El Calafate, the closest town to the world renowned Perito Moreno Glacier, isn't the most exciting town. The main street is filled with outdoor shops and touristy restaurants, but there is little character. As we soon discovered, there is very little to do there other than see the Glacier, unless you have bucket loads of money! We had 4 nights in El Calafate so we had a look into some options of what to do. On our first full day there, we enquired with some tour...

El Chaltén is known as the hiking capital of Argentina, and for good reason! The town is quaint with little bakeries and pizza shops and sits near the impressive spires of Mount Fitz Roy. The best part is lots of the hikes start right from town. We had taken an overnight bus down Ruta 40. It was surely the most expensive bus in human history and included several interludes on dirt roads as there was considerable roadworks going on, but we still arrived 2 hour...

Futaleufú lies only a 10 minute drive from the border with Argentina. It's a small town along the river of the same name, Rio Futaleufú, a rafting and kayaking mecca with category 4 and 5 rapids. We had to stay here 5 nights due to the infrequency of buses, such a hassle! After crossing the border and switching buses we arrived in town, then walked to our hostel about a 10 minute walk away. Built on the top of a small hill the hostel offered views through the ...

Esquel is a fairly small, uninspiring town. We arrived around dinner time and decided to eat out, amazed by the prices we encountered for basic meals. Argentina had been on the expensive side when we first visited 10 months earlier. Now it was even more so, though we can't be sure if this was due more to the 30-40% annual inflation or the fact that we were getting further south. Our next destination would be Futaleufú just back over the Chile border, but buses ...

We stopped over briefly Puerto Montt as we couldn't get a connecting bus from Castro through to Bariloche. We stayed in a lovely guesthouse and after a walk around the busy but uninspiring port city we just had a quiet afternoon. We found a place for dinner which was really busy with locals so we figured it must be good. That couldn't have been further from the truth! Sometimes we just manage to get it all wrong. The drive to Bariloche was beautiful, though it ...