The route to El Chaltén was quite a trip. We had to take a bus from Puerto Natales to El Calafate, a couple hours there and then another bus to El Chaltén. The first trip involved crossing the border from Chile to Argentina which was interesting. We had to stop at a Chile border crossing to have our passports checked then back on the bus for 5 minutes where we stopped again on the Argentina side. We paid our reciprocity fees at the bus station in Puerto Natales and once on the way we realized three of us could have just used our EU passports!!! Could have saved us $480 and a lot of time filling out forms with our passport info. Grrr...

El Chaltén is a very small town and is clearly geared completely towards hiking in the area. One thing that's nice is all the trails begin right at the edges of town which is so small that no trail is more than a 10 minute walk away.


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Hike to Mt. Fitzroy

We were really looking forward to this hike as this is supposed to be one of the great hikes in Patagonia. Unfortunately the weather did not cooperate as it was drizzly and overcast the entire day. Only at the end of the hike when we were almost back to town did a little sun start poking through.

However all great hikes have something to look at despite the weather. The highlights were seeing a stream that was a dark rusty red color that was very different than all nearby streams. Another highlight was seeing a Caracara walking around on a clump of vegetation and finding what looked like a lizard and picking it up and flying away with the snack.

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Trail Map