Patagonia and Altiplano Expedition | #26 – El Calafate

Our next planned destination was El Calafate. Since there is no direct connection from Ushuaia to El Calafate within Argentina we had to use a Chilean ferry again, either from Porvenir or from Bahía Azul. This means two more time-consuming and sometimes stressful border crossings were unavoidable.

(Editor’s note: we have currently a delay of about 12 weeks between real life and our blog posts. We were in El Calafate in January).

This time, we decided to use the short ferry from Bahía Azul. This ferry can’t be reserved in advance and we were warned by other overlanders that waiting time can sometimes be quite long. We had to wait for about 1.5 hours in line before we were able to enter the ferry. Far better than the 5 hours of SiJu_Campervan a few days earlier (due to bad weather).

In addition, a curious fox made sure that the waiting time passed relatively quickly (all fox images shot by Linnéa).

On the way to El Calafate, we stopped in Punta Arenas and Puerto Natales to get fresh sourdough bread and some other things that are far easier to get in Chile than in Argentina (like good coffee).

Near Puerto Natales, we saw an American rhea next to the road.

Two days and two border crossings later we reached El Calafate, where we had rented a nice modern cabin for about 50€ per day on booking.com.

From the cabin, we had a lovely view of the huge Lago Argentino.

Glaciar Perito Moreno

The main reason to visit El Calafate is of course the spectacular Perito Moreno glacier. It’s a 75 km drive from El Calafate to the glacier and since it’s located in a national park we had to pay an entrance fee of about 15€ per person.

For a few days, Lucas, a friend from Germany was visiting us. Of course, he joined us on the trip to the glacier.

The Perito Moreno glacier is one of the largest in the world and is absolutely stunning.

The countless shades of blue were just mesmerizing.

We stayed there until they closed the national park and thoroughly enjoyed this fascinating place. The only downside was that there were far too many tourists, hundreds if not thousands each day. If you want to avoid them your only chance is to come early or late. During the last hour before closure, we were pretty much alone there.

When we returned to our cabin we were welcomed by a spectacular sunset.

In the evening we went together with Lucas to a nice restaurant and had some cordero patagonico, lamb grilled on an open wood fire, the local specialty.

El Calafate

A few days later Lucas had to get back to Germany. But we weren’t alone for long. Just after Lucas had left Naomi, a very good friend of Linnéa, arrived in El Calafate to accompany us for a few weeks.

Together with her, we explored the city of El Calafate.

At the Intendencia Parque Nacional Los Glaciares in the city center, you can find a small park and an interesting exhibition about some of the historic explorers like Charles Darwin.

El Calafate is far more attractive than I had expected with many nice restaurants, cafés, and interesting shops.

Reserva Laguna Nimez

Another attraction near El Calafate is the bird sanctuary Reserva Laguna Nimez. The entrance fee of 8€ is a bit steep for this small area but the birdlife is abundant there.

Just outside of the sanctuary, we found a beautiful owl (some of the following images were shot by Linnéa).

The eyes of an owl have an interesting feature, which looks a bit spooky.

Contrary to humans they have a third eyelid, a nictitating membrane.

Luckily, we also were able to get some birds-in-flight images of the owl.

Mirador Julio Heredia

About 60 km east of El Calafate you can find the spectacular Mirador Julio Heredia. Especially at sunset, it’s definitely worth a visit.

We spent a couple of hours shooting some timelapse sequences at this place (all videos will be processed after our trip when we are back in Europe).