blown away by the beauty of the Cerro Fitz Roy chain of mountains surrounding the village. This chain of mountains inspired the logo of the brand Patagonia and is also on the cover of our Lonely Planet guidebook! That’s how famous it is!
On the second day here, we (all ten of us) woke up at seven o’clock and left at eight to go hike up to the Laguna de los Tres for a 20km trek. To go to the starting point, we took a shuttle and started the hike on a gentle flat path and after about an hour, we stopped at viewpoint and admired the dazzling snow-capped mountains we would almost be walking up to. After a short pause, we took off again and went all the way up to the campsite, where the hard and last section of the hike started.
We also had lots of fun drinking from the streams. Now don’t get all alarmed, the water was absolutely safe to drink because it comes from one of the many glaciers of Patagonia, so yes it was very cold. ❄️ After our little water stop, we set our first foot on the next rock and started the hour long, steep walk up to the lake. All in all, it was a 750 meter elevation gain!
When we finally got at the top, priority was eating! I really enjoyed the view and also when we got to the top, we were surprised to find that the lake was frozen over! So we did and then we went down to the lake and had so much fun munching on ice and throwing rocks on the ice. During our time at the lake, we saw two crazy people (a man and a woman) in their swimsuits that actually went into the lake, which was at about 3 or 4 degrees, and went to sit on the hard ice. But unfortunately the ice wasn’t that hard because it cracked under the man’s weight and so he went splash! completely in the water!! I think the only reason they did that was for Instagram!! After spending two hours at the top, we started the long way down and unfortunately had a few slips and falls but nothing major, luckily.
The rest of the walk went well apart from Gus (our friend, of Raphaël’s age) who unfortunately fell into a stream which he said was surprisingly deep. His parents had a change of clothes and Apolline lent him her socks (she didn’t mind having none apparently), so apart from the shoes, he was able to continue the walk in dry clothes! Phew!
When we finally arrived in El Chalten, we went straight to the ice-cream shop! I was very happily surprised by the amount of ice-cream they can fit in a tiny cone! Dad even tried the Calafate berry ice-cream, which gives its name to the town of El Calafate. legend says that if you eat calafate berries, you will come back to Patagonia! We all were so happy to get ice-cream. It compensated a tiny bit for our extremely sore legs and feet! When we got back to the hotel, we watched the Goonies movie with our friends!
The following day, we opted for a smaller hike towards a waterfall. We even saw some condors, the famous birds of the Andes. It was only three kilometres away so we quickly got there and had our picnic lunch whilst taking A LOT of pictures in front of the waterfall!
At first, I wasn’t really looking forward to hiking but in the end, I really loved it and enjoyed the amazing views we all hiked long and hard for…
Eléonore
P.S: More hiking stories are coming up…
