El Chalten, Argentina - Day 3
Thursday, March 2, 2023
Rain. Wind. So much rain and wind!
El Chalten is the hiking capital of Argentina with some of the best mountains in all of the country, so Andi and I have been looking forward to visiting this area. Unfortunately, we woke up today to very cold, windy, and rainy skies. I don’t mind hiking in cold and wind — we can dress for that — but rain is a different story. We brought rain coats with us on this trip, but none of us were particularly excited about getting drenched today. Andi and I hoped the rain would pass and we’d be able to hit the trails at some point, but in the meantime, we hung out at our apartment for the morning, caught up on some school, and each enjoyed some down time.
Two perks of staying at El Chalten Apartments is that they provide a tray of breakfast foods for guests every morning and they also provide maid service. I’ve never heard of a rental doing that before, but it’s really nice! We enjoyed toast, cereal, yogurt, and orange juice this morning in our apartment.
Around 11:00am, we decided to go into town so the housekeeper could clean our apartment. It was still pouring rain, so Andi suggested we find a coffee shop with wifi to hunker down for the afternoon. He picked Kaulem Cafe on the edge of town which had a nice lounge area. We ordered falafel and chicken sandwiches, hot tea, and smoothies for the kids. The wifi was pitifully slow, but at least it worked well enough to send a few text messages. While we were out, we also picked up our laundry from the laundromat in town.
Travel tip 1: Throw in a deck of cards and three dice. They don’t take up much room and provide hours of entertainment, especially on a rainy day!
Travel tip 2: Andi brought along a cloth laundry bag with us on this trip which has been really useful to have. It’s an easy way to keep dirty clothes together and transport them to/from the laundromat.
A few hours later, we returned to our apartment. El Chalten is a tiny town in the mountains, and there’s really nothing to do here but go hiking or rock climbing. We hung around our apartment until dinner time. The wind and rain were blowing so fiercely the windows of our apartment building shook! Tory and Aden said they would rather stay home, so Andi and I made them spaghetti and then went out to dinner ourselves. Tonight, we picked a restaurant just a few doors down from the apartment called La Tapera. I’m glad we went right at 7:00pm! The small restaurant was already packed when we arrived. Andi and I shared a salad and steak with chimichurri for dinner. At the end of our meal, they brought us some sort of apple-flavored liquor — no idea what it was, but we drank it. Our service was great and the food was very tasty. We stopped at the kiosko (mini market) on the way home to grab a pint of ice cream for the kids.
Today was a total wash-out and we felt guilty for wasting an adventure day in El Chalten. Andi and I are hoping for clear skies tomorrow — ready or not, we have to make the best of the weather because it’s our last day here before flying out on Saturday.
