Oh, Patagonia. We sure do love this place.

Our time in Patagonia was amazing and completely opposite of Buenos Aires — it is hard to believe they are in the same country. We stressed about our itinerary a lot….was it wrong to make it all the way to Patagonia and not do the W trek in Torres del Paine? Was it smart to go backpacking for 5 days when we had to rent all of the gear we might need – not only would that be expensive it would be difficult to be stuck with gear that was only adequate? Where do we store our laptops and other technology while we backpack? It was frustrating since we have everything we might need back in Denver, but we were left ill-prepared. For this post, I am going to let the pictures do most of the talking.

Cities Visited

El Calafate and El Chalten

Hikes Completed

Laguna de los Tres (16 miles), Laguna Torre (15 miles), Chorrillo del Salto (5 miles),  and Los Condores and Las Aguilas (3.5 miles)

Things We Liked

NATURE and views like the one below

Things We Disliked

Expensive, bad food, rainy, windy, unpredictable weather and our lack of camping/hiking gear

El Chalten

Ultimately we decided to skip Torres del Paine (and the 3-5 days backpacking with rented gear) and instead spend 4 nights in El Chalten exploring some of the premier day hikes. The hikes were long, but stunning. The weather rarely ever cooperated. There were days when we hiked with cold, sideways rain and with wind about to knock us over. We had read that the views in Los Glaciers National Park rivaled the views in Torres del Paine National Park (and that some people even preferred Los Glaciers National Park). A few days we rented hiking boots two of the days (thank goodness!) and even some day packs for some of the longer hikes (7 plus hours). Although they were not the greatest boots they saved our feet and I am so thankful we were able to rent some gear!

My favorite hike was Laguna de Los Tres — although the last kilometer very steep and almost straight up, but the stunning views of three glacial lakes and and Mount Fitz Roy made every step of the 16 miles of hiking. The pictures really say it all….

Our other favorite hike in the area was Laguna Torre, clocking in at 14 miles round trip. I would have loved this hike even more if there wasn’t rain the entire day and clouds obscuring our view most of the hike.

El Calafate

After El Chalten we headed to El Calafate to check out Perito Moreno Glacier. We have seen a couple glaciers before but this one was really special. Every so often pieces of the glacier would fall of into the water and it sounded exactly like thunder. To hear the glacier creak and crack was amazing. We took a boat ride to get a better view before trekking on the glacier — it was touristy and I loved every minute.

Don’t Drink the Water

Fun fact about Patagonia is that you can drink the water. I am not talking about water from the tap either (although you can drink that too) — I am referring to lakes and rivers. Never have I ever heard a park ranger encourage me to dip my water bottle into the river and drink it. There was nothing better than filling my bottle up with some nice, cold glacial runoff water and drinking it. We even had ice cubes from a glacier in our whiskey on the rocks at Perito Moreno Glacier.

We really loved our time in Patagonia. It is incredible here. It also reminded us of Colorado and made us so, so excited to go back and explore our state more 🙂