Yesterday was Christmas.
I have been road tripping, camping, and hiking the length of Chilean Patagonia for the past several weeks, but not today.
Today, finally, I relax. It’s funny how travelers need vacations from traveling.
The entire house is shaking with the violent gusts of wind as I sip my full cup of thick, homemade hot chocolate, trying not to spill. I’m in El Chaltén, Argentina, and I have a view of Fitz Roy to my right out the floor to ceiling windows of La Chocolatería.
El Chaltén is a tiny town, tucked into a corner of Argentinian Patagonia that is famous for its world class mountaineering. I have been here twice before, both times just last year, so I don’t feel the plaguing pressure of hitting the trails during the best weather window.
Instead, I let my three travel buddies pack up and head out on an overnight hike while I blissfully reserved another two nights at the Fitz Roy Inn. Merry Christmas to me.
Cell service is non-existent in most parts of Patagonia, especially everywhere I seem to have been recently, including this town. WiFi, when it isn’t down because of the wind (which is an everyday occurrence), is a luxury that many tiny towns don’t even have.
It was all I could do just to try to keep up with important work emails over the past few weeks, let alone actually communicate with my friends and family. I’ve nearly completely lost touch with the outside world down here, so for me, it’s time to reconnect, and it feels nourishing.
We need community, I need my people and I miss them, especially at Christmas.
As I think back about everything I have seen and done in the last few weeks, and what I know I’m surrounded with now (Fitz Roy and Torres del Paine just across the border), I wonder what I even do next.
How Can It Get Better Than Patagonia?
Where do I go where I can see something more beautiful than Patagonia? Iceland? Norway? Maybe New Zealand? I learned last week that the area I just traveled through in Chile was the second place contender to becoming Middle Earth. In other words, the filming location of Lord of the Rings, which we all know was set in New Zealand.
This hardly surprises me. On my first trip to Patagonia two years ago, I captioned a photo, “Kayaking in Middle Earth,” and occasionally I look up at mountains towering over us and think “Isengard!” #nerdalert
Maybe it’s best that Chile wasn’t chosen, because perhaps these pristine areas would be overrun with Lord of the Rings tourists (I would surely be one of them, although I still haven’t been to New Zealand).
But seriously, my eyes have seen such beauty, I am becoming even more of a mountain snob after this trip. Kinda like I did with Italian food after living in Italy. #ruinedforlife
What gets better than this? Nothing.
So Iceland, Norway, New Zealand… try me. 😉
Across from me, sipping on their own hot chocolates, is a Greek man and a German woman whom I offer to help with details of their upcoming hikes and travel plans, since it turns out they are heading for the exact area where I just came from.
I take a look at their plan and realize just how much more I have learned about Patagonia on this trip. I was already in love with Patagonia, but I just filled in a huge gap in the map by exploring the region in between the north and south, the parts I already knew.
Advice pours out of my mouth as I light up with “must-do” hikes and campsites along their planned route. They have fewer days than we did, but as they started with the “O” Circuit in Torres del Paine, then Perito Moreno, then Fitz Roy, and now the Carretera Austral, I cannot think of a better itinerary to pack into three weeks.
They are doing it right. They will be mountain snobs now, too.
Two hours pass as the three of us chat about Patagonia, sailing, Germany, life… and now the chocolate shop is closing. Time to say “see you in Germany” to my new friends (and I have, several times), visit the only ATM in town, hope that it has money, and go pick up the laundry I dropped off earlier.
While on one hand I am anxious to start writing about my experiences and creating a master guide to the Carretera Austral, I am enjoying simply being in El Chaltén, one of the coolest towns I know.
I think I’ll come back to this spot at the floor to ceiling windows tomorrow, because cozy, because Fitz Roy, because chocolate… and who are we kidding, because the empanada shop is on the way here…
