Photo Time: Still More from Patagonia

I'd hoped to have a sneak preview, at least, of my photos from my most recent trip, but I've been a total scatterbrain, and haven't done much more than upload the lot of them to my computer. So we're back to Patagonia.

One day we drove to the very end of the road beyond El Chalten, to Lago del Desierto, where you can take a ferry up the lake and get off in Chile (or walk a trail; either way you go through immigration at the far end of the lake). We didn't do that--we already been in Chile--but we looked at the lake, then hiked to nearby Huemul lake. Huemules are a sort of Patagonia deer.

Apparently we started the day with another visit to the sunrise viewpoint. These two are my photos.

Dave shooting the sunrise.

First light on Fitzroy. Trivia note: Fitzroy was renamed from Chaltén in 1877 by the Argentinian explorer Perito Moreno (see Perito Moreno Glacier), in honor of the captain of the HMS Beagle (Darwin's ship).

Only then did we drive the 15 or 20 miles to the end of the road. We saw some cyclists who were probably going to take the ferry and pick up the Carretera Austral (Rte. 7), which would involve riding several miles of trails, a lot more miles of rough dirt, and at least one more (long) ferry ride before hitting the gravel Carretera. In other words, they were committed.

The rest of these are Dave's photos, as part of my on-going effort to share some of his excellent work.

The one-lane bridge across the Rio Eléctrico.

 The drive was scenic in its own right.

Glimpses of Fitzroy beyond the beech forest.

Signs like this gave us hope of seeing the rare huemul deer. Note how they stack up the PSAs on one sign: Slow down for the huemules, and prevent forest fires.

Looking up the Lago del Desierto to Chile.

Once we'd looked at the lake we did the short hike to Lago Huemul. Spoiler alert: we didn't see any huemules, not that day.

Through the beech forest.

 

The color of the water is, of course, due to glacial silt--the milkier the turquoise, the more silt and thus you can conclude, the closer to the glacier. In this case, it's evident that until recently the glacier came down to the lake.

 

Me, at Lago Huemul.

Since this is fairly short, here are a few more random shots from El Chalten. The town has a pretty short history--there was some settlement up in there, but basically it was built in 1985 as a) a service town for climbers, and b) proof that Argentina owned that territory. The region was granted to Argentina in a settlement reached without resorting to fighting.

 

Their work on spreading the LNT ethic seemed to be going pretty well.

We rented a little apartment over this shop for the 10 or so days we spent in El Chaltén.

The only gas station in town (actually a bit out of town). It was run out of a shipping container. Since it's 140 miles to El Calafate, it was necessary (and expensive).

 

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 ©Rebecca M. Douglass, 2026 

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