Our bus arrived to El Calafate around lunch time. Our first stop was the visitor center where we told about the park rules and given a map of the area and surrounding trails.
The trails for Los Glaciares National Park start in the town of El Calafate which makes it super easy! I didn’t have much of a plan since reservations are not required for the park. I figured I would see how the weather looked and then decide my route based off that.
Since it was nice and sunny, I decided I would head to Laguna Torre, have lunch, and then cut over to Camp Poincenot.
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The hike to Laguna Torre wasn’t too bad from a difficulty standpoint, but there were a lot of people on the trail which got annoying after awhile. I made it up the lake where I had lunch. I didn’t stick around too long as the wind made it quite chilly, and I knew I still had a couple hours of hiking ahead of me if I wanted to make it to Camp Poincenot.
The hike to Camp Poincenot seemed like it went on forever, but that was mostly because I was tired from numerous days of hiking. I was glad to finally make it to camp and setup my tent. When unpacking my bag I also realized I had never thrown out my water bottle which had a cup of wine in it – score! That made dinner much better 🙂
I went to bed fairly early, but did set an alarm. I wanted to get up early hike to Laguna de los Tres for the sunrise, but when I awoke, the wind was blowing quite hard and it was drizzling. I decided to go back to sleep and would re-evaluate in a couple of hours. The rain did eventually stop, but it was cold and there were still clouds covering the mountains. I was exhausted and decided I would rather hike back to town and try to catch an earlier bus back to El Chalten.
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The cloud eventually did start to clear up on my hike out, and I caught glimpses of the mountains.
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At some point on the trail, it started to lightly snow.
The snow didn’t last long, and with the sun out, it started to warm up.
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Most of the trail back to town was downhill so I made pretty good time. I went to the bus station and found out about bus departures. I was able to switch my ticket to the 1 pm bus (I was previously scheduled for 6 pm). I had two hours to spare so I found a cafe with wifi, and grabbed some food. Yummm… carbs…
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I got back to El Calafate around 5 pm. I grabbed my bags and walked to my hotel where I took a much needed shower. I then ventured into town. I walked around a little, but my feet were so tired! I found a nice rooftop restaurant and enjoyed some empanadas and wine.
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The next morning consisted of breakfast, and then it was off to the airport where I began my long journey home.