Our primary destination in Patagonia was actually El Chalten, a tiny town about 2 hours north of El Calafate. The town was only established in the mid ’80s and has a real wild-west feel to it. With only 500 or so residents, it pretty much exists to cater to visitors to the national park and closes down in the winter when tourism dries up. The town itself is ideally located in a valley that sits right inside the border of the national park, so all you have to do is walk out the door of your hotel to go trekking. Which is what we did. It was perfect for us because we didn’t have to rent cars, take buses, buy camping gear etc. El Chalten is perfectly set up as a day-hikers dreamland.
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Elyse and I flew to El Calafate, the largest town in the southern part of Patagonia to start our travels after a month and a half in Buenos Aires. El Calafate is a town of around 8000 in the middle of nowhere. This part of Patagonia is pretty barren, with mostly scrub lands and rolling hills at the foot of the Andes. It was a dusty town without much in the way of attractions or entertainment save for some decent restaurants and of course, the spectacular Perito Moreno glacier, around 80k west of town.
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The icing on the cake – our last night in Buenos Aires we splurged on what is boasted as the Best Tango Show in Town. The name of the place is El Querandi, it was built in 1920 – although I don’t think it has been a tango club the whole time. The architecture was beautiful, lots of wood trim with details in the Art Deco style (my favorite). The show itself was fabulous. We were transported through time – from the early days of tango to modernism. It was fascinating to see the progression from late 1800′s early 1900′s to the present – changes in dress, dance style and music. Surprisingly the early days of Tango appeared to be less structured and stylized, more playful. The dancers were amazing, the singers talented and dramatic. Although this is the only official Tango Show I saw, I see why they call it the best.
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It’s been more than a month and our divey little departamento in San Telmo has become home to us. I’ve become accustomed to our daily routine. We do our homework at the kitchen table in the morning before class, shop at the crappy Chinese grocery a block over, and sit on the balcony in the evening as the chaos in the street below winds down. The old lady next door says buenos dias to me in the elevator and the guy in the shop downstairs knows thats it’s best if he talks slowly and avoids adjectives. Overall this city has grown on me and I’ll be sad to leave. But leaving is exactly what we’re doing, bright and early tomorrow morning we board our flight to El Calafate in Patagonia, thus beginning our travels and marking the end of our sedentary life.
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We took a week off classes to better digest everything we’ve learned and to make a little excursion to Colonia de Sacramento, a small town in Uruguay that is about 4 hours from BA by ferry.
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