After a day of waiting in Bogota, an overnight flight to Buenos Aires, immigration, luggage transfer, ATM failures, sticker shock, a 5 hour layover and another 3 hour flight, we arrived in El Calafate, Argentina – clearing our cloudy unslept eyes to reveal, for the first time, the vast expanses and milky topaz waters of exotic Patagonia…

and then there was another 4 hour wait at the airport, and the 3 hour bus to El Chaltén.

Across a landscape of sage spotted hills, distant mesas, and those rich blue-green lakes and rivers, Ruta 40 makes it’s way across the massive miles that are so characteristic of Argentina. Wild groups of guanacos gallop alongside the highway while the emu-like rheas make their appearances here and there.. Incredible as it all may sound, we must also admit to a small dose of disappointment at this point: if it weren’t for the animals and waters, this part of Patagonia looks almost exactly like Southern Colorado and New Mexico.

But there is something “else” about this place – maybe in the distances, the pure silences, the ever-present winds. However we may feel that we are familiar with the place, there is yet something so very wild about it all.

And of course, when standing at the foot of the mighty Los Tres of the towering Fitz Roy, it’s very easy to remember just where you are. Those iconic narrow towers carving the moment into your mind as if to say “Patagonia wuz here”. And maybe it’s because the last scrambling kilometer was so painfully, scrapingly steep, but a few warm tears arrived on-time as the trail found it’s end at those “torres” – we shook our heads and shuddered under that realization that we had really, finally arrived.

Tiny El Chaltén exists only as a hiking and climbing destination – densely populated with outfitters, hostels and eateries, with an occasional thinly-stocked grocery. In a place where outdoors is the focus, weather sweeps people together within the warm communal walls of the hostels.

Hostels: you never know what you’re going to get. The showers usually suck, sometimes you pay extra for towels, sometimes you get inconsiderate dorm-mates, sometimes the beer is under lock and key, sometimes people are distant and unfriendly, sometimes the kitchens are unusable, usually the beds crinkle with plastic and the foam bottoms out into wooden beams. And sometimes you get a place like Aylen-Aike: warm, friendly, comfortable… And with the hottest and most powerful showers you’ll likely encounter in life. Though weather, wear and languidity kept us often under its roof, our little hostel next to the river was host to great rest and lively conversation with people from around the globe – sharing information on the places that we’ve been and loved, cooking elbow to elbow and watching Point Break until midnight.