This is a first-person vlog (Nate and Kara Buchanan) documenting Day 7 of their Patagonia trip: leaving El Chaltén and traveling three hours by bus to El Calafate. The episode highlights clear mountain views (including Mount FitzRoy, which inspired Patagonia's logo), scenic lookouts (including an approachable fox), a stop at the historic La Leona restaurant, a glacier-trip briefing and park admission in El Calafate, and an evening visit to an ice bar where they wore crampons and drank from ice cups during a 25-minute session.
Chapters
Today was our seventh day of our Patagonia adventure with Southern explorations. It was our last morning in El Chatan and we spent it drinking coffee, enjoying the buffet breakfast, and soaking in the views one last time.
And later that morning, we had a three hour bus ride to El Calafate.
For the past three days, it was so cloudy that we were never able to see Mount FitzRoy or the surrounding mountains. So that morning when we woke up and the skies were clear, we were really excited to be able to see the mountain range before we left.
Of course, since we could actually see the mountains today, we asked our driver to stop so we could all get out and take a picture. Fun fact, this mountain range is the one that inspired the logo for the Patagonia clothing brand.
We stopped at another scenic lookout and while we were there taking pictures, a little fox came up behind us. He. He must have been used to people stopping at the lookout because he posed for all of our pictures.
We stopped at La Leona again, which is the restaurant that we stopped at on the way in for some more delicious empanadas.
We learned this place has a ton of history. Butch Cass and the Sundance Kit actually hid out here for a whole month after robbing the bank.
So here's what I was saying about this map. We started in El Chitan.
Then we drove all the way around the water to La Leona.
And now we're driving off the map to El Calabaze. And everybody was waiting on.
We got into town and went straight to a briefing about our upcoming glacier trip.
They gave us our park admission tickets and told us what to expect and got us really excited for the next day.
Our hotel felt like it was on a ranch in the middle of nowhere, but it was actually only a 15 minute walk to downtown.
We were greeted with flowers and a delicious welcome drink.
After we explored our hotel, we set out to meet friends from our group to explore the town on our one night in El Calafate.
If you've watched our videos for any amount of time, you know that going to bars isn't really our scene. However, we thought we'd make an exception tonight.
We went to our first ice bar.
And got to put on crampons for the first time. It was a party right off the bat with super loud music and flashing lights.
Once we got into the ice bar, I changed the settings on the camera so we actually have audio for the next few clips. So enjoy.
Before dinner.
So I saw one of these like ice bar hotel things on the Travel Channel years ago and I just remember the people drinking their drink and then breaking the cup against the wall and always wanted to do that. And the bartender just told me that I could.
I changed the settings again here and we lost audio. But it's okay because the ice cup didn't shatter exactly like I wanted it. Just.
Our 25 minutes were up. But we managed to squeeze in just a few more dance moves before leaving.
