The trekking capital of Argentina — the only village in the world built solely as a base for mountain trekking, with the Fitz Roy massif rising directly above the main street and the Cerro Torre icecap visible from the hostel breakfast table
El Chaltén (the Tehuelche people's name for the Fitz Roy mountain — 'smoking mountain', from the cloud cap that forms on the summit in Patagonian wind) is a village of 1,500 people in the Los Glaciares National Park sector of the Argentine Patagonia (Santa Cruz Province), 230km north of El Calafate by dirt road (3.5 hours). The village was founded in 1985 as a deliberate Argentine government response to Chilean border claims on the Patagonian territory (Argentina settled the town to establish civilian presence in disputed territory), which means El Chaltén has no history, no colonial architec…
The Patagonia region was inhabited by the nomadic Tehuelche people (the Aónikenk and Kawésqar peoples of the Southern Patagonian steppe and coast) for thousands of years before European contact — the Tehuelche gave both Patagonia's landscape and its first European characterization: they were described by Ferdinand Magellan's chronicler Antonio Pigafetta in 1520 as 'giants' (Patagao — 'big foot' in Magellan's Portuguese — possibly due to the animal-skin moccasins they wore over stuffed grass insulation, making their footprints appear very large in the snow). The mountain now called Fitz Roy wa…