El Calafate to Parque National Torres Del Paine

Wednesday – January 5

We left El Calafate at 8:00 on our bus with Marco, Carolina and Gabe for our two-stage drive to Parque National Torres Del Paine. Our route in Argentina was on nicely paved roads in good weather. The direction was south and then west. The terrain was mostly flat with the Andes poking up in the west. Carolina and Marco kept us entertained with lessons on history and culture in Argentina. There was friendly nationalistic banter between them – Carolina is from Argentina and Marco is from Chile.

Among other things, we learned about the custom around drinking mate from Carolina. Mate is similar to tea. It must be prepared properly with the perfect temperature of hot water, the right amount of mate and the correct amount of sugar. It is mixed in a gourd-like bowl and then passed around among friends who sip it through a silver straw with a strainer on the liquid end. We all shared the bitter brew.

Our first stop on the route was at a road-side cafe/hotel. Carolina mentioned that it had wonderful hot chocolate, so we tried one. They pour foamed hot milk into a glass and add solid dark chocolate. You stir it to melt the chocolate and then drink it. It’s tasty, but nothing special.

Our nice paved road soon turned into a dirt road a mile or so before we came to the Argentina border checkpoint. We had to disembark and file through the guard house to have our passports stamped.

Shortly down the road, we stopped at the border of Chile. We got off of the bus with all of our luggage. The border guards inspected the bus while we went through immigrations and customs. We were warned that we had to declare any food that we had or else we could be fined Chile has a thriving agricultural industry that it wants to protect. I declared the salted peanuts that were in my backpack but they didn’t bother to check them. We were also told that there was a reciprocity fee (visa fee) of $140 each. They didn’t bother with this either. So we happily walked over the border to our new bus and loaded our bags. Our Argentina bus, driver and local guide had to leave us here. We had to say good-bye to Carolina and Gabe.

A few feet in front of the bus was a restaurant/tourist shop. We had our first Chilean meal on a long table on the second floor. I had a filet with French fries while Ann had a sandwich and a huge cappuccino. We had fun paying for our meal when the credit card machine stopped working. This was interesting for some of our group that didn’t want to use their cash. They persevered though because the restaurant took American dollars, Argentina pesos, Chilean pesos, etc.

When I went outside to get some air, I noticed two fully loaded custom-made touring bicycles. They and the equipment on them looked very used. I went inside a found the pair of young men they belonged to and found that they were on month 18 of a journey from Alaska to Ushuaia, the southern tip of South America. They had one month to go.

We had to wait at the restaurant for a while because Julio, our local guide, was delayed because of a transit strike in Punta Arenas. Apparently the government tried to raise the price of gas and “The People” di not like that. So they blocked all of the roads in and out of Punta Arenas. Julio finally showed up and we were off for Parque National Torres del Paine.

Julio is a young Chilean man who teaches an ESL course at the local university. He sets his schedule so that he can spend part of his week teaching, part of it leading tours, part of it kayaking, running and mountain biking and part of it being with his family. He speaks American English extremely well and knows a lot about geology, biology, history, culture, etc.

Once we turned into the park, we were on a narrow gravel road. Dust was not an issue because the wind was blowing so hard that all of the dust and dirt blow away before we could feel it. The weather was only partly cloudy so we had very good views of the mountains, lakes and rivers. We stopped several times for photos. We had excellent views of the Torres Del Paine. We also saw animals – guanacos and a huemul.

We got to the Lago Grey Hotel just before our 8:00 dinner. The started us out with pisco sours. Then we had an appetizer, soup, a main course of lamb chops and a huge slab of chocolate ice cream cake. We got to bed after 11:00. It was still light outside.