Patagonia

February/March 2015; part of our round the world trip

Old sailor’s motto
“Below 40 South there is no law, below 50 South there is no God.” – let’s have a look!

Puerto Madryn (AR)
Hostel: ChePatagonia
Very good place owned by a nice young family with 3 kids. 50 meters from the beach with clean rooms, a big & good communal kitchen (balcony with sea view!), good working wifi and good bikes to rent.

We wanted to reduce our travel speed, which was until that time more like our 3-week-vacation-travel-speed. Puerto Madryn seemed like a perfect spot to do that. We even got more slowed down here than expected, because the only available ticket to travel onward to Ushuaia was 7 days ahead.

There is a Carrefour in town, but the better options are the local Carnerias and Verdurerias. We bought two bife de chorizo, some tomatoes and a cucumber. With a bottle of Malbec we ended up at 100 ARS for an excellent self made meal.
Another night we cooked with a couple from Switzerland. That was not only cheap and tasty, but also a very pleasant evening. We learned something new about Switzerland, tasted Fernet-Branca with Coke and lemon for the first time and got an introduction into Truco (Argentine card game).

The ocean had a wonderful refreshing summer temperature, if you are a sealion or a penguin. We got in a few times, but only to cool down. For the most time we managed approx. 15 minutes in the water.

Tour to Punta Loma (sealion colony)
We rented two mountain bikes in our hostel, got up early at 6 and 15 km later we arrived at Reserva Faunistica Punta Loma. On the way (well more a gravel road, not always easy to ride by bike) we saw an old lighthouse, a sunken shipwreck near the coast, a nice beach of dark round cobbles and big white sand dune. We arrived at the entrance around 8.45 am, payed our fee and went to the watch out on a cliff, approx. 60 meters afar from the sealions. Although at this time it was high tide a few sealions (one male, a few female and some pups) tried to stay very close to the cliff while the waves rolled in hard. As the tide lowered more and more animals emerged from the sea. In January the sealions give birth and after 7 days mate again – so there was plenty going on in this sealion colony. We were even lucky to see the birth of a sealion.

Tip:
Bring binoculars to have an even better view on the animals. Also bring warm clothes as with the wind on the cliff it can get very cold, even when the sun is shining!

Puerto Madryn to Trelew
Busses run every half an hour from the terminal and need around an hour to get to Trelew.

Trelew (AR)
Hotel: Touring Club
The rooms are clean and ok but nothing special. The window offers only view into a tiny concrete courtyard.
The café & bar is a great place to stay and just watch. The old man i.e. who comes every day, sits at the same place, orders a coffee, reads the newspaper and his mobile with a magnifying glass and falls asleep … every morning. The tourist groups that stop here for 30 minutes, ordering without even trying to be polite and use a least some words in Spanish. The business people and locals for whom this is a place to get a quick morning coffee and exchange the latest information. All this happens in a setting where you can close your eyes and when you open it again you could believe Monsieur Antoine de Saint-Exupéry walks in …

Places to eat

Mi Ciudad
It’s a no thrills place with many locals. 1 Pizza (for 2) + big beer as promo: 135 ARS is ok. The burgers are ok as well.

Dorita, Panaderia y Confiteria
25 de Mayo / A.P. Bell
Big variety on facturas, tortas and tortes. Nice for an afternoon stop. They have tasty sandwiches as well! Tip: Here we bought a variety of sandwiches for the upcoming bus travel to Ushuaia.

Sugar
Opposite of the main plaza
Chic, modern restaurant with attentive service and tasty dishes. We drank a bottle of Bodega Rural of Mendoza and ate a lamp and a fish dish. Very tasty but not cheap. Tip: The Alfarores here are incredible!

Tour to Punta Tombo (Magellan Penguin colony)
As soon as we arrived in Trelew we wanted to book a tour to Punta Tombo to see the famous penguin colony. We discovered that there are only two operators left in town that do the tour and they don’t run them every day. In our opinion it is better to stay in Puerto Madryn and organize it from there, at least you have a cool beach if you have to wait for the trip.
The bus that picked us up came from Puerto Madryn – arrrgh! We drove approx. 1 hour to get to the park. The entrance fee was 130 ARS. Straight from the beginning we encountered penguins, but the best part came a little later. The penguins come from and go to the ocean constantly. Doing that they cross the path of the humans all the time. They waddled just a few feet in front and behind of us. So funny and cute!!! On the tour we only had 2 hours at this marvelous place. We could have stayed here all day :-)
It’s expected that each year around 180.000 couples of Magellan Penguins mate and nest here. Every woman can have 2 eggs each year. The couples are feeding and taking care of their babies for 40 days. One of the parents goes fishing for 10 days to feed the family and the other part takes care of the babies. Than they change roles. If one of the parents dies, the whole family has no chance to survive. It was a really interesting experience at the penguin colony!

Tip:
We would recommend a visit… Maybe with an own care to have the opportunity to stay longer! It is advisable to get there early. The park opens at 8 am. On some days the cruise ships in Puerto Madryn set about 4000 people loose, that than go to and tour Punta Tombo.

Trelew to Ushuaia via Rio Gallegos
For the ride to Ushuaia we bought fresh sandwiches at Dorito (see above). Good idea!

Bus: Tremat, 31hrs, semi cama, no service
The bus came on time, but had to wait for who knows what. So we started one hour late. “No service” meant none, not even a movie.

Tip:
Book seats on the left side of the bus for the first part, because for a long time the street goes along the coastline and it’s really beautiful.

Around 4 am there was a police control, that took about an hour. Miraculous we arrived on time in Rio Gallegos (at 6 am in the morning –> bring warm clothes as you have to wait here for 2,5 hrs). Opposite to the bus terminal is a big Carrefour in case you need anything. (Be aware: You are not allowed to bring meat and vegetables to Chile!)

At 8.30 am we had to pick up the unavoidable forms for the boarder crossing procedures and could board the bus a little later. The second part of the journey went through really beautiful landscape and there was so much to see! Around midday we arrived at the boarder to Chile. Shortly before Rio Grande we reentered Argentina.

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BOARDER CONTROLS
Let me put it like this: One of the greatest achievements of the European Union is, that there are no boarder controls inside the EU territory :-)

Tip: You are not allowed to bring meat and vegetables or open spices to Chile! Really, be aware – they take it seriously!
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In the late afternoon in Rio Grande we changed the bus again. From here it’s still around 4 hrs to Ushuaia. Later on its way the bus stopped at Tolhuin.

Tip:
The bus turns at the micro Evita Plaza and stops. If you are hungry, walk the street on the right in direction of travel and after a few meters there is a panaderia.
Finally around 10 pm we arrived in Ushuaia.

Ushuaia (AR)
Hostel Yakush
We slept in 6-bed-mixed-dorm. The rooms are nice and big enough. The hostel has a good kitchen (with 180 degree street view) and a nice communal area. Downside: toilets and showers are in one room and the toilets have dwarf size…

On our first day (Sunday) most businesses were closed, but is was fun to walk through the quiet town. Club Andino was closed as well, but some of the tour operators near the new tourist info were open. Hard to imagine that it is high season.

Trying to book the passage to Puerto Williams to catch the ferry on to Punta Arenas turned out to be trickier than we thought. There is no overall service like with the busses. You have to book the zodiac to Puerto Williams and the ferry to Punta Arenas separately. The zodiacs were available, although we had go to the port a few times because only Pira Tour had someone in their office. The problem here is that they don’t run the zodiacs by a lot of wind. You get your money back, but the ferry won’t wait for you. So you have to go at least one day before your ferry departure. We contacted the ferry office (company: Transbordadora Austral Broom, tabsa.cl) directly via email, because they don’t have an office in Ushuaia and the online form doesn’t work with Safari, but we’ve never received an answer. In the end the Chilean tour office could tell us that the ferry (one week ahead) was already booked.

The next disappointment was the Club Andino. We went there to get some info about the hiking opportunities – especially outside the national park – and to buy a good map. Unfortunately they had no information what so ever and send us to the souvenir shop to buy a map. A little disappointing when you’re expecting to be in an hiking area…
Another thing that we learned is that you best chance to buy water purification pills is probably the Carrefour. Neither in a pharmacy nor in any of the outdoor shops was there anything close. Better you buy them in advance.

Trekking:
“Paso de la Oveja” – our first 2-days-one-night trekking tour
The Paso turnend out to be a very beautiful and varying tour. Read the short but detailed description of our hike here.

Ushuaia to Punta Arenas
Techni Austral, 13 hrs

Punta Arenas (CL)
Hostal Dona Irma
Staying here is close to living with a Chilean family! Valesca who runs the hostal for Irma is a good hearted, very friendly woman, that is relaxed and likes to laugh. She is patient if you – like we – don’t understand her the first time. (Our Spanish isn’t that good 😉

Café: Los Inmigrantes
Doesn’t seem much from the outside but inside this small place is very nice and cute and it has fantastic sandwiches, hot chocolates and huge Tortas! Check this place out!

Trekking:
Cabo Froward – 5-day-trek
If you want to see the southern most point of the American mainland you have to walk. What infos you need and where to get them plus why we failed to reach the Cabo and what you should do to get there, read it all in our description here.

Punta Arenas to Puerto Natales
Pacheco, 3 hrs, no service

Puerto Natales (CL)
Hostel: The Singing Lamb
We slept in a 9-bed-dorm. The beds are good and the lockers big. They have a nice and very spacey communal area plus a creative winter garden.

Eating and Drinking

Café El Living
Good coffee, smoothies, tasty tortas and vegetarian meals. Try the fresh dish of the day!

Creperia Café & Té
Great fruit shakes and fantastic crêpes (sweet and salty). Here you can order from a really brought choice of coffee styles.

Restaurant La Picada de Carlitos
Many locals eat here. They have a kitchen were you can look into. The meat is good and prices are low. The burgers are amazingly huge!

Trekking:
Parque Nacional Torres del Paine – The w, the o or the q???

Preparation
The three o’clock talk about Torres del Paine at the “Base Camp”‘of Erratic Rock is informative, you can rent gear, or find a trekking companion. The best is that these guys have a real interest in the park and the local community.
We stuck our heads together and decided we wanted to start with the tail of the q-trail, than go into the w-trail and decide on the last day of the w if we would have enough energy to do the 3-day extension for the backside of the park and complete the q.
We made a dinner and shopping list for 6 days/5 nights. Our main concern was to pack our bags e as light as possible, but on the same time don’t bore ourselves to death with our own food. Here you find our Paine Cuisine for the trek.
At last we bought a bus ticket (return) into the park for 15.000 Pesos. Because we were not sure how many days we stay in the park we made no reservation for the hostel in Puerto Natales in advance.

The hike
Stayed 6 days/5 nights in the park; hiked approx. 87,6 km, had some rain but more dry days, temperatures from approx. 0 degrees in the night up to felt +20 degrees during two day. Saw beautiful mountains with impressive glaciers, heard them crack and tumble down in the valley at night. Hiked along ridiculously blue icebergs and turquoise lakes. Saw a condor flying in the morning of the last day along the Torres del Paine. If you want to read our full report of the six days + tips and see our new section “what to eat on a 6-day hike” go here.

As we came back from the trip The Singing Lamp was already booked so we had to look quickly for another place to sleep. We ended up at Erratic Rock 2.

Hostel Erratic Rock 2
With 80$/night for a double it is not exactly cheap, but after such a hike it feels good to come to a place were you can relax, where they wash your clothes, you can have a nice breakfast and friendly and helpful staff.

Immediately after showering we celebrated our return. La Piscada de Carlitos was the restaurant of our choice. With a pisco sour, a giant hamburgesa completa, patatas fritas and a liter Austral beer. It totally overwhelmed our digestive tract, but it was worth it!!!

Puerto Natales (CL) to El Calafate / Glacier Perito Moreno (AR) to El Chalten (AR)

In Puerto Natales we booked a normal daytour to Glacier Perito Moreno (45.000 Chilean Pesos). One funny thing is that the gate at the boarder CL-AR-border is closed by a chain with a small lock between 10 pm and 8 am and it has to be unlocked by an official. You could drive left and right around it and I guess nobody would notice. But we got us some more Chilean and Argentine stamps in our passports. I always wonder what they do with the little papers that you fill out and they stamp so eager? After returning from the glacier we got dropped off near the bus terminal of El Calafate and proceeded with the local bus to El Chalten.

El Calafate / Glacier Perito Moreno
The glacier was quiet impressive on this sunny afternoon, with his approx. 50 meter high and 3 km long blue ice wall from where constantly small chunks of ice dropped into Lago Argentina. There are three main balcony levels from where you can see the glacier perfectly. Although it is a main tourist attraction and we visited at high season, there was still enough room for everyone. We stayed about 2 hours, which was ok. We did not take the boat tour, mainly because you have to stay inside the boat and we don’t think that you have good views from inside the boat.

From El Calafate we took the local bus to proceed to El Chalten. We already had our bus tickets bought in advance, which didn’t seem to be necessary at all.

Tip:
Try to get the seats in the front row, or at least at the left side of the bus. When you get near El Chalten you can enjoy a brilliant live mountain movie. As we road we could see Fitz Roy perfectly. Behind the mountains huge dark clouds came up and the half moon gave a dim light on the scenery, while the bus front lights showed the curved way and the wind gusts shook the bus as night fell.
There are no seat reservation, so you have to be first in line when the bus comes!

EL Chalten (AR)
Hostel Aylen-Aike
A basic hostel near the river, with a big kitchen and huge dvd collection. If you are interested in climbing this might be a good place for you.

Restaurant La Senyera
Try the Locro and/or the Carbonada (traditional stews) – very good! They as well make excellent and big steaks.

Trekking:
We did two wonderful hikes
1. To Laguna Torre, from where you can see Cerro Torre und Glacier Grande. This one is very easy, because it is flat most of the time.
2. To Fitz Roy with stunning views upon Fitz and it’s satellites and the whole national park. This trek can be done starting from El Chalten by feet and returning the same way or you can get a shuttle in the morning and start from the northern end of Parque National Los Glaciares. I did it this way and it was a beautiful hike.

Need to know
In El Chalten internet connections are slow if working at all. You need a lot of patients if you want i.e. book your next hostel online. The only ATM in town runs out of money at weekends and gets money not before Monday. Cambio is possible at restaurants and hostels (but only in the evenings). We got 12 ARS for 1 US $ in pizzeria Patagonia*, the bigger hotels wanted to give 11, and the rest had no money to change with.
*27th of February 2015

EL Chalten to El Bolson via Perito Moreno
The bus company ChaltenTravel reserves no seats and provides no service on this 22 hrs route. It started at 8 pm and had a stop of 45 minutes in Perito Moreno the next morning. We bought empanadas and tarta de choclo as provision – good choice.

Tip:
After Perito Moreno the bus stops in Gobernador Costa in front of a pizzeria for 30 minutes. Head back to the main street (Av. Julio A. Roca) and there is La Espiga, a small panaderia with good sandwiches and sweet facturas.

El Bolson (AR)
Hostel La Casona de Odile
A lovely place, only a little outside the town. We got a 4-bed-dorm with bathroom. Friendly staff, homemade bread and jams for breakfast, a huge garden with garden chairs, tables and relaxing hammocks, a nice communal area and a great bar with self made tasty beer and optional dinner in the evening, make this place an excellent choice that we recommend wholeheartedly.

Here we met Tine & Flip again, with whom we spend two days in Buenos Aires. They told us from their trekking experiences. Chapeau! They are so much fitter than us. We cooked together and talked about doing some trekking together.

The town El Bolson lives from it’s “hippie history”, but let’s face it “peace, love, understanding” is still a good motto, but these times are over and so the hippie community stripped of its purpose only makes a sell out on former ideals – here as in many other place around the world. Having said that El Bolson and it’s surrounding mountains is still a very nice place to visit.
At least La Casona de Odile is absolutely worth a visit for some relaxing days :) This hostel seems to be a good example of how you can keep your lifestyle and still run a place that provides good service and makes travelers happy.

Trekking:
Around Cerro Hielo Azul – 3-day hike
The hike itself was nothing spectacular or something on the must do list, but we walked through really nice nature, about 5 hours per day, and really enjoyed it. Tine & Flips company was a very nice add on, especially because they have this incredible manual coffee maker with them ;o) The only thing that annoyed me (Tom) was that the campgrounds allow open fire. I was a afraid that the flying sparks could damage our tent and I don’t like to smell of smoke. More details here.

Crossing the border from El Bolson (AR) to Puerto Varas (CL) – 4-day hike
All the info that we got was well meant but at best inaccurate. We learned that the hard way on our first multiday hike with all our stuff. Fortunately our friends Tine & Flip hiked with us and kept moral up with cooking i.e. pancakes! Read all the details for this wonderful hike along the 4 lakes Lago Puelo, Lago Inferior, Lago De Las Rocas & Lago Azul here.

 

Thank you for following us through Patagonia. We hope we could provide you with some helpful information. As it seems that Puerto Varas no longer belongs to Patagonia, our journey up north continues on the Chile page. Wanna join us? Continue reading here.

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Safe travels!
Claudia & Tom