What kind of activities do you love to do in cute little mountain towns? Hiking? Skiing? Staying in with a good book?
We came to El Chalten for the hiking. After several days down in El Calafate, we were ready to explore the other end of the beautiful Los Glaciares National Park.
The town has a unique charm. It’s certainly geared more toward backpackers than even El Calafate, and it’s far less touristy. It is also very much still under construction.
Every other building appeared to be in some stage of being built – from exposed plywood to one building that almost looked like it was duct-taped together. There’s also a whopping one gas station for the entire town, and it’s encapsulated within a shipping container.
The town also features random sculptures of wood and odd parts. We enjoyed just wandering around the town.
We made the mistake of driving to El Chalten. While it was useful to have a car in El Calafate, all the trails were easily accessible directly from town, and our rental car simply sat the few days we were there before heading back south.
And we certainly got our distance in! Across two days, we clocked over 30 miles – more on that later.
After all that hiking, we finally found the street with all the breweries.. right at the foot of the most popular Fitz Roy hike, of course! We explored the offerings, and found a few we liked, including our good old favorite from El Calafate, La Zorra!
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I LOVED El Chalten! So much less touristy than El Calafate and as. you said, you don’t really need a car as all the great hikes are so accessible from the town. I was also so impressed with the quality of the food for a small town. Cheers!
Yes! It just took us a couple days to figure out all the breweries we’re NOT in the middle of town but rather on the eastern edge by the Fitz Roy trailhead 🙂