28th December 2025: Siddharth’s 2nd Birthday. We were keen to speak to him and wish him before we left the Estancia, however he was having his late morning sleep. Hence we drove to Gubernador Gregores (GG) to fill gasoline as after GG the next opportunity for refuelling was only at El Chalten.
He came online excitedly once we connected on WhatsApp, exclaiming Machi and Pacha, and wanting to show us his “Cameon” which he had got as a birthday present. We spent a few minutes wishing him a happy birthday, marvelling at the confident little person he had become. We continued our drive on to El Chalten.
The road again passed through the meseta, with it’s strong winds with the occasional estancias identified by clumps of trees surrounding buildings.
While appearing barren, there was an abundance of colour by the roadside from the different varieties plants and flowers.
Just before Lago Viedma, Ruta 41 takes off from Ruta 40 towards El Chalten at El Pez Metalico. This is a metallic sculpture of a fish along with a little Refugio for travellers, mainly for wind protection and also emergency Wifi. There was a lone cyclist in the Refugio, on her phone taking a break.
Driving towards El Chalten, Mount Fitzroy becomes more and more prominent. We kept stopping by the roadside to take pictures every few kilometres. During one of such stops, a familiar vehicle pulled up in front and stopped. The driver jumped out and came around and asked ” is everything OK: Do you need any help? It was Sven and Katya (Brinks-on-route.com) who we had met in Pumalin Park several days previously. We were pleasantly surprised to see them.
“I always make it a point to stop, when I see lone vehicles by the roadside, just to check if everything is OK, as we have over the years seen many who node help. We are also headed to Chalten and will be there a few days” he said, and headed off with a wave.
El Chalten is the trekking capital of Argentina and is the starting point for numerous hiking and trekking trails around the Cerro Torre and Mount Fitzroy regions.
We would have loved to spend a day hiking one of the easier trails, but as our schedule did not allow that, we were here just to see and get a feel of the place. We paid a visit to the Church, Capilla Neustra Señora de la Patagonia, which was open. It was a beautiful little chapel, against the backdrop of Fitzroy.
The best views of Fitzroy and El Chalten are at twilight and dawn, when the mountains and the area are suffused with colour. The evening was cloudy and there was not too much colour, except for some interesting cloud formations.
Sunrise pictures from the Mirador overlooking El Chalten (Below)
Sheila’s Take: The place we stayed at in El Chalten called Dos Les Tres on Avenue San Martin, was again like a service apartment with rooms and attached bathrooms. It was not manned at night with a reception desk. But in the day two youngsters in their early twenties were available for all our requirements including serving breakfast and manning the reception.
We struck up a conversation with one of them, Juan who was exceptionally nice. He was learning and keen to practice his English, writing down new words using them in sentences. His English was pretty good. He is from Buenos Aires. He like all other people both young and old come to El Chalten in summer from the North of Argentina. The economy in Northern Argentina is really suffering. Due to the tourism in El Chalten the salary is 3 to 4 times that in the north. The town is however open only from September to May after which it is snowbound and the whole town shuts down. So people like Juan have been coming and working for 6-8 months flat out (12 hr days) in El Chalten and similar places and when he goes back he rests for the other 4 months!
When we were leaving he gave us all the cake that was left over from the breakfast which he had baked himself along with coffee for our journey.
I hope and pray that one day he will be able to own his own hotel or service apartment as he does really care about people and what he is doing. We wish him well.
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