El Calafate is a city in Patagonia, Argentina. It is situated in the southern border of Lake Argentino, in the southwest part of the Santa Cruz Province, about 320 km Northwest of Río Gallegos. The name of the city is derived from a little bush with yellow flowers and dark blue berries that is very common in Patagonia: the calafate (Berberis buxifolia); the word comes from the word “calafate”, which is Spanish for “caulk”.
El Calafate is an important tourist destination as the hub to visit different parts of the Los Glaciares National Park, including the Perito Moreno Glacier and the Cerro Chaltén and Cerro Torre.
Our flight was at 1:20 pm from the local Aeroparque Jorge Newberry airport in Buenos Aires. This is a domestic airport with only one runway. The airport is right next to the river Rio Plata. The airport is very modern, but small.
We took the Aerolineas Argentinas flight from Buenos Aires to El Calafate.
In the lounge waiting for the flight to El Calafate.
May 27 at 2 pm. Flying from Buenos Aires to el calafate, the southern most part of Argentina. That region is known as Patagonia. What you see in the photos below are pictures of the Atlantic coast.
As we landed in El Calafate, we saw a beautiful meandering river, Rio Santa Cruz, which ends in Lago Argentino (Argentina Lake) near El Calafate.
We reached El Calafate airport around 4:45 pm.
We took a taxi from El Calafate airport to the city center which was a distance of about 21 km. Cost was 300 Argentina Pesos (about $30) per taxi. The roads were really good.
We stayed at Puerto San Julian hotel. It was a 10 minute walk from the city center. Nice and cozy hotel. Rooms were quite nice.
We took a walk to El Calafate center in the evening.
El Calafate town hall 🙂 It is a small town. It is only important because of its nearness to Perito Moreno glacier.
We ate at a small sandwich shop. We got pasta, sandwiches, fries etc.
It was quite cold around 2 C. We walked back at around 9 pm. We got some money changed at Illy Cafe. In Argentina, the official rate is about 9 pesos per US Dollar. But unofficially people will give up to 12.5 pesos to a dollar. That makes a huge difference. We converted most of our cash US dollars into pesos rather than use credit cards.
We paid for the glacier mini-trek tour (about 920 argentinian Pesos per person). We also arranged for a taxi from El Calafate to Perito Moreno and back (about 3200 pesos) for six people.
