The Finest Journey of All (How We Stopped Being Grumpy Gits)

If you’ve been following this TravelLog, you’d be forgiven for thinking we’re two joy-sucking vampires who hate fun, sunlight, and functional transportation. The journey had been a masterclass in frustration, requiring the patience of a saint and the resilience of a Nokia 3310.

But then we flew into El Calafate, and the travel gods finally decided to stop using us as their personal punchbag.

Being a small municipal airport, we collected our bags in roughly 20 minutes — a timespan so brief I almost forgot how to scowl. Even others on our flight noticeably relaxed. Immediately, we were met by our mini-bus driver from Las Lengas. I’ve used this company five times, but this was the first time we were the only passengers. That's right. We had a vast mini-bus all to ourselves. It wasn't a transfer; it was a private, slightly excessive, chariot of solitude to El Chalten.

I remember this route back in 2006. It was a four-hour kidney-rattling ordeal on a dirt road that seemed designed by a particularly sadistic goat. Now? It’s a glorious, smooth tarmac that accomplishes the journey in a breezy three hours. And what a road! To the right, the dry, semi-desert badlands of the Argentine Pampas stretched out, looking beautifully… beige. To the left, massive, the shockingly blue glacial lakes of Lago Argentino and Lago Viedma were backed by range after range of snow-covered, jagged peaks that looked like they’d been drawn by a dramatic teenager.

The sun was shining. The views were stupidly amazing. The frustrations of the previous two days were not so much forgotten as violently evicted from our minds by the sheer awesomeness. It was emotional. I may have shed a single, manly tear. Or it might have been dust.

As we sped along at a cool 90kph, we entered a live-action episode of " Planet Earth". Herds of guanacos (which are basically llamas that have been to a finishing school) dotted the landscape, with ever-watchful condors flying overhead like feathery secret service agents. We even spotted the strange-looking Rhea, an animal best described as an ostrich that gave up on life and decided to become a walking haystack.

We didn’t stop at the Parador de las Leones, allegedly a haunt of Butch and Sundance. No time for historical day-drinking; we had mountains to gawk at!

In our excitement, we took approximately seven billion photos. About six billion, nine hundred million of them are a blurry mess, thanks to a holy trinity of interference: road bumps, gale-force winds shaking the bus, and a windscreen that appeared to have been cleaned with a potato. It didn’t matter. We were happy, content, and being magnetically pulled towards the mountains, whose summits were dramatically swaddled in clouds being thrown around by the jet stream.

Then, after rounding a final bend, there it was. El Chalten, nestling in the valley below. And looming above it all, the majestic, cloud-piercing peak of Mt. Fitzroy. We had arrived. And for the first time in days, our faces were sore from smiling, not scowling. A miracle.