Viewing Fitz Roy and the glacial lakes

Great holiday

PC is an amazing facility. We loved the bar and the meals, excellent staff and food. Our individual yurt didn't have a great view. For some reason, PC allows the bushes to grow and block the views of Toro lake. Also our yurt overlooked the main lodge. However, we didn't't spend much time as we were on excursions, just a missed opportunity on PC's part. The staff are great, with the exception of the excursions coordinator - more below.

We went with our heart set on the tough, but amazing Base of the Towers excursion. During the briefing, we were given information that was inconsistent with reports from those that did the excursion, and from trip reports. The excursion leader seemed to overstate the risk/challenge - we understood this would be a tough climb, but she described climbing at a 60 degree angle (mountain climbing) up ladders with helmets. So we chose to skip this trip. We spoke with others that returned from this excursion who had more accurate information, and were disappointed by the inaccurate briefing. There were some language issues, e.g. the highest altitude vs altitude gained. We questioned the 60 degree climbing angle several times and the leader got frustrated with us. Maybe an adventure for a future trip. 2 of the 3 excursions we did take based upon recommendations were a bit blah, one was a farm road (Paine Massif overlook) and the other required bushwhacking through thick brush because the water level was up blocking the trail. The French Valley hike was spectacular.. On our tour to Fitz Roy, the guide told us he was sick (and we were spending 10 hours with him) so we tried to keep distance. He is an accomplished mountain climber, and frankly that is all he talked about. 90% of his conversation was which mountain he climbed, which approach, where he backcountry skied... Several times we said that we weren't into climbing, but into hiking - hoping he would get the hint, unsuccessful. A guide would be nice if they added flavor to the hike, in this case the trail was easy to follow (and crowded) and we really did not benefit from this guide.

Swoop did a great job preparing us for the trip. Luckily, we got great weather, e.g. little to no wind and minimal rain sprinkles. We always took our rain and cold gear with us just in case, but lucked out and hiked in t-shirts most of the time. The guides kept saying 'this is not typical for Patagonia'.

We loved El Calafate, great hotel. El Chalten is a city on the rise, today there seem to be high end and low end restaurants. We were challenged getting reservations to the better restaurants, and the lower end weren't great So book early.

I was impressed by the scenery, the friendliness of the people, excellent food in Chile, less so in Argentina. I learned that Chile and Argentina are economically challenged, the remote areas get little federal support, and one can see that the large influx of of visitors is challenging the infrastructure and staffing.

Swoop was great, exceptional support even while on the trip. Would use Swoop again and highly recommend.

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