We said good-bye to Paula and continued south to meet my friend JoAnn in El Calafate.

Travelling Ruta 40 south over miles and miles of ripio (gravel roads in varying states of repair), we really began to glimpse Patagonia.

Endless kilometers of ripio roads brought us to Santa Cruz Province

Entering Santa Cruz, at the heart of Patagonia

Starting to sense the wide open spaces of Patagonia

Given the many kilometers of ripio we travelled across, it was a bold move to take a 100+ kilometer detour (each way) to check out Lagos Posadas and Pueyrredon. But detour we did and we were not disappointed.

We arrived at the lakes and began to scout a place to camp. Shouldn’t have been too hard, it’s a relatively undeveloped area and there are two huge lakeshores to explore. While we found many beautiful places, the howling wind deterred us from choosing one

One possible wild camp site on the shore of Lago Posadas, nixed due to incredible winds

We eventually came to Camping El Tio (not in any books but indicated by a couple of roadside signs). Wind-protected in an unbelievably beautiful spot, Camping El Tio was just the paradise we were looking for and we set up camp for several sunny, peaceful days.

Looking toward the Chilean border from our site at El Tio's on the shores of Lago Pueyrredon

Looking back at Lago Posadas from Lago Pueyrredon with the isthmus between the two lakes visible

Mike doing a little fishing...

...and although Mike didn't catch any fish, Daniel caught a beauty

Even Chettie liked it here

The Chetster

Sunset after a peaceful day on Lago Pueyrredon

Then more Ruta 40 ripio....

that eventually led us to El Chalten, the self-proclaimed trekking capital of Argentina......

The approach to El Chalten

I don’t know what this town is like in the winter, but we enjoyed super sunny, hot, clear days just made for hiking in the FitzRoy range. Chalten is at the northern end of Los Glaciares National Park and it is completely opposite from the southern end of the park near El Calafate.

Chalten is a hippy town full of nature lovin’ hikers. Unlike the southern part of the park with the famous Perito Moreno glacier, access to the park here is free. Everywhere are people with backpacks and daypacks, zippy-offy pants and walking sticks making their way to the many trails that lead directly out of town.

Glimpsing FitzRoy on the hike to the mirador

FitzRoy and me

Playing with the sepia feature on my camera...

,,,and playing with the black and white feature

The Burly Beast, who renamed herself the Beagle as we got further and further into Patagonia, is on this side of the river near the middle of the picture. Can you spot her?

Here, in El Chalten, we ran into our cycling friends Guillermo and Cecelia for the last time. We had met them much further north and had criss crossed paths so many times we lost count. Each time we’d meet, Guillermo would give us a great tip on where to go, where not to go and where to camp. Though we probably spent less than two hours of total time with them we consider them kindred spirits and good friends.

Our first sightings of Guillermo and Cecilia. On this day, we followed their bike tracks for many, many kilometers and entertained ourselves by hypothesizing on who these track makers were. We used our deductive powers to determine the tracks were made by two cyclists, probably a guy and a girl, not locals but probably cyclists touring south and that they were not very far ahead of us. And then we came upon them and we were right on all our assumptions.

From Chalten it was time to meet Jo in Calafate and off we went. I'll post the blog for the JoAnn chapter of our trip next.

Flamingos in the Reserve looking back towards El Calafate

Our campsite along the shore of Lago Argentino. When we were making coffee in the morning we heard voices saying things like, 'How do you think they got here?', to which Mike replied, 'We drove here'. And here was a group of 8 or 10 people from Colorado Springs who had just arrived the in Calafate the day before.