Time for our 4th country of our trip. We were headed to Torres del Paine National Park in Chile. We had been flirting with Chile most of our trip as it was always just the other side of the Andes Mountains. We were driving straight from El Chalten, which is probably a good 6 hour drive not counting the time for the border crossing.
Your main concern is gas for the car as their is no gas in the National Park. the last place for gas in Argentina is Esparanza (or Hope) as in you hope they have gas. Luckily, they did have gas, although we had to get a higher grade of gas because they were almost out of the lower grade. We were able to get a salad and sandwich at the one gas station as well. Then we headed on for the border. It was a Sunday and at the time, we went through it was very quiet. We made it through Argentina just fine. Got to Chile and again it was very quiet. They did a quick search of the car and we were back on the road.
We first got into Chile and loved the concrete roads with wide shoulders. Well, that was short lived as it was paved for only a few kilometers until we were on gravel roads the rest of the way to the park. So, by the time we got to our accommodation the car was a dust bowl and probably needed a new suspension.
We were staying at the Konkashken Lodge. It’s very close to the Rio Serrano park gate. The lodge has an optional dinner that you can choose if you like. We had dinner the first night and it was very good.
Told the staff what time we wanted breakfast the next morning and also ordered a box lunch for the next day.
We headed out the next morning to catch the catamaran inside the park. The boat takes you across Lake Pehoe to the start of a number of trails. We didn’t have a whole lot of time as we had already scheduled to come back on the 5:00 boat. So, we started on the Grey Glacier trail. We just figured we’d go as far as we could until our turn around time. We almost made it to our destination of Mirador Grey Glacier, but not quite. We were really tired and our feet beat from the rocks. It was a nice day. Fairly warm and no wind. For Patagonian that’s a win any day. Our box lunch was great and it was so nice to have it on our hike. We ended up doing about 7.25 miles and gaining almost 970 feet in elevation. So, pretty good for us.
We had another nice dinner at the lodge.
The next morning, we had an early start as we were scheduled for the 8:30 catamaran. We were going to the same location, but this time headed on a different trail towards the French Valley. The wind was up that day. We were almost thinking that we’d hike a little and mainly be hanging back at the lodge waiting for the boat back. But we forged ahead and let the Patagonian wind “caress us”. (More like it almost blew us off the trail a few times.) This trail was much kinder and relatively flat. We got to the swinging bridge. Will decided that was his turn around point. There was no way he was crossing. I went across and came back. We were probably within 500m of the Italian camp anyway, which was our goal for that day. It worked out to be a good turn around point because both our feet had had enough by the time we got back.
We ended up doing close to 9 miles with probably ½ the elevation gain of the day before.
Another nice dinner at the lodge.
The next day we were going to take it easy. We had a scenic glacier boat tour that we had booked. We were happy to give our feet a rest and happy not to be hiking as the weather had taken a turn. It had rained quite a bit the night before and the wind was supposed to be even higher. Got to the Grey Hotel to check-in for the boat tour and found out the captain had canceled the sailing because of high winds. We were disappointed but not too upset. We now had a really leisurely day.
We stopped at another hotel to try out lunch somewhere else. I got to try the lamb stew which was great on a cold windy day. Will got some type of charcuterie board and was happy with his as well.
Spent a lazy afternoon catching up on some things back at our room.
Thanks Gabriela, Constansa, Marion, Carlos, Patrick, and Benjamin. We really enjoyed our stay at the Konkashken Lodge, but it was time to head on.
We headed out the next morning amid even cooler weather.
On the way back, we decided to check out the coal mine capital of Argentina, Rio Turbio. Why, you might ask? Well, really, we knew there was a ski hill there and they have a couple of gas stations. So, we decided to take a scenic detour and drive by the ski hill. We found out about the coal mines when driving through town. We really had no idea.
We then turned around and drove on to El Calafate and went again to Viva la Pepe. We took our filthy car back the next morning to catch our flight back to Buenos Aires.
We walked around a bit the next morning as we were staying in the San Telmo area of Buenos Aires. We went to the San Telmo market which is really quiet early on a Saturday morning. And from there we walked to the Galleria Pacifica. It’s an upscale shopping mall. It was nice to be in the air conditioned indoors as it was in the 90’s that day.
We then went to see about doing the underground tour of some tunnels under Buenos Aires at El Zanjon de Granados. It’s a former mansion home originally built in the mid-late 1800’s. The man who purchased the abandoned building in 1994 had originally planned to put in a restaurant. But while in the process of the remodel, they discovered some of the history of the home and that it had been built over some river/ditches. Waste/trash was sent down these ditches to end up in the River Platte in the 1800’s. Wealthy homeowners bricked over the ditches when building homes in the area. It took about 15 years of restoration before the building was open to the public in 2001. Instead of a restaurant, the owner turned the building into a museum and meeting space. The museum is now self stainable. It was a really interesting tour as you learn some of the history of Buenos Aires and how the city developed. We also learned about the lifestyles of the people who lived in the late 1800’s.
We came back to the hotel to grab our luggage and move to another hotel to meet up with our group. Upon checking in we learned that our bus for the airport would be leaving at 3:40 AM the next morning for our 6:00 AM flight. Wow, it was an early morning for us. We flew to Ushuaia for the start of our trip to Antarctica.