Argentina, Uruguay & Chile - From city life to the great outdoors

The initial struggles and doubts ceased after some 3 days into the trip, by then I was able to wrap my head around things to start exploring and really dive into the adventures at hand.

We discovered some of the neighborhoods of Buenos Aires, which gave us quite some

European vibes in a lot of places, based out of our AirBnB in the hipster area of Palermo. Distances can be long in this metropol of approx. 15 million people, walking only gets you this far and we figured out the public transportation being a convenient and affordable way to get around, of course Uber does the trick, too. Old city parts of San Telmo, the famous area of Boca including the legendary Boca stadium, a tango show and of course red wine and meat of all sorts (as a vegetarian Diana was struggling with options, sandwiches, pasta and papas fritas being the common go-to-meals). Also, Argentineans don‘t really seem to care for the quality of coffee - going for a coffee is more of an excuse to meet and chat, not necessarily enjoy the hot beverage. Of course, mate is a completely different matter.

Crossing the Rio Plata got us to Uruguay, the old colonial town Colonia del Sacramento is just a quick 1 hour ferry ride away. We were shocked by prices being quite Western European city levels, a first indicator of this country being quite different and unique. As a tourist paying by credit card at least you save the 20% taxes. With a population of just 3.5 million but 13 million cows, you can imagine that the meat/beef culture here is similarly strong as in Argentina. Our tour guide in Montevideo even claimed that Uruguay has the better steaks, red wine and mate ;) at least mate is treated very serious here and there are certain rules to adhere to (never move the straw, under no circumstances are you allowed to add sugar, etc) and half the people never leave the house without their thermos and mate cup.

As a result of being located between Brazil and Argentina, Uruguay has undergone a lot of pressure from both Portuguese and Spanish in the colonial days. They’ve found their way out of it and evolved to a very modern, progressive and secular country; they say that Uruguay is the most safest country in Latin America and has the most chill people. The latter we experienced and also were impressed by the approach to both diversity (as well as openly

admitting the genocide of indigenous people) and religion (ie all public holidays were re-named in the early 1900s, for instance christmas is called family holiday). Another peculiarity worth mentioning is the Uruguayan fondness of the sun, we had it several times that people started clapping when the sun was setting.

The first week of January is holiday season in both countries and we faced a lot of closed bars or restaurants actually, so was the Estadio Centenary where Uruguay won the first ever World Cup in 1930. It‘s the peak of summer here of course, so people go to their summer places - we thought that makes sense and had our very own beach day in Puntar del Este - or Patagonia, our next stop after returning to Buenos Aires.

An idea of the vast size of Argentina: A short 3 hour flight got us to El Calafate in Southern Patagonia, still not the Southernmost point of our trip but further down South on the globe than for instance Australia, just to give some perspective. We experienced very looong days here, where the sun would only set by 11pm. The landscape is mainly covered by dry step land that is home to guanacos (wild lamas) and Nandus (kind of a small ostrich or emu), surrounded by dramatic mountain ranges of the Andes. At the coast we could see some flamingos and other birds as well.

We visited El Chalten, THE hiking capital of Argentina and serving as entrance point to the Nacional Parque de los Glaciares and offering plenty of day or multi-day hikes. The climate is very much influenced by strong and icy winds coming from the Chilenen Pacific, forming several 100 glaciars in or between the Andes. Rapid and drastic weather changes occur frequently and it is highly advised to always dress in layers and bring a rain coat or poncho. From this small mountain town we went to see Mt. Fitzroy and the Laguna Capri on a rather easy half-day hike.

We were actually impressed by how smooth and easy everything is organized and accessible over here, ie our first highlight of the trip: a mini-trekking on the impressive and picturesque Perito Moreno Glaciar. The tour included a boat ride on the glacial lake and obviously a whisky on the (glacial) rocks to celebrate.

A 5-hour bus ride later we found ourselves in Patagonian Chile, the third country of our trip and home to the world famous Torres del Paine Nationalpark where we embarked on a 5D/4N hiking trip, called the W-Trek. Again, extremely well-organized: a bus takes you to the park entrance to check in, a shuttle service to the first refugio (aka hostel with bunk beds) or if you choose a campsite, two meals are included at the refugio and lunch is offered as boxed to take with you during the hike, so your only „job“ is to make it to the next refugio. And I haven‘t seen a national park this clean, there was literally not even a little item of trash anywhere.

The one part that worried particularly me was stories we heard about both the duration & elevation/steepness, also that the information provided in the park on length and distances might not always be accurate. I was not convinced that my knees would be up for the challenge of 6-9h hikes for five days in a row - but the hiking poles rented last minute were the best support and quickly felt like a natural extension to our bodies!

The days were long, the weather rather unpredictable (we were overall lucky!) and the hikes strenuous indeed with at times extremely steep and rocky climbs - but a total of 89km, 3.500m altitude difference and 23h with several days well exceeding 20km rewarded us with stunning panoramas of mountain ranges, rivers and glaciars. The vegetation changed almost every day, the weather went from sunny to rainy within a blink of an eye and the next enormous gush of cold wind was never too far.

Every night we fell into our beds exhausted but happy, and rising early for the next day. We‘re both proud we’ve made it, though our feet and bodies are sore and we‘re looking forward not wearing or seeing our hiking gear for a while :)