From Perito Moreno I continued north to my next base of operations, Esquel, another pleasant and convenient Argentinian town. This is the gateway town to another of Patagonia’s wonderful national parks, Los Alerces. Alerce is a type of giant cypress tree native to this part of the world that they say can live up to 3000 years old. However, the national park is home to the Alerce Milenario, a tree that scientists have determined is between 5000-5400 years old! This would more than likely make it the oldest living tree in the world. But, my exploration began in another part of the park to see some waterfalls.

This first place I went to is privately owned, Cascadas Nant y Fall. It’s actually three waterfalls and none of them are named Nant or Fall. Whatever! They built a nice family friendly boardwalk and charge a hefty fee, but the waterfalls and the views are pretty.

The last waterfall you come to is called La Larga. The view of the waterfall wasn’t all that great though. You’d think with the amount of money they charge there would be a better vantage point. It was a good warm up though.

Now in the not privately owned rest of the park, the first thing I noticed was how beautiful the views are from every turn. It’s also quite a bit warmer up here and the wind has miraculously stopped. Only a nice gentle breeze. The weather is perfect right now.

The second thing I noticed was that wildflowers are blooming everywhere, especially these yellow guys. They line the sides of just about every mile of road in the park. Spring has definitely sprung in this part of the country. You can smell them on the breeze too. It’s really wonderful!

In addition to the trees, this part of Patagonia is referred to as Argentina’s lake district. There are several lakes here and the main road through the park kind of runs along all of them. Most of the sites this first day were just one really short hike after another. My second stop was Bahía de los Palos on the shore of Lago Situacion at the southern end of the park.

Just down the road from there was Cascada de los Tambores. There was a railing. There was a sign forbidding crossing of the railing. I may or may not have crossed the railing to get this picture. There are advantages to exploring a mostly empty national park.

Further north near the shore of Lago Futalaufquen was this little petroglyph site. There wasn’t a whole lot of information about it, but it was a nice walk, especially with all the flowers. I’m loving the flowers.

Another bonus to the short petroglyph hike was the viewpoint on top of the giant rock. There’s a decent amount of infrastructure in this national park, but I’m really surprised how few people are here. I’m pretty much alone here for the most part. I’m not complaining, it just seems weird.

I finished up this first day with another waterfall hike to Cascada Irigoyen. There was an upper and a lower viewpoint for maximum viewing satisfaction.

After exiting the park I get to drive past the really beautiful Río Percy Valley on my way back to Esquel.

This section of the trip ended up being not quite as busy as I had planned. I had a few other longer hikes lined up as well as a boat excursion to see the Alerce Milenario, but there were some really devastating wildfires here in Los Alerces at the beginning of the year and some sections of the park are still off limits. So, I did what I could. The next day I drove deeper into the park along Lago Futalaufquen and beyond to the Lago Verde viewpoint.

As you can see in the pictures there is a LOT of fire damage. Everything here should be green now. All the brown stuff is from the fires. It’s pretty sad. But the lakes are still here and the flowers are blooming. In the pic below that’s Lago Verde in front and part of Lago Menéndez beyond it to the left. And way way off to the right you can spot Lago Rivadavia. What a fantastic view!

After that I did a longer hike up the Río Menéndez to Lago Menéndez. There’s a really stark contrast between the burnt landscape and that bright blue glacial water in the river. The water here is so clear too, you can see every rock on the bottom. I even saw a fish jump out of the water at one point. These lakes are chock full of trout!

The Río Menéndez is really short. It’s basically just a little tributary that flows from the lake into Río Arrayanes, but it sure is pretty. Then I came to the opening of the lake and followed the shore until I came to the Torrecillas Glacier viewpoint. On the way back the trail followed part of the other side of Laguna Verde. It was a good hike, but all of the fire damage was kind of a downer.

On my way out of Esquel and on the way to my next stop, I spent part of the early day exploring a couple of sites at the far north end of the park. First was a famous piece of United States history actually. In 1901, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid escaped the United States on a steamship to Buenos Aires along with Sundance’s wife, Ethel Place. They then bought over 12,000 acres of land at the foot of the Andes Mountains and built a ranch. Three structures, including the main homestead are still here. Awesome!

They were apparently very well regarded by the locals in the area, but it seems they just couldn’t behave themselves because they ended up robbing a few banks here in Argentina too. Between that and the Pinkertons reportedly closing in, they fled to Chile in 1905 and there are mixed stories about what happened to them from there. This was a really cool place to visit.

After that I made one more stop, a quick hike up to Cascada del Arroyo Hacha, right next to Lago Rivadavia. The fire damage wasn’t as extensive this far north, but there was some. It looks like the lower viewpoint was completely wiped out. Thankfully, the upper viewpoint was still intact.

On the hike back down I got a pretty good view of Lago Rivadavia. I did stop for a minute at another spot further down the road to enjoy a closer view of the lake though. Fires or not, this is a really beautiful place.

From here it was a long drive north to my next Patagonian stop, but you’ll have to wait for the next post to find out about that one. This post was much shorter than it was supposed to be, but I still have three more weeks in Argentina and a few more national parks to visit, so stay tuned…