Fifteen years ago we spent six days at a lodge called Explora in Chilean Patagonia. We’ve described it ever since as one of the most beautiful places we’ve ever been — and one of the best travel experiences overall. Patagonia is a dreamscape of rugged Andean mountains and bright blue glacier-fed rivers and lakes. And Explora offered a great combination of challenging day-time adventures, highly comfortable lodging, and great food.

Now that we’re at the very bottom of the South American continent anyhow, we decided to check out the Argentine side of Patagonia — and another Explora lodge. So we booked six nights at Explora El Chaltén, which sits at the base of the most iconic mountain peaks in Argentina. These are the very peaks depicted in the logo for Patagonia sportswear, in case you were wondering.

El Chaltén itself is a village, founded in 1985, inside Los Glacieres National Park. It’s considered the trekking capital of Argentina and sits at the base of the dramatic Fitz Roy massif, a group of towering granite peaks, the tallest of which is Mount Fitz Roy.

From Ushuaia we caught a flight of a little over an hour, north and west, to El Calafate, followed by a 2 hour drive to El Chaltén, and then another grueling hour up a rough road to the lodge. That was the plan anyway, but for a little snag. As we awaited our bags at the airport in El Calafate, they took forever. The crowd started thinning out. Finally Jim’s bag came out. And then his second. (Yes, we are each traveling with two bags, something we’ve virtually never done before. But we have to have clothes for hot summer in Buenos Aires, possible extreme cold in Antarctica, and a few dressy nights on the ship.)

Then the moment of dread. The belt stops. Every single other person has trickled out. Every bag has been delivered except for my two. I’m supposed to start 5 days of hiking tomorrow in temperatures just above freezing, in a very remote area, and I have no clothes, no equipment, no shoes except what I’m wearing.

To my surprise, an airline rep pretty quickly determined that my bags were still back in Ushuaia, and that another flight could bring them up later that evening. The airline would send them on a bus to El Chaltén — but not the additional hellish hour up the mountain to our lodge. So we journeyed to the lodge without my bags, where the extremely helpful staff monitored the situation.

Eventually they announced that there was good news and bad. My bag had arrived in El Calafate, but the flight was late. The bus would get to El Chaltén around 11 pm, and I’d be required to meet it in person with my passport to take receipt of the bags. The wonderful staff person would accompany me — and provide a car and a driver. But I had to do that treacherous drive there and back late at night if I wanted to have my stuff to hike tomorrow.

I dreaded that trip, but it had to be done. As I gathered my passport and the luggage tags and lost bag report, I noticed something peculiar. Apparently, they’d put the wrong tags on our bags, so that my two lost bags had Jim’s tags on them. And the lost luggage report was in his name. So poor Jim had to go in person to claim the bags. He did so without complaint and got back on those hellish roads well after midnight. I was fast asleep.

So our five days were packed with hikes, usually followed by a soak in one of the outdoor hot tubs to soothe the sore legs. And the evenings meant mingling with interesting fellow adventure seekers over beautiful food and Argentine Malbec. As always at Explora, we’ve greatly enjoyed the company of both our fellow travelers and the highly competent guides and staff at this exceptional lodge.
We also did a rafting trip one day in a vehicle I’ve never seen before — a packraft. It’s inflatable, like a raft, but it’s shaped more like a kayak.

Tomorrow we will give our sore bodies a break and catch a flight back to Buenos Aires. We’ll spend a couple days there at a hotel with a nice pool before catching our flight back home. It’s been a month of great adventure — and finally checking off that seventh continent.

From Buenos Aires, we took a 4-hour flight to Ushuaia, the capital of Argentina’s Tierra del Fuego province. Argentines call Ushuaia the southernmost city in the world. That title is in dispute with Puerto Williams, a small Chilean settlement just across the Beagle Channel, which Chile recently reclassified as a “city.”

Ushuaia’s nickname is “El Fin del Mundo,” the end of the world, and it does feel that way. It’s the launching point for 90% of the world’s cruises to Antarctica. It’s a cute town, full of provisioners of hiking and trekking gear. The streets are filled with people getting ready for adventure of some kind. The landscape is dramatic. The weather is moody. As soon as we stepped outside the airport Jim said, “This feels just like Alaska.”

We did a bit of hiking here, enjoying some spectacular views of the rugged landscape. We enjoyed some pretty good meals, appreciating both the grilled meats that are ubiquitous in Argentina and the seafood plentiful here in this sea facing town. And of course we found ourselves combing the town with all the other adventure seekers for last minute provisions. We are about to get on a boat for 18 days, and I really don’t want to run out of toothpaste.

Here we are at the start of a month-long trip down to Argentina, where eventually we’ll board a ship for Antarctica before coming up to Patagonia for six days of hiking. Having never been to Antarctica we’ve been pretty excited about the trip. First stop, three days in Buenos Aires.

Buenos Aires is one of our favorite cities, though oddly we only came here once on our long nomadic adventure. It’s a city with great food, great wine, great restaurants, great neighborhoods, nice parks, and often a nice climate. It’s relatively inexpensive and yet has a distinctly European vibe to it. From the East Coast you fly nearly straight south, meaning there’s practically no jet lag. Lots to love about this place.

Now, having been here a few times before there wasn’t a lot that we needed to see or do. Still, we made an effort to be good tourists. In addition to doing a lot of walking around we spent one morning touring the Teatro Colón, BA’s opera house. I don’t think we’d ever been in it before but since we now spend so much time at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, and since we’d heard great things about the opera house here, we figured we’d give it a shot.

Built at the end of the 18th century it has that old, grand European feel to it. Beautiful inside, lots of gold and pretend gold. Allegedly the acoustics are supposed to be great, but I suspect every opera house tells you their acoustics are great. All in all it was a great 15-minute tour but sadly they took 50 minutes to do it – just a lot of time standing around with kind of stupid questions. “Did you think it was beautiful?”, as though anyone would say that it was just OK.

The good note was that they warned us that since the crew was preparing for an opening on Saturday, the main theater would be dark. You’d be able to see inside but it wouldn’t be lit. And sure enough when we went in it was pretty dark. But after a few minutes of admiring it in the dark (maybe extra time just standing around wasn’t such a bad thing…) on came the lights as part of their testing. So we got to see it in its luminous glory and it was pretty impressive.

The other piece of culture for us was a morning in the Museum of Fine Arts. While there were lots of Argentine artists represented, the museum had its share of great artists: Monet, Picasso, Rodin, Van Gogh, Pollack, Goya, Tintoretto … you know, those guys. A fun little diversion.

There was one little crisis during our stay when Mark got a message that it was time to check in for our 5:00 AM flight to Ushuaia. What? We’d booked an 11:00 AM flight. Turns out they rescheduled that flight to a crazy early time and had a different flight going at 11:10. And instead of obviously moving us to the 11:10, there we were on this insanely early flight. It took Mark well more than an hour to rebook us – the new 11:10 flight was full so we had to do a 1:10 flight instead – which was obviously pretty annoying.

The highlight here, though, is the food and restaurant scene. We stayed in a cute little hotel, the Home Hotel, in the Palermo Hollywood neighborhood which is ground zero for great little restaurants. Probably our favorite was a place called Heirro which, not entirely coincidentally, was in the space that once housed Mark’s favorite restaurant when he studied Spanish here for a month back in 2013. Lunch the first day consisted of a few appetizers, while dinner the last night was a couple appetizers, a big steak, and an arugula salad. All great.

And thus went the opening of this little adventure. It was great flying out of New York’s cold weather – where allegedly a big storm is brewing this weekend – into the ’70s and low ’80s with low humidity of a BA summer. Apparently it’s getting hotter here over the next few days but by then we’ll be in Ushuaia on the very southern tip of the continent. So far at least, off to a good start!