On the Road is a weekday feature spotlighting reader photo submissions.
From the exotic to the familiar, whether you’re traveling or in your own backyard, we would love to see the world through your eyes.
lashonharangue in Chile
This series is called the Southern Chile Road Trip. However, the next leg of the trip took us into Argentina. We had booked passage on a ferry from Puerto Natales to carry us and the rental car back to Puerto Montt, thus avoiding driving all the way back. The Carretera Austral ends in Villa O’Higgins where it runs into a large ice field. Puerto Natales is south of the ice field. So after seeing Puerto Tortel we drove east along Lago General Carrera to a border crossing into Argentina and then headed south.
The lake extends into Argentina where it is called Lago Buenos Aires.
We drove through a desolate landscape and saw few vehicles. It made me long for driving across Nevada. We stopped overnight at an old small hotel on the way to El Chalten. This is the view from the hotel. The wind was blowing so hard I had trouble opening the car door.
We drove for hours and didn’t pass another gas station (or much of anything else) before I had to use our reserve can of gasoline. We examined our location on the GPS and how far it was to El Chalten. It looked like we would run out of fuel about 90 km short of El Chalten. We had visions of being stuck by the side of the road on Christmas, hoping our tent wouldn’t blow away. Fortunately, with the gauge moving close to E, there was a gas station where we filled up and made it to El Chalten. That’s why there is a picture of the pump.
You could easily drive to various trailheads from our hotel room in El Chalten.
Impressive.
It was definitely worth the stress to get there. But I think most of the other tourists there took a more direct route.
We drove 37 km north of El Chalten on a road that ends here. There is a low dam that makes the river wider here (aka Lago del Desierto) but below the dam it is narrow and has good fly fishing. If you keep heading north, past the source of this river, you reach the Argentina/Chile border. There is a lake past the border, and at the other end of that lake is Villa O’Higgins. Some adventurous backpackers get a ferry ride to cross it, and then hike the rest of the way here (34 km or 22km if you catch the shuttle boat that is based here).
The town is a mecca for nature tourists. There seemed to be a lot of new construction to handle the influx. Food and lodging were a bit pricey. It is probably due to the high demand and the difficulty of supplying a town so far from the rest of Argentina (Buenos Aires is about 2700 km away).
Lapassionara
What a saga! I am so glad to have seen these. I have actually in my lifetime driven across parts of Nevada where there were no gas stations for miles, so I don’t know how I would have managed this trek. Nice of you to do it so I can just see the photos.
Grover’s Bathtub
Gorgeous shots of Cerro Fitzroy/El Chalten. I was there in 2000, and I felt lucky to get a brief glimpse of Fitzroy through the clouds. I met a climber who was attempting to scale the peak, and I later found out that he made it to the top, but not before seeing a frozen climber who wasn’t so lucky.
Mike in Oly
Those peaks are amazing!!
WaterGirl
That blue water is amazing.
Benw
Just astonishing.
What a gift we can see these lands through your eyes!
BigJimSlade
Ooh, picture #5 – “Impressive” indeed!
Has anyone read “The Tower: A Chronicle of Climbing and Controversy on Cerro Torre”
It’s a pretty strong read on climbing down there, though all about a different peak, Cerro Torre.
randy khan
I’d have taken a photo of the gas pump, too.
RinaX
Nm
Wag
Trump has COVID.
Wag
And excellent photos, too!
Albatrossity
Wow. Parque Nacional Los Glaciares has been on my bucket list for years. Thanks for sharing these images!
Betty
What a beautiful and amazing adventure.