An early start for a long day on the bus, we departed at 7:15. We drove for a while, then as the sun began to rise we also began rising out of the big valley containing Lake Argentino and El Calafate. Even a few hundred feet higher got us into frost and then light snow on the ground.
The first group of guanacos spotted from the bus had our tour members excited, but after half an hour or so we realized they are all over certain parts of the landscape. This large province has about thirty thousand people and three million guanacos.
The Patagonian Steppe goes on and on, gently rising and falling in the rain shadow of the Andes. Our local guide, Gorry, talked for quite a while about the history, politics, and economy of Argentina. I’d read some of this before coming on the tour, but he had interesting perspectives and opinions. Argentina’s new president, Javier Milei, is strongly disliked by the tour guides, but the “more of the same” candidates offered by the main political parties were not what most people wanted. It will be interesting to see if Milei can actually get rid of some of the corruption and stasis before running the country into the ground and/or collapsing the economy entirely by extracting all the wealth for the rich.
We also got a lesson about mate (“mah-tay”) and Yerba mate. Drinking mate is an important tradition and cultural identity practice in much of Argentina. We saw a number of people with their mate cups and a thermos of hot water in various places on our tour, and later we would visit the Guaraní people who first began making tea with this plant.
We eventually found a mate (the gourd used as a mug) and a filter-tipped straw that we liked to bring home along with some Yerba Mate.
After driving for a couple hours south from El Calafate we left the paved highway of Ruta 40 to get to Chile a shorter way. We drove eight or so miles on a gravel road in poor condition to the Argentina border station where we checked out.
Then we drove about six more miles of gravel to the Chile border station. Here our passports were stamped and our carry-on luggage was scanned for forbidden fruits, vegetables, or plants. The bus that would take us around Chile was just beyond the gate, but we couldn’t walk to it - we had to get back in our Argentina bus, drive a hundred feet, then switch to the other bus. The pleasant news was that the road in Chile was paved. We also bid farewell to Gorry and met our new local guide, Kris.
There is a souvenir store nearby that we stopped in, which also provided a bathroom break. Then we took our new bus a short distance to the tiny town of Cerro Castillo and the Hotel Estancia El Ovejero Patagónico restaurant where we had lunch.
We drove a ways on the highway and stopped several times. Once for a group of condors that were circling and feeding on something we couldn’t quite see, then for guanacos including a really big group that was on the move, then for views of the mountains and lakes.
We entered the Torres del Paine National Park. Clouds were clinging to the mountains but we could still see most of the namesake towers. We stopped at a few places in the park to take photos.
I was a little surprised that the only roads through this famous National Park are narrow gravel roads, with washboard in a lot of places.
We met another bus while traversing a fairly steep hillside. Javier, our bus driver, really got to practice his close-quarters maneuvering to get by without letting us slip over the edge.
More photo stops.
Eventually we arrived at Hotel Lago Grey, our home for two nights, around six thirty – eleven hours after we started. It was a long day on the bus, but we made a lot of interesting stops and we learned a lot from our local guides.
The hotel is made up of several buildings with eight to ten rooms each.
I had been having a funny feeling in my throat for a couple days but that evening I really started feeling sick, with something happening in my sinuses. I made it through dinner and then went to bed.