We didn't plan to go to El Chaltén originally. But there is not much to do at El Calafate besides the Perito Moreno Glacier, and we found out we could do El Chaltén as a day trip when we were in El Calafate, so we bought the tickets (1,600 Argentina Pesos PP, which is about $43).
Basically, it was just round-trip bus tickets. They did do hotel pickups from 7 am to 7:45 am using a shuttle. The double decker bus was supposed to leave the bus terminal at 8 am, but the hotel pickups took longer than schedule and we arrived at the bus station after 8 am, so the bus didn't leave until 8:10 am. Took about 3 hours to get to El Chaltén and we had to stop at a national park office just outside El Chaltén to get a quick introduction about area trails first.
The return bus leaves at 6 pm, so we got about 6 hours, enough to hike to Friz Roy Viewpoint and Laguna Capri. We started our walk around 11:30 am, took 20 minutes to walk through the town and reached the trail head. Started hiking around 12 pm. Took an hour to reach the Friz Roy Viewpoint. The mountain was covered in cloud on top even though it was kind of a sunny day. We waited quite a while but the mountain just refused to show its whole face that day :(
1. El Chaltén.
2. Walking to the trailhead.
3. Friz Roy Trailhead.
4.
5.
6. Friz Roy Viewpoint.
7. Friz Roy.
8. Friz Roy.
9. Laguna Capri.
10. Laguna Capri.
11. Friz Roy from Laguna Capri.
12. El Chaltén.
13. El Chaltén.
14. Our bus at a bathroom stop.
(The End)
P.S. $1 was about 670 Chilean Pesos and 37 Argentina Pesos in Nov / Dec 2018.
