My employer, Epic, has a sabbatical program. Once you’ve worked at Epic for 5 years, you get 4 weeks of paid leave. If you take that paid leave in a country where you’ve never been, Epic will pay for round-trip flights for you and a companion and provide a per diem to help with the costs of the trip. As you can imagine, you don’t have to work at Epic for long to begin daydreaming about your sabbatical. In fact, you might be doing that right now. Join the club - daydreaming about a sabbatical is part of the fun of getting to take one. After considering many destinations, I decided to build my sabbatical around hiking in Patagonia, meaning that Linnea and I spent 2+ weeks (you can take 2 two week sabbaticals instead of a full one) in Buenos Aires and Patagonia.
Chorizo + crusty bread = choripan.
After a 2 hour bus ride to Heathrow airport and a 13 hour British Airways flight, we arrived in South America. We checked into our Airbnb in Palermo, a trendy neighborhood full of cafes, restaurants, and tourists, which served as our home base for the first 4 nights of the trip. We spent this part of the trip getting to know Buenos Aires by learning how to tango, attending a soccer match (surrounded by fans who chanted for all 90 minutes of playing time), and by eating and drinking. A culinary highlight was the delightfully simple choripan, a chorizo sandwich on crusty bread. The choripan that I had at Nuestra Parilla in San Telmo is maybe the tastiest street food I’ve ever had.
On our final day before flying to Patagonia, we took a day trip on the ferry to Colonia del Sacramento in Uruguay. In the cab on the way to the ferry terminal, Linnea remarked “I can’t believe there aren’t more car accidents,” as our cab driver weaved in and out of traffic. I nodded my head in agreement. It wasn’t that our driver was driving dangerously; it was that drivers in Buenos Aires seem to follow a completely different set of rules than we’re used to. Buenos Aires isn’t alone in this as I felt the same way in Thailand. Anyway, Linnea’s statement proved prophetic. 10 minutes later, our cab got in a minor car accident by rear-ending a car and hitting a bus on our right side. Nobody was hurt, but the car wouldn’t move. Shaken, we exited the car, dropped 200 pesos (about 5 dollars) to cover our cab fare on the driver’s seat, and left the scene. We walked off the adrenaline, caught another cab, and made our ferry to Uruguay.
A guanaco surveys the land.
After the cab incident, we were ready to get out of the city and go to Patagonia. If you’re wondering, Patagonia is a large region in Chile and Argentina in the southernmost part of South America. We landed in Patagonia’s main airport in El Calafate and rented a car to drive to El Chaltén. As anticipated, the drive was beautiful, and to our delight, we saw many guanacos along the way. Upon arrival in El Chaltén, we checked into our B&B and made dinner plans with a couple who we met during our aforementioned tango lessons. During said tango lessons, we realized that our plans for the following week were nearly identical. We hiked with them the next day and ended up crossing paths with them later in the trip during our backpacking trek, at which point they felt like old friends. But I’m getting ahead of myself - back to El Chaltén, a town in Argentina near the Chilean border where you can begin a day hike from your hotel. The day hike that we did was to Laguna de Los Tres, whose summit is the inspiration for the outdoor clothing company Patagonia’s logo. Scroll to the top of this blog post for a photo - it was probably the most spectacular view that we saw in Patagonia.
Our legs aching from that grueling day hike, we were glad to have a couple of easy days. The next day we drove back through El Calafate to the massive Perito Moreno Glacier, one of the few glaciers in the world that is not retreating. Measuring nearly 100 square miles, the scale of the glacier was difficult to comprehend, even while looking at it. Every 20 minutes or so, a sound like thunder would explode from the glacier, indicating that a piece of ice had fractured. We were lucky a couple of times and managed to see the ice before it splashed dramatically in the lake. The following day was spent taking the bus to Puerto Natales, Chile, the city closest to Torres del Paine National Park. This national park is the main reason we went to Patagonia and where we spent our next 5 days.
The granite towers that Torres del Paine National Park is named for.
The W Trek, named after the ‘W’ shape the route makes on a map, is one of the most famous backpacking treks in Patagonia. We spent 5 days and 4 nights completing the trek. While roughing it and carrying your tent and food is an option, we elected for the simpler and more comfortable method of staying in huts along the way. Sleeping arrangements were hostel-esque and the huts were nothing fancy, but they impressed me with their amenities considering how remote they are. Not only were we fed 3 square meals a day (full-service breakfast and dinner and a bag lunch to eat on the trail), but there was running water, hot showers, and wine, beer, and wi-fi were all available for purchase. After spending a night at the first hut our first hike was to the granite towers that gives Torres del Paine National Park its name. We got an early start to avoid the crowds and spent the next 8 or so hours hiking 15 miles to the tower viewpoint and back. While the view at the top was beautiful, there wasn’t much to see along the way. Even though this hike contained the most famous sight in the park, it would end up being the least interesting day of hiking. That night after arriving back at the hut, we struck up friendships with Davy and Rosie, a couple about our age from the UK, and Diane and Maura, middle-aged friends from Canada. We ended up spending a lot of time with these folks throughout the trek. We only occasionally hiked with them, but spent a lot of time getting to know each other and discussing the day’s hike and tomorrow’s plans over a glass of wine or dinner at the huts. By the end of the trek, we felt like old friends. It wasn’t the last time we saw Diane and Maura- we had dinner with them in El Calafate and took the same flight back to Buenos Aires. The way that the huts facilitated meeting fellow travellers was an unexpected and wonderful benefit.
Linnea on her way to a glacier-capped mountain.
The weather throughout the W Trek is unpredictable and can be unforgiving. Gale-force winds, torrential downpours, and snow aren’t unheard of in March. We were extremely lucky to have experienced none of those things. Other than a minor drizzle on the last day, we were treated to dry, calm, and relatively warm weather for the entire trip. We began each day around sunrise, bundled up and wearing pants and long sleeves. As the day wore on and warmed up, we finished in shorts. Day 2, the shortest day of hiking, took us along a lake and ended with a glimpse of a glacier-capped mountain. Day 3 brought us right next to that glacier-capped mountain as we hiked through a valley that forms the middle point of the W. Thanks to an early start, we had the valley and the views to ourselves for a magical couple of hours. On our way back down the valley, we had lunch at a spot where we could again listen for ice fracturing. The most exciting fractures resulted in mini avalanches, which caused every hiker on the trail to stop to admire the power of nature (from a safe distance of course). Day 4 took us to Glacier Grey, another massive and stunning glacier, by way of several picturesque lakes. After that out-and-back day hike, we had covered about 60 miles in 4 days. We really enjoyed the trek, but were ready to give our bodies a break.
We spent the next couple of days getting back to Buenos Aires, where we had 2 more nights before flying to London. We stayed in a different neighborhood (San Telmo) this time, and took it pretty easy, not feeling like we needed to push ourselves to do many more tourist activities. We treated ourselves to a fancy 10 course tasting menu with wine pairings at El Baqueano, which was a lovely and delicious experience at a massive discount compared to what something similar would cost in the UK. This dinner was a great way to finish off a wonderful first trip to South America. I certainly hope it isn’t the last - it’ll certainly be in the running when I begin considering destinations for the second half of my sabbatical.