El Chaltén

Top walks around El Chaltén

Trekking in Patagonia is a highlight for many travelers to South America, and it’s never been easier than from Argentina’s 'trekking capital', the village-cum-fledgling-city of El Chaltén. Whether you prefer to rise late and dawdle the afternoon away next to picturesque tarns, or enjoy getting fully tooled for a week-long epic out on Hielos Sur (the Southern Patagonian Icecap), Chaltén has it all.

Monte Fitz Roy / Image by Steve Waters / Lonely Planet

Steve Waters

Lonely Planet Writer

The best hiking in Patagonia and Tierra Del Fuego

The south of Chile and Argentina is a hiker’s dream. The melange of craggy mountains crowned with glaciers and glistening with waterfalls, scrubland dotted with pale glacial lakes, flowering meadows, marshlands, and windblown cliffs that skirt the Magellan Strait present countless opportunities for exploration on foot.

From day hikes to a week-long trek around Tierra Del Fuego’s most inhospitable mountain range, here are our five favourite hikes in the region.

Anna Kaminski

Lonely Planet Writer

10 things to do in Patagonia

Coastal treasures, ancient forests, dazzling glaciers and incredible wildlife - Patagonia's captured your imagination, but where do you start? We've cherrypicked a few Patagonian delights from the latest Argentina guidebook to get you started:

Patagonia offers some of the world's best whale-watching and Puerto Madryn is the place to glimpse them. Its warm, more enclosed waters along the Golfo Nuevo, Golfo San José and the coastline near Caleta Valdés are prime breeding zones for southern right whales between June and mid-December. A standard whale-watching trip lasts an hour and a half, but longer excursions are available too.

Lonely Planet

Lonely Planet Writer