Fitzroy and Lago Buenos Aires (December 09 to 19)

Coming from "Torres del Paine" we crossed to Argentina on a small border crossing and started driving again first to El Calafate, where we have been already seeing the glacier "Perito Moreno" some weeks ago.

However, we wanted to have some of the fantastic empanadas we ate there in this time and also to go extensively shopping to a grocery, before moving on to El Chalten, the home of "Cerro Fitzroy" and "Cerro Torre", some more so-called "must sees" on such a trip. We were lucky, seeing the silhouette of "Fitzroy" already when arriving in the evening and the whole next day, when we were hiking to one of its viewpoints.

Like at "Torres del Paine", hiking is not possible to the summits of "Cerro Fitzroy" or "Cerro Torre" for normal people, just to climbers or expeditions. This time we took a tent, sleeping bags and mats, and cooking gear with us, for staying overnight. It was quite demanding walking the first time with the heavy backpacks compared to the used lightweight day-packs before. Nevertheless, it was a good experience, but unfortunately we didn't see "Cerro Torre" on the second day because of the clouds.

At the end it was a nice trip to see these mountains, but after the great views of "Torres del Paine" before, it lost a little bit of attraction. From El Chalten on we followed the Ruta 40 to the villages "Gobernador Gregores" and "Perito Moreno" (not to be confused with the glacier with the same name). There was not much more too see besides asphalt, gravel, gas stations along the road, and Christmas decoration in the villages.

However, we had to look for places for filling our gas bottles and this turned out to be a challenge more and more from this point of time. In earlier times, it was quite easy to refill our bottles in places where the locals are exchanging their empty bottles to new pre-filled ones. However, both in Chile and western Argentina this is prohibited and one has to find nonofficial private places, where they are doing it in their backyard. Unfortunately, we were not successful in doing this. As an alternative solution we explored different gas bottle fittings in "ferreterias" (in the good old days in Germany this was an "Eisenwarenhandlung", an absolute necessary place everywhere in South America) and cars of other overlanders to find out if using local bottles would be doable.

But still with some European safety mindsetting, we didn't dare to make some necessary mechanical adjustments by ourselves to the gas installation in the car and also dropped this idea. Therefore from now on, we were even more into cooking using the coleman stove outside and even small camping gas cartridges inside the car to save the remaining gas in the big bottle for running the fridge. So we went on to the "Lago Buenos Aires", one of the biggest lakes in South America, shared between Argentina and Chile, where it is called later on "Lago General Carrera". Having a lot of wind like most of the time meanwhile, the "Lago Buenos Aires" appeared more like a rough sea under a fantastic blue sky.

On the shores of this lake we arrived to the village "Los Antiguos", the self-announced capital of the cherries, which was quite surprising as the last hundred of kilometers we just saw the usual dry and dusty steppe of Argentina. But due to some micro climate and endless water from the lake, which is used for watering the plants, it turned out to be like that.

After Los Antiguos we crossed the border to Chile again, coming to a small village called "Chile Chicco", where we felt a little bit like in an old western movie and where we started to our trip on the famous "Carretera Austral".