I know, I know. I practically just welcomed you to Peru, and now we’re in Patagonia? What is this? Confusing, that’s what. But here we are, and if you ever want to hear about Patagonia (trust me, you do), the time is now.
The trip kind of came out of nowhere. Mike (my brother) had a two-week vacation and no plans, and I had no job and also no plans. An ideal pairing! We had talked briefly a couple of months earlier about maybe travelling together, but then it wasn’t mentioned again. I assumed that meant it wasn’t happening. NOPE. About three weeks before the departure date, we decided to go to Patagonia, and I was assigned the task of planning the trip.
My biggest recommendation? Don’t start planning your trip 3 weeks before you go. My gosh. I nearly lost my mind in that first week because I knew that there were things that needed to be figured out ASAP… like an itinerary so that we could buy our plane tickets and book places to stay. You know, those semi-essential details. The short timeline definitely complicated the process, especially because the “busy season” is around December – March. With a little maneuvering, I managed to come up with a rough plan, talked to Mike, and started booking things like crazy.
Patagonia is the region that covers the southern tip of South America. It’s in two countries, Chile and Argentina, and borders three oceans, the Atlantic, the Pacific, and the Antarctic. It’s a weird place. In my pre-trip research, my general conclusion was that no rules of nature apply there. Everyone said to pack for all four seasons, even though we went in the summer, because you can feel like you’re experiencing all of them on the same day. People also couldn’t say enough about the strong winds, especially in the park we visited in Chile, Torres del Paine. So, we did our best to prepare for anything while also only packing in our backpacks. Simple. Mike had the bigger challenge because he insisted that he could take the whole tent in his bag… something I think he later regretted, but it was great for me!
I did my best not to look at pictures while I was making our plans because I didn’t want to have any expectations. I think I did a good job of that, but in hindsight, I also think that it wouldn’t have mattered what pictures I saw because they wouldn’t have looked real to me anyway. It’s like when you look at a picture of the Grand Canyon and think, “Yeah, that’s pretty. What’s the big deal?” versus when you’re there looking at it in person and your brain can’t begin to comprehend its size or the fact that what you’re seeing is real. That applies to anything magnificent, really. Pictures are great for giving you a taste, but you’ll always wonder if the water was really that blue, if it was really that impressive, if it was really that serene, etc.
Mike and I flew out of New York on a direct flight to Buenos Aires, Argentina (hooray for 11-hour flights!), arrived in the middle of the night, and had about a 6-hour layover that got delayed to more like 8 (no complaints from me because I spent most of it sleeping on the floor of the terminal). We got our first taste of summer at the airport as we walked between terminals. We were spared the sun since it was the middle of the night, but even 15 minutes outside was MORE than enough, between the humidity and the fact that we were still mostly dressed for New York winter. My gosh.
From Buenos Aires, we flew to El Calafate, a town in Argentinian Patagonia and our main hub for the trip. Here’s the 5-second summary of my travel planning approach: I made a map of all the places people recommended going, scrapped the outliers, picked the ones that seemed to be at a reasonable distance from one another, and looked for the cheapest plane tickets (that still weren’t very cheap) to get us there. So, at the end of all that, we found ourselves in El Calafate.
Our first day was fairly relaxed… and it was the last relaxed day of the whole trip (Mike’s approach to vacations is, “Let’s do everything. We can rest when it’s over.” My approach is, “Let’s do a lot and also not die from exhaustion.” Even though I planned it, this trip was more of the former than the latter). We got into town around 3 and spent the afternoon getting ourselves organized in preparation for the days to come and warming up our rusty Spanish. We had an early start the next day and planned to go to bed early so we didn’t hate ourselves in the morning… but, surprise! It didn’t get dark until around 10PM which made us completely lose track of time. Whoops. Off to a great start!
