When we’re traveling, there are moments that don’t seem real. Granted, most of the time I go along in my own world, disorganized thoughts drifting happily from the vapid to the existential and back again. But then I look up from the trail and everything stops. The world grows still and a part of me separates, floats up and looks down on myself like I’m a character in a movie located in some exotic and spectacular land. Something inevitably jolts me back to reality, the moment passes, and I go back to putting one foot in front of the other. This happened more while backpacking in the awe-inspiring shadow of Mount Fitz Roy than at any other time on our trip.

Fitz Roy by Day: A Blazing Sunset

Fitz Roy by Night: A Starry and Majestic World

After reluctantly tearing ourselves away from Northern Patagonia and being pleasantly surprised by the relative ease with which 30 hours passed on a bus, we arrived in El Calafate, the launching point for the main attractions in Southern Patagonia. We immediately made our way to our destination of highest priority: El Chalten – a tiny mountain outpost of fast winds, slow internet connections, big mountains and small food selections. This region is a world unto itself and the weather is its dictator… its fickle, schizophrenic, histrionic and demanding despot. On the rare occasion that the dictator is happy, it is Heaven; at all other times, it is Hell; and that switch seems to happen without warning.

Watching sunrise from the front seats of our 30+ hour overnight bus from Bariloche to El Calafate

Viewpoint over the once-isolated outpost town of El Chalten, growing exponentially as a tourist stop

Thankfully, modern technology is able to predict the unpredictable and when El Chalten’s snail-paced internet connection finally downloads all those numbers, colors, and vectors, Michael (my personal meteorologist) interprets this magical nonsense into a mostly-reliable weather report. Armed with an idea of when the world outside our hostel will be hospitable, we were able to take full advantage of every weather window and mentally prepare for our (many) days of confinement.

The complex numbers, colors and vectors that Michael magically interprets into a weather forecast

Our time in El Chalten started off with a bang – a one-day weather window! Eager to move after so much time sitting on buses, we set off before sunrise to climb Cerro Madsen. Not even an hour later, we began to realize that we were in a magical fairyland of incredible beauty – a landscape of crystal clear streams, calming lakes, and enchanting forests, with Fitz Roy rising up from a royal court of surrounding mountains like a benevolent but commanding king, with Poincenot as his stunning yet deadly queen. As the early morning rays illuminated the landscape, we knew with certainty that we had never before witnessed a landscape of such grandeur and grace. And as the day progressed, the Patagonia weather gods granted us two wonderfully sunny hours on the summit of Cerro Madsen, with full-frontal views of (in our opinion) the most beautiful mountain in the world.

Taylor climbing around on Cerro Madsen with an incredible view of the Fitz Roy Massif

A panoramic view of the area around Fitz Roy

We returned to El Chalten in high spirits that we hoped would sustain us until the next weather window, at least five rainy and windy days later.

Unfortunately, LAN Airlines had other plans. In our last blog, we wrote that we skipped our originally-planned flight to El Calafate in order to visit Northern Patagonia (e.g. Bariloche) first. Well, that turned out to be a catastrophe far beyond our wildest expectations… and it all started with a short email from our travel agent, received after our climb of Cerro Madsen: “Our records show that your tickets have been canceled.”

Cancelled. No tickets home. Could there be a more anxiety-inducing, nightmare-coming-true email to a fatigued traveler whose only certainly in life is the booked flight home? No. No no no. And yet… there it was. And so began what we’ve dubbed the “Flocking Flight Fiasco.” In total, we spent the next SEVEN days of our young lives almost entirely in a cold telephone booth navigating the dark and labyrinthine customer service departments, victims of the disorganized, astonishingly inaccurate, and maybe even malicious machine that is LAN Airlines. Over and over again, one department would give us a quote to correct the problem, and another department would then tell us that it was “not possible,” each quote taking at least 24 hours to process and deliver a price tag ranging from US$0 to US$6,000. It reached a point of total absurdity on Day 3 and then kept going… for 4 more days. It felt like an epic battle with an evil empire operated by Mr. Bean.

How we spent more than a week: stuck in a cold telephone booth talking to the oh-so-competent representatives of LAN Airlines

The Flocking Flight Fiasco very nearly drove us insane. Truly. The ceaseless wind and rain, the never-ending fight to the death with LAN Airlines, the isolation, and the straight-back wooden chairs surrounded by blank white walls of our hostel all banded together to create a madness-inducing nightmare from which our only reprieve was fat steaks and copious wine – which helped a bit in the evening but hurt like hell in the morning.

How we spent our time in captivity: cooking and eating gourmet meals made from scratch, usually accented with whatever was leftover in the “free box” for hostel guests

Michael picking out empanadas at our favorite bakery, which we got to know quite well

But just as the light of dawn follows the darkness of night, our spirits and goodwill towards humanity (thoroughly thrashed by LAN Airlines) began to rise with a solution to our flight problem and a new weather window on the horizon. The solution, however, was utterly nonsensical: in order to reinstate our tickets home, we had to re-take the flight from Buenos Aires to El Calafate. Of course, we were then only about 2 hours from El Calafate and over 40 hours from Buenos Aires. So, to hell with reason, we would bus back to Buenos Aires, fly back to El Calafate (via Ushuaia), and then fly right on back to Buenos Aires the same day. To put this in perspective, this is like driving from Mexico City to Calgary, Alberta, Canada in order to catch a flight back to Mexico City when, in fact, your next flight leaves from Calgary. To call this inconvenient would be the understatement of the trip.

Yet life is not perfect and it seemed to be the only way to avoid purchasing new tickets home. With no other options, we accepted this crazy plan as fate and turned our attention to the upcoming weather window.

The stormy weather that kept us indoors also resulted in a lot of fresh snow in the mountains, making our other climbing objectives impossible or, at best, not fun at all. But the fall colors were transforming the landscape from a consistent green to a vibrant and multifaceted array of reds, yellows and browns. So we took to the trails (with more than a little bushwhacking with a number of stream crossings for good measure) for the next week and a half, following Michael’s analysis and intuition for the very best times and places to capture these gorgeous mountains on camera. Photographically speaking, it was the most productive 10 days of Michael’s career so far.

Waiting for the sun to set over the Torre Group from across the glacier

Another fiery sunset, taken from our Secret Spot camp

Sunrise as seen from the beautiful valley under Mt. Fitz Roy

One of the many hurdles we overcame to access the best vantage points of Fitz Roy

Battling the pokey and thick trees was one of the less enjoyable parts of hiking through these forests

One of the more fun ways to get across a raging river… and not a bad arm work out either!

Our path was a roaming, circular, illogical meandering through the four main valleys that surround Fitz Roy and its reclusive yet terrifying neighbor, Cerro Torre. We adopted a relaxed pace of life, seeking new photographic vantage points and spectacular campsites, and always saving at least a few hours in the afternoon for card games, hot chocolate, and general gazing. Michael photographed almost every sunrise – returning to the tent afterwards for a couple more hours of dozing – and sunsets became an all-consuming affair as he literally ran from location to location, all pre-planned and reaching the height of their beauty in the same fleeting moments.

The fall colors were out in their full glory, giving a powerful foreground to the Fitz Roy massif

The forests and the valleys were some of the most beautiful we saw on our entire trip, even without the famous mountains in the background

Taylor exploring a ridge on one of our day outings in the mountains

The streams and forests were incredibly beautiful

With photogenic trees, fall colors and cascading waterfalls giving Michael plenty of foreground, it was one of the most relaxing backpacking trips of my life. I completed one of my goals for the trip: reading Tolstoy’s War and Peace. I read another book or two. I made my way through yet another journal. I contemplated and reflected and slept and pondered and eventually started to realize how much I’m looking forward to having a little more purpose in life. It’s too bad we can’t store up these times of quiet solitude and use them strategically to interrupt the inevitable demands of normal life to come. 

Camping out for the evening while Michael photographs the sunset

Our trekking clothes have taken a beating this year…

Hiking out from the Fitz Roy area after many days on the trail

Like all good things, the weather window came to its end and we reluctantly entered into another period of involuntary confinement. By day 3, having proven to ourselves the existence – and power – of Seasonal Affective Disorder and fearing that our current pace toward alcoholism and gluttony would take us down a road we didn’t want to travel, we decided it was time to say farewell to El Chalten and simply appreciate the fact that we had 10+ days of amazing weather, an incredibly uncommon experience in this part of the world.

We caught a bus back to El Calafate with every intention of continuing south to Torres del Paine the following morning. But the weather forecast was its typically unreasonable self – cold, rainy, and/or windy was the menu of the week, with steadily dropping temperatures. As we walked around El Calafate, the rain turned to wet snow that seeped through our worn clothes and gnawed on our spirits. We sought refuge at a bar, fully attired in down jackets despite being indoors. There we wrestled with the seemingly all-powerful should: we should see Torres del Paine, everyone goes there, we should just suck it up one more time and deal with the egregious discomforts, we should pay exorbitant fees to camp in the mud so that we can say we saw Torres del Paine and experienced the capstones of Southern Patagonia. But about two beers deep, we realized we were fed up. Done. Tapped out. Screw the should. On our way home, we purchased tickets back north to the warm, reasonable lands of Bariloche. Life is simply too short to let it be ruled by the should.

As the temperatures dropped and the snow began, we were second guessing our plan to continue trekking in Southern Patagonia

Contemplating our next steps at the Libro Bar in El Calafate as it snowed outside

When we boarded the bus the next day, its temperature gage said 3 degrees Celsius (37 °F). Over the next 28 hours, we watched it climb steadily upwards to 30 degrees Celsius (86 °F) and we felt happier and happier with our decision. With almost a month remaining and all of our original plans thrown into the wind, we started looking at Argentina with fresh eyes, uncertain what to do with this unexpected gift of a few final wide-open weeks of travel.