Patagoin' into 2024 like...

Now, with honesty and transparency, it would feel wrong not to share the good and the bad days that we (I) have while traveling. Patagonia was filled with high highs and low lows. I think being away from family and friends during the holiday season was subconsciously getting to me. The transition from Asia to South America has also been a bigger transition than we anticipated. 

After Antarctica, I felt a little down and blue. It was just such a high, and we had such an amazing experience. I became overwhelmed with the idea of tackling another continent with little planning (which I realize sounds bratty and ridiculous!). We’ve had a few moments of travel fatigue throughout the past 6 months, but this time, it just hit me a bit harder. 

Before we went to Antarctica, we had booked the famous 4-day W trek at Torres Del Paine National Park in Chilean Patagonia. It was NOT cheap, and after a 12-hour bus from Ushuaia the day before we were starting, you could safely say we were horrendously underprepared. After getting all our gear and food, we spent the evening doing our budget (we hadn't looked in a while...whoops) while also planning our route through Patagonia after the W. After already being overwhelmed with the budget review, we started to see the prices for accommodation and travel in Patagonia were crazy high. One of the most frustrating things we've experienced while traveling is feeling 'stuck', i.e. you have to pay for a really expensive bus/train or plane to get 'out'. In Patagonia, we've been feeling that in every direction. Anyway, we (mainly me 😅 ) were BAD vibes heading into the hike.

Obviously, we were overreacting, but in general, we made some mistakes during our time here: 

1. Traveling Patagonia during PEAK high season- Arriving during the week between Xmas and New Years may be the busiest time during the high season in Patagonia. The “summer” season has a short window (Nov-March), so most people will travel during the Christmas break, hoping to get some sunshine and decent weather. This made accommodation, both in the town and the campgrounds, stupendously expensive (we're talking $220/night for a TENT some nights in the park!!). I think the sticker shock coming from Asia is still hitting me, and after calculating the remainder of our budget the night before we left for the trek, it put a really sour taste in my mouth. 

2. Making travel decisions while emotional- Because we were so frustrated with the pricing, we irrationally booked the cheapest option to leave Patagonia after Torres Del Paine. This meant skipping out on El Chalten (Argentinian Patagonia), which many people told us was unmissable. When we were on the trek (and had calmed down), we chatted with other travelers who suggested different routes and camping options to make it more affordable. We ended up buying Wifi on the trek to adjust our flights and re-prioritize El Chalten (costing us a few missed flights and $$$). 

3. We packed WAY too much food and clothes- Everyone had warned us that the weather is unpredictable in Torres Del Paine and we needed to pack lots of rain gear + layers (it’s normal to see rain, snow, heavy winds, and sunshine all in one day!). We rented large hiking backpacks and gear from a hostel in town. They were HEAVY. Sam also insisted we buy 2 Kg of PEANUTS and 5 packs of American cheese because in his words: “I need to eat”. We became the laughing joke at camp each night when we handed out peanuts and free food to people to take the weight off of us. We had to trek with our bags most of the days so this was a BIG mistake. 

4. Lack of research- This is a big change from Asia, where the hostels and other travelers are VERY forthcoming with information and you can decide to do and book anything and everything you want on the spot (like literally tell the hostel host you want to do a tour to a waterfall and leave in a tuk-tuk 2 minutes later). We assumed we would figure out all the backpacker hacks for doing things cheaply through word-of-mouth for busses, routes, etc but we haven’t run into many “backpackers” during our time in Patagonia. I’m not sure if it's because most backpackers know not to come during high season/ that it's filled mostly with vacationers right now, but we felt kinda lost in terms of optimizing our route, etc. 

5. Not renting a car- In reality, we should have looked into car rentals since we were retracing our steps back to Puerto Natales or figured out a way to drop it off in Mendoza to have more flexibility. We read online it was notoriously expensive, but later found out from friends it was affordable. For anyone planning a trip in the future, ditch the buses and rent a car!!!

Now, enough of the negatives! Although this was a tough 2 weeks, we did have some amazing experiences and met some hilarious people. Mistakes aside, the hikes were LOVELY.

Torres Del Paine, Chile- The W Trek 🥾 ⛺️ 🏔️ 

 This is a popular 4-5 day trek where you hike ~20 km a day where the route makes a “W” when completed (the more advanced trek is the 9-day “O” trek). We hiked the W trek from East to West, which meant we started with the hardest (and most famous!) hike in Torres del Paine.

The first day was TOUGH- mostly because we were out of shape from sitting on a boat for 2 weeks, but we made it in good time. It took us 8 hours from start to finish but managed to score blue skies and nice weather the whole day. The hike was steep and rocky. Thankfully we tried using hiking poles for the first time which were a lifesaver!

Each evening, you stop at a new refugio (campground), that hardly resembles a campground. Yes, you can do it on the cheap, like us, by cooking your food and bringing sleeping bags, etc. But some people opted for a boujier experience where they were served 3-course dinners, welcome cocktails, and slept in warm dorm rooms. We managed to score a free dinner on our first night because a family had accidentally ordered too many (BOOYA!!!) and to be fair, it was delicious after our mediocre pot of white rice (another verrry heavy food choice...) !! 

We lucked out with the best weather in Torres Del Paine and even got a tan (sunburn for Sam) on some days. Day 2 was spent hiking with Carly and Dan, a couple we met from DC. This was my favorite day, both for the scenery (+ a huge glacier lake we took a dip in!) and also for the company. They were a great time and the 14-mile hiking day rolled right into NYE at the 2nd refugio. 

This refugio had just built a brand new bar and this was opening night! It was amazing celebrating with so many people from different cultures and we met some absolute gems. Blanca and Stephanie (living in Mallorca and Barcelona!) were 2 Spanish women in their 50s who were HILARIOUS. They could out-drink us any day. They even traveled with bottles of Cava and 12 grapes each to consume at midnight on NYE (a Spanish tradition). We also met Simeon, an INCREDIBLY positive and optimistic British guy in his late 30's (he even outdoes Sam somehow). He ran a football coaching business where he travels the world hosting workshops and camps in deprived countries so you can imagine him and Sam chatting each other's ears off. But truly he was that dose of optimism we needed and even convinced us to go to El Chalten! The beers, wine, and pisco sours were flowing right through midnight...

By day 3/4, we were naturally a tad hungover (Blanca and Stephanie were worse!) but we had got into the swing of waking up early to start our hikes. Day 3 was the longest hike we had to complete (25km) and Sam’s favorite day. The lucky part about some of the hikes is that you can store your bag at the bottom of a mountain and retrieve it after completing a section of the hike. We did this at a refugio called Italiano, which was the crossroads of a lot of different hiking routes. After scaling Mirador Britannica, we chilled at Italiano which was the crossroads of a lot of different hiking routes. Sam input: It was one of the most incredible times I've had so far traveling. Sat in this wide open field, mountains all around, in absolute blissful silence except for the quiet murmurs of happy hikers passing by each other and birds chirping. I sat there for an hour and it honestly didn't feel like real life. Magical stuff. BACK TO LAURA: We made it through a grueling last few hours (I was not a happy hiker), but we celebrated the end of the day with friends we had made the night before, Felipe and Margarita from Chile.

Day 4 was a bit anticlimactic. We had originally booked a campsite after a 9km stint but reached the location before lunch. There wasn’t too much activity to it, and we had managed to score a bit of wifi to change our flights to travel to Argentinian Patagonia by Bus (El Chalten) the next day. We decided to hike back to complete our W trek a day early (speed demons!).

El Calafate, Argentina 🧊 

We booked a morning bus the next day and traveled 6 hours across the border to Argentina. We chilled in El Calafate for 2 days enjoying warm showers, researching on our laptops, and visiting the famous Perito Moreno ice glacier. We ran into two Czech friends from Antarctica in El Calafate who drove us to the glacier. It was such a nice treat to see them (as well as score a free ride!). The Glacier is HUGE and is always growing. We observed it for ~2 hours when it constantly had chunks of ice break off into the water, which made the loudest crashing noise. 2 hours was moreee than enough for us though.. lol 

El Chalten  🗻 🌲 🥾 

From El Calafate, we traveled another 3 hours to El Chalten, the most famous peaks in Argentinan Patagonia. The mountain ranges make up the Patagonia clothing brand’s logo! The cool part about El Chalten is that the majority of hikes start directly from the town center and are mostly day hikes, which allowed us to have daily happy hour beers after a long day haha. On the first full day in El Chalten (and Sam’s bday!) we met up with friends from the W trek, Laticia and Esteban (German-Argentinans), where we hiked to a lagoon and glacier. They had to leave later that night, so Sam and I went to ~the best restaurant in town~ (there are like 10 places to eat at lol) and indulged in handmade pasta and tiramisu! (p.s. Sam says whoever forgot his bday now has to come and meet us in the next 6 months! lol)

Since it was so busy in El Chalten, we constantly had to change our accommodation and bounce from different hostels every night. We hoped to camp for 2 nights to cut down on costs but didn’t plan our route properly and were left exhausted and at the brink of a rainstorm where we decided to change plans and book ourselves into a hotel instead (the weather was shit and so was my attitude! Another mistake again…). On our last day, we saved the famous hike, Laguna de las Tres, because the weather had been unpredictable the days prior. It ended up being super chilly and managed to snow at the top! We zoomed up and down the mountain in record time (I guess we're in good hiking shape now!) and were glad to end our time in El Chalten on a high. 

Getting out of Patagonia (..finally!!)

Now remember how we said it was hard to get around Patagonia? Unfortunately, Argentina flights and buses are stupidly expensive and the only way to get to northern Argentina is to retrace our steps through El Calafate and Torres Del Paine, Chile, to catch a cheap flight through Santiago to only fly BACK to Argentina (ridiculous, we know!). One silver lining of this longgg travel stint was that we coincidentally ran into our friend, Matt (from Antarctica), and his parents in El Calafate. We had the best dinner and it was SUCH A SURPRISE!!!

All in all, Patagonia is such a unique and beautiful part of the world. It is SO VAST. We've been in a visual whirlwind over the past month where we've seen some of the most stunning nature in the world; from mountains to glaciers to lagoons and deserts, it's been beautiful. We've had to catch ourselves "getting used to" the stunning vastness Patagonia has to offer. Hiking culture also left the park in it’s natural beauty- there wasn’t one piece of trash along any trail and people respectfully carried all trash and wrappers back with them.

I am SO ready for our hiking and cold weather stint to be over and cannot wait to bask in the sun with Malbec in hand while exploring Mendoza and Buenos Aires. More on that later!