El Chaltén is a small mountain village in Santa Cruz Province, Argentina. It is located in the riverside of Rio de las Vueltas, within the Los Glaciares National Park (section Reserva Nacional Zona Viedma) at the base of Cerro Torre and Cerro Fitz Roy mountains, both popular for climbing. For this reason this village was named Argentina’s Trekking Capital or Capital Nacional del Trekking. It was built in 1985 to help secure the disputed border with Chile. Today the sole reason for its existence is tourism. It is 220 km north of El Calafate.
In October 2014, El Chalten took second place in a ranking of “Best cities in the world to know” of the travel guide Lonely Planet publishing in 2015, being the first city of Argentina.
El Chalten
El Chaltén is in the Patagonian region of southern Argentina. El Chalten was founded in the late 70s/early 80s as an outpost of Argentina to anticipate land claims of Chile for that area. It is still a small town that is best known for being the gateway to Mt. Fitz Roy and Cerro Torres, two of the most rugged and impressive peaks in the Patagonian Andes. The growing number of hiking tourist lead to an increase in construction and in summer the town is full of tourists
