Introduction
This is Five Cents: travel guide to Patagonia. Let’s plan a first trip of ten to twelve days without turning an enormous region into a succession of airports. The route moves from the lakes and roads of northern Patagonia to hiking and glaciers in the south. The approach is simple: choose a few distinct areas, fly between them, and give each base enough time.
Start by understanding the distances
Start by understanding the distances. Patagonia isn’t a continuous route you can rush through. Choose three complementary landscapes: Bariloche for lakes and forests, El Chaltén for hiking, and El Calafate for ice. Buenos Aires can be your gateway, but the trip really begins when you fly south.
Bariloche, beside Lake Nahuel Huapi, is your base in northern Patagonia. Rent a car here. The best experiences are outside the city, among roads, lakes, viewpoints and forests. Circuito Chico, a scenic driving loop around Bariloche, makes the most sense for your first day. It’s a relaxed introduction to the relationship between the mountains, water and woodland.
Then head north along the Seven Lakes Route. This is the scenic stretch of Route 40 between Villa La Angostura and San Martín de los Andes. Give it two days. Its appeal isn’t ticking off stops, but taking your time driving between lakes, forests and side roads.
A motorcycle can be an appealing alternative for someone who particularly enjoys the road itself, but a car is the most practical choice for this base. With more days and an appetite for hiking, Cerro Tronador offers a mountain excursion. Staying in a mountain hut lets you see sunrise and sunset from higher ground.
The route step by step
From Bariloche, move on to the next part of the trip by flying to El Calafate when a direct connection is available. Avoiding a return through Buenos Aires preserves days for what matters. From there, travel north by road to El Chaltén, a hiking village in the mountain area of Los Glaciares National Park.
Explore El Chaltén on foot. The main hikes start in the village itself, and the number of nights you spend here should reflect the routes you want to walk. The priority is Laguna de los Tres, the hike to views of Fitz Roy and the lake beneath it. Set aside a full day and do it early in your stay, while your legs are fresh. The final stretch is a steep climb and demands more than quick descriptions often suggest. Start early to give yourself plenty of time.
For a contrast, Chorrillo del Salto is a shorter walk for a less demanding day. There are restaurants and breweries here, but the reason to stay is to head into the mountains. Leave room for changes in the weather, too: conditions can disrupt a day’s hiking. Return south to El Calafate, your base for exploring the glaciers. You don’t need a car for this part: excursions usually include transport. The essential visit is Perito Moreno Glacier, about eighty kilometres west of town. Don’t reduce it to a quick stop at the walkways.
The walkways let you observe the glacier’s face from several levels. A boat trip changes your sense of scale as you approach the tongues of ice from the water. Ice trekking, when operating, is the most immersive experience. It reveals crevasses, colours, textures and shapes you can’t make out from land.
Key stops and decisions
The best combination is the walkways plus a boat trip or ice trekking, depending on what is operating. Coming this far deserves more than one perspective. Torres del Paine, in Chile, is the natural extension, but only with fourteen to seventeen days. From El Calafate, you would continue towards Puerto Natales to enter a park of granite massifs, ice and mountain trails. Treat it as a separate stage, rather than a rushed excursion.
Remember three decisions: choose a few areas and give them time; use a car in Bariloche, but walk from El Chaltén; and experience Perito Moreno from more than one perspective. For some additional cultural preparation, El peronismo explicado a los españoles, a book explaining Peronism to Spanish readers, helps you understand how deeply politics runs through contemporary Argentine society.
To explore this further, you can generate another Five Cents: El Chaltén hikes: routes, difficulty and planning. You can also generate Southern Patagonia’s glaciers: walkways, boat trips and ice trekking.