We crossed into Argentina by car at Dorotea border crossing coming from Torres del Paine National Park in Chile in December 2024 and headed for El Calafate and El Chalten for more hiking. The border crossing was pretty straightforward. Car rental company in Chile arranged all the documents to take the car over the border and come back. Chile border crossing side was very orderly and organized. Argentina side was less orderly with a longer queue and dilapidated facilities. The road quality on Argentina side was also somewhat inferior to the Chilean one in places. All the roads we took were paved and we did not have any issues in our compact two wheel drive.
Once we crossed the border we headed north on Ruta 40 to El Calafate. We followed Ruta 40 all the way instead of taking a shortcut on Ruta 7. We saw cars driving off onto Ruta 7 and understand it is fine but with a small rental two wheel drive we did not want to risk it on an unpaved road. The views along the way on Ruta 40 is rolling planes as far as eye can see, quintessential Patagonia one could say.
We reached El Calafate at about 5pm. The scenery around with the snow cap mountains in the distance and turquoise blue Lago Argentino was very beautiful. El Calafate is a major holiday place for Argentinians and international travelers. It has a very lively main street with many restaurants and bars with great food and all sorts of essential shopping one could need.
The next day we headed to Perito Moreno Glacier and our first part of exploration of the Los Glaciares National park.
The drive from El Calafate to Perito Moreno is very scenic passing through agricultural lands where we saw gauchos and even had a condor flying by very low over our car. Part of the drive goes along beautiful Lago Argentino.
Perito Moreno Glacier is 30km long, 5km wide and up to 60m high. It has a well developed tourist infrastructure around it making it one of the more accessible glaciers to visit. We spent most of the day walking around, admiring the glacier and watching it calve. It is a spectacular site. Here is more on our day at Perito Morreno
On the next day, after spending two nights in El Calafate, we stocked up in the supermarket, got fuel and headed north to El Chalten. El Chalten is a small village and is the best base to explore Mount Fitzroy and surroundings. We were very lucky with the weather on the day we drove. There was no cloud in the sky and we had phenomenal views of the mountains all along the way.
It was fascinating to see the view of Mount Fitz Roy on the ground and then look at the photo we took from the airplane while flying over it on our way to Punta Arenas in Chile. The rugged sharp edges on the side where ice field ends. And much more smooth looking surfaces that we were looking at from the planes.
We stayed for 6 nights in El Chalten to give ourselves time to explore the area. Since weather changes a lot and often we thought it was important to have a couple of extra days in case it rained or snowed and stopped us from hiking. Here is a write up on our stay in El Chalten and hikes around Mount Fitz Roy.
After 6 nights in El Chalten it was time to go back to Chile. As we were leaving El Chalten we again saw Malvinas sign as the one at Perito Moreno Glacier. The 99km mark must be missing a zero though. On our drive back we had a very thick cloud cover and it was quite a contrast to the views we had on the way to El Chalten a week earlier. This time we had striking menacing sky completely changing the landscape. But it was spring in Patagonia and flowers were everywhere and they seemed to have come up just within this past week since our drive.
We crossed the border back and were in Chile again for more adventures starting with a ship navigation from Puerto Natales around fjords for a few days.