Hello everyone! Happy December! I think this next post will mostly be pictures because Patagonia, in southern Argentina and Chile, is unbelievably beautiful! 🤩 As someone who was born and spent a large part of my life in Colorado near the Rocky Mountains, the mountains are my happy place. 🏞️ I love skiing and hiking and just being able to see mountains in the distance. Uruguay is mostly flat, with only a few very small hills, so after a semester there I was extremely excited to be ending my time in South America with a trip to some of the world’s most breathtaking mountains. 🎉

El Chalten, Argentina ⛰️

Stefan and I started our Patagonia trip by flying to southern Argentina and renting a car to drive to a little tiny backpackers town called El Chalten (pic below). It has only been around since the mid-1980s and consists of little hostels, hotels, bars and restaurants all catering to backpackers and hikers. We lucked out with warm and dry weather, though it was quite windy. 🌬️We also found a tasty restaurant the first night we arrived. 😋

Miradores 👀

We learned how gorgeous Patagonia is on the drive from the airport to El Chalten and then were pleasantly surprised again and again by how lovely and picturesque the area is. There are countless ‘miradores’ or viewpoints in each area that we visited and our first day of hiking took us to several.

Fitz Roy

One of the longer and well known hikes in El Chalten is the Fitz Roy. It has similar rocky peaks like the Torres Del Paine in Chile. We hiked this on our 2nd day in El Chalten, it was warm and with minimal wind (and lots of mosquitoes). 🦟😆

El Calafate

After El Chalten, we drove to a town called El Calafate and the drive itself is super impressive because the water ways here are a unique and stunning blue, sometimes bordering on turquoise. It looks so unusual that it feels like something out of a sci-fi movie. Apparently this is due to the glaciers in the area grinding rocks into a fine-sediment containing powder that turns the rivers and lakes their distinctive color.

Lodging 🏩

We booked a hosteria in El Calafate, which I incorrectly thought was a hostel, but we learned that ‘hosteria’ means ‘Inn’ in Spanish and it was so cute that I had to share pictures. Since it’s summer in the Southern Hemisphere, it doesn’t really feel like Christmas time as I’ve always experienced it in the United States. The days are long and warm and everyone is excited to get to the beach. There aren’t very many traditional Christmas decorations, but our hosteria made me even more excited to come home for the holidays because of how cozily and Christmas-y it was decorated. 🎄 Also the view from the dining room looked like something out of a story book.

Perito Moreno Glacier 🧊

The highlight of El Calafate is the Perito Moreno Glacier located in Los Glaciares National Park. It is a famous glacier because it is one of the few glaciers in the world that is growing instead of retreating. The drive to see the glacier was of course, totally beautiful. And the glacier itself is really remarkable in its size and sounds when it moves and pieces of glacier break off. There is a series of boardwalks to view the glacier and it took us about 2-3 hours to walk through them all.

Glaciarium Museum and Ice Bar ❄️

After the visit to the Perito Moreno, we stopped by the Glaciarium museum which gives a neat overview of how and when the glacier developed. They also have an ice bar that is literally an ice room with a small igloo and a bar that serves drinks. They gave us heavy parkas and gloves to put on before we entered, but it was still pretty chilly! 🥶

Puerto Natales, Chile 🏔️

Next, we took a bus from El Calafate to Puerto Natales, Chile in order to explore the Torres Del Paine National Park. The bus was quite comfortable with air conditioning and bathrooms. Unfortunately, the weather in Puerto Natales was windy, cold and rainy when we visited. ☔️ This was initially a disappointment because we had hoped to do some longer hikes, but we were able to rent a car and explore the park on 2 separate days, and were able to do some shorter, but still lovely hikes. The views here were extraordinary as well. 😍

The Food!! 😋

We lucked out with seriously delicious food on this trip! From empanadas in El Calafate to tasty Asian fusion and tacos in Puerto Natales, to pumpkin milenesa. After long days hiking and driving, these dishes were so satisfying!

Santiago, Chile 🌵🏜️

Worried about being stuck in the hostel in Puerto Natales in the cold and windy rain, we decided to adjust our schedule and fly to Santiago for a few days before leaving Chile. Where it was in the 30s-40s in Puerto Natales, it was the exact opposite in Santiago. On the day we arrived, it was dry and 92 degrees F! The city was fun to explore and we again found some really tasty food!

Happy Holidays and thanks again for following along! I fly back to the United States tomorrow and can’t wait to see my family and catch up with friends in the midwest before returning to Maine for one last semester. Wishing everyone a safe and lovely end to 2024 and an even better start to 2025! 🥳🎊🎉🥂🍾❤️