I travelled to Patagonia with my good friend, Sumin in March of 2025 - the beginning of fall in the Patagonia region. Our trip started in Punta Arenas where we rented a car with Europcar. We flew into Punta Arenas for several reasons: 1) More rental car options, 2) More flight options if our flight was to get delayed. From Punta Arenas, it was about a 3.5 hour drive to Puerto Natales - where we fueled up our rental car before heading into Torres del Paine. The road to Puerto Natales was excellent - fully paved with no major potholes. However, the ~95 km road from Puerto Natales to the south entrance of Torres del Paine (Rio Serrano) was terrible. It was paved for about the first 10 km - to Cueva Milodon - and then turned into a mix of paved and gravel road, before going almost entirely to gravel for the last ~40 km. In this section, we had to watch for potholes and drive much slower. Additionally, the Chilean tourist vans do not slow down or move out of the way - which made for an interesting driving experience on this narrow gravel road! However, this road is definitely driveable even in a sedan and was an absolutely stunning way to enter the park - as the mountains grow bigger and bigger as you keep driving. Our total driving time to Pehoe Lake from the Punta Arenas airport was almost 5 hours. We spent our first night at Camping Pehoe - on the shores of beautiful Pehoe Lake right in the heart of Torres del Paine National Park. Camping Pehoe was fantastic. Each campsite has a wind shelter, which is very helpful, and a flat area for our tent. Additionally, there are flush toilets and showers that are clean and in good condition. We reserved a campsite in advance but found that there was plenty of availability and we could have just walked in both nights we were there. Finally, there is a very nice main building, with a little camp store - which carries ramen/other camping food, fuel, and hiking snacks like protein bars. The building also had a nice restaurant. The food was good (nothing special) but the views were the truly spectacular part!

Our view from Camping Pehoe - not too bad!

The next day, we took the first boat across beautiful Lake Pehoe from Pudeto - Paine Grande (8:30 AM) and hiked all the way to Mirador Britanico. The hike ended up being close to 20 miles but was absolutely stunning. One thing to note is the trail condition once you enter the French Valley (Trail to Miradors Frances and Britanico) is not good at all. It is incredibly steep and rocky, which makes the hike much more difficult as you rapidly ascend up the valley. The views make it worth it though!

We arrived back to Paine Grande at 5:00 and barely missed the 2nd to last boat back to Pudeto. The last boat left at 6:40 but was completely booked online. Since we had paid in cash for our journey to Paine Grande, I was a bit concerned that we would not be able to make it back to Pudeto. However, even though the boat was entirely full, they still let every person that did not have a ticket (AKA paid in cash to get there) on the boat to return. As we were getting on the boat, I overheard one of the local guides talking to the boat operator about how they ALWAYS let everyone that paid in cash return back to Pudeto. I can’t guarantee that this will always be true, but it was encouraging to hear! That night, we stayed at Hosteria Pehoe - which is located on a small island in Pehoe Lake. This was my favorite night of our trip. I had seen reviews online that complained about paying ~$250 USD for a glorified Motel 6. I did not feel like this was the case. The room wasn't anything special - but it was perfectly clean and had a warm shower (+ shampoo/conditioner/soap). The special part about this accommodation was the main building. It is a small chalet-type building with a dining room, an upstairs reading room, and fast, free WiFi. When we walked into the main building after checking in, we found that there was a table reserved for each room for dinner. Dinner was ~$45 USD for 3 courses + a drink. The food was excellent all the way around! It was my favorite meal of the trip and when combined with the insane mountain views - it was an awesome experience! In the morning, there was a free breakfast and the same beautiful views!

After catching a beautiful sunrise, we drove ~45 minutes to the Torres del Paine Welcome Center and the trailhead for the Base Torres hike. This hike ended up being close to 13 miles and took us about 6 hours total. This trail is in slightly better condition than Britanico, but is still a tough trail once you get close to the top. Base Torres itself was incredible and totally worth the 12+ miles, 3000+ feet of elevation gain!

After completing this hike, since we had absolutely incredible weather, we decided to head straight to Argentina and try to catch a weather window in El Chalten and at Mount Fitz Roy. From the Base Torres trailhead, it was a bit over an hour to Paso Don Guillermo (which is the northern border crossing into Argentina from Torres del Paine). Chilean exit immigration was very easy. All you need is your passport and the PDI slip given when you enter the country! At customs, we needed to provide our rental car paperwork + the passport and we were able to head to Argentina. Chilean and Argentinian passport control are not adjacent to each other. After going through the Chilean side, we drove an 8 km paved road to the actual border. Once we reached Argentina, the road turned to dirt with plenty of potholes! It was about 4 km to the border station from here. The Argentine side of everything was very similar. We needed our passports for immigration and passport + rental car paperwork for customs. The road continued to be dirt for the next 6 kms before we were able to turn onto pavement. From here, we drove a bit over 3 hours on good, paved roads to reach El Calafate (we avoided a “shortcut” and instead stayed on paved roads and went through Esperanza). Right before we reached El Calafate, we had to go through a checkpoint. The officers at the checkpoint asked for our passports before letting us through. We spent the night in El Calafate at Destino El Calafate - which was a nice clean hotel with a free breakfast in the morning.

The next morning, we continued heading towards El Chalten and Fitz Roy. It took us about 2.5 hours to make it to El Chalten. From here, we headed up into the mountains to take some pictures and take advantage of the beautiful weather we had! Since we were slightly ahead of schedule, we found same day availability at Hosteria Kau Si Aike - which was clean and a nice, cheap room. That night, we ate at Patagonicus, which was quite tasty. The next morning, we realized that we basically had only one more day of good weather, so we decided to wake up early and hike as much as possible. We hiked to Laguna de los Tres first - which was absolutely stunning but a tough hike. Then, we took the connector trail over to the Cerro Torre area and found a viewpoint about halfway up the trail to Laguna Torre. From here, it was about 3 miles back to El Chalten. Our day ended up being ~20 miles, but we saw everything we had travelled so far to see! For the next two nights, we stayed in an AirBnB called Kuka - which was a great experience and about $100 per night. The next day, we explored the town of El Chalten and ate (too many) empanadas!

We then headed back to El Calafate the next morning and continued onto Perito Moreno Glacier - about two hours past El Calafate. Tickets cost ~$45 USD (which felt like highway robbery) but the glacier was absolutely incredible. That night, we spent the night in El Calafate at Amigo del Mundo Hosteria for ~$50. Again, the room was clean with a warm shower and free breakfast. Not much more I could ask for!

The next morning, we woke up decently early and headed back to Chile. While leaving El Calafate, we had decided that we had enough gas to get back to Chile, thru Torres del Paine and refuel in Puerto Natales. We ate a nice breakfast and snagged some extra croissants/scones and hit the road. We went back through the city checkpoint - again having to give our passports to the officers. After leaving town, we went up a big hill and got gorgeous views of Fitz Roy - about 150 miles away. We then dodged guanacos for about an hour and AGAIN did not fill up with gas in Esperanza. It was not until right near the Chilean border did we realize we might be in for an interesting drive (the projected range dropped below our total distance). We immediately switched into eco-driving mode as we crossed the border. The Argentinian border crossing was very easy again - we were able to bypass a couple tour buses but had to wait on others (on the way in, all they wanted to know was where we were staying in El Calafate). The Chilean side was more strict (but it was nice to get on pavement and off of the awful Argentine road to the border). In Chile, we had to go through immigration and customs (aduanas) and additionally had to have an officer come check our rental car for food, as we did not pre-declare that we had no fruits/vegetables with SAG beforehand. Anyways, we were eventually waved through and continued our eco-driving to Torres del Paine and Camping Pehoe. We took a very scenic drive along Lago Sarmiento through the Patagonian steppe and checked in at the guard gate. After about 30 minutes, we reached Pudeto and hiked about 4 miles (out-and-back) to the Cuernos viewpoint (passing the scenic Salto Grande waterfall). This was a great hike that I would totally do again - it had beautiful views of the bright blue Lago Nordenskjold and the Paine Massif behind it. The clouds even cleared for a few minutes, allowing us to see the top of Paine Grande for just a little bit. After this, we checked into our Camping Pehoe campsite and used the extra time in our afternoon to hike up to the Condor viewpoint. This was a 2 mile, 800 foot climb to the summit of the hill and had amazing views of the mountains and Lago Pehoe below. There was even an option to hike down to Hosteria Pehoe and of course we saw plenty of guanacos near the top. The wind was absolutely insane at the top of the hill. After the hike, we set up our tent and enjoyed the beautiful mountain views. Paine Grande never came out the rest of the day but it was beautiful nonetheless. After, we ate dinner at Camping Pehoe - the chicken was much better than the steak and the sauce with their rolls was fantastic - I put it on the chicken! Then we headed back out for a bit and went to bed early. The next morning, we woke up for sunrise - which was good but not perfectly clear, enjoyed the mountains for about 45 minutes, and then began the beautiful, but curvy, swervy drive back to Puerto Natales.

We were now battling our fuel tank and had both done our fair share of worrying about it the previous night. But after about 30 kilometers of elite eco-driving, we had determined that we would make it to town with gas to spare, which took a bit of pressure off and we were able to dodge potholes and enjoy our drive back to town. In town, we got gas, took some pictures, stopped at a coffee shop, and stepped into a gift shop. Coming into town, we saw the nice, touristy side of Puerto Natales - something we didn’t really see on the way in! From here, the drive was straightforward and pretty - about 3.5 hours back to the Punta Arenas airport. We took pictures as the Patagonian steppe gave way to an Antarctic landscape scattered with fall foliage. We drove through some small Chilean hamlets and got gas about 30 minutes away from the airport - which was awesome because that meant that we wouldn’t need to drive extra into Punta Arenas to fuel up. Finally, when we arrived at the airport, we cleaned out the car, grabbed one last (terrible) set of empanadas, went through security, and enjoyed a very scenic flight back to Santiago - passing over the Patagonian Icefields with spectacular views of both Torres del Paine and Los Glaciares (both Perito Moreno and the Fitz Roy Massif).

In Santiago, we went through the foreign terminal security, through Santiago Duty Free (Sumin bought some cigarettes and chocolates), and we got both Dunkin and McDonalds in the beautiful Santiago foreign terminal (much nicer than the domestic one) as we were both starving. The McDonalds was legitimately the second-best meal we had on our entire trip! I grabbed a cool tote bag for my mom and we got on our flight to Atlanta (after a flight attendant confiscated my sparkling water). Once we landed, (I was actually able to sleep about 5 hours) we went through immigration and customs, got our bags, checked them back in, and then got Dunkin one last time. Then, after a short delay and a two-hour flight back to Austin, my dad picked us up, dropped Sumin off, and drove us home. That was the end to one of the most incredible trips I have ever taken.

Patagonia: A Trip Report from the Bottom of the World

Andrew Seidel Photography

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