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El Calafate has become an unmissable stop on any trip through Patagonia, being the gateway town to the extraordinary Perito Moreno Glacier.
While most of the attention is on the glacier, the town provides a perfect base from which to explore, with all the amenities passing travellers need. The main street is lined with cosy cabañas, funky breweries, plenty of eateries and dozens of travel agencies.
It’s undoubtedly a touristy town that revolves almost entirely around the glacier, but we were pleasantly surprised to find that it was actually pretty cute, and we happily spent a few days here.
Whether you whiz through town, visiting only the glacier, or linger for a few days to explore more of what El Calafate has to offer, most travellers to Patagonia inevitably find themselves here for at least a short while.
Here’s everything you need to know about El Calafate, Argentina. Including transport info for getting there and around, the top things to do (yes, more than just the glacier!), where to stay, what to eat, and helpful tips about essentials like money, phones and groceries.
About El Calafate
El Calafate is popular for one reason: the Perito Moreno Glacier. Most people fly in, see the glacier and immediately shoot north to go hiking in El Chalten.
I’ll admit, we did do something similar, but instead of spending just one night in El Calafate, we stayed three. I felt like the town deserved a little extra time and exploration.
As with most destinations that exist purely to service one tourist attraction, we didn’t have high hopes. But we were pleasantly surprised to find a very cute and charming little town!
I still don’t think you need a lot of time here, and El Chalten should certainly be your priority with its many hikes, but El Calafate is by no means a disappointing destination, which is what many other travellers led us to believe.
El Calafate is located in the Santa Cruz province of Argentine Patagonia, and besides being the nearest town to the famous Perito Moreno Glacier, it’s also a major transport hub in Patagonia.
The town has an airport with daily flights to Buenos Aires and less frequent connections to neighbouring Patagonian destinations like Ushuaia and Bariloche. It’s also a very popular route to cross the border to Chile, with direct daily buses departing for Puerto Natales.
El Calafate is named after the Calafate berry, native to Patagonia. Legend has it that if you eat a calafate berry, you’ll return to Patagonia one day. Look out for calafate-flavoured foods around town – jam, ice cream, alfajores, and even beer.
The town sits on the shores of Lago Argentina, the biggest lake in the country, striking distance from the famous Los Glaciares National Park. The town is known as la tierra de los glaciares (the land of glaciers). Although most visitors know of only one, there are dozens of glaciers in the national park.
👁️🗨️ El Calafate was one stop on our trip through the Patagonia region in both Argentina and Chile. Don’t forget to browse all our posts about Argentina and Chile for more help planning your trip!
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El Calafate map
How to get to El Calafate
- ✈️ FTE Aeropuerto Internacional Comandante Armando Tola de El Calafate
- 🚌 Terminal de Ómnibus de El Calafate
It’s most common to travel to El Calafate from Puerto Natales in Chile, Buenos Aires, or a neighbouring destination in Argentine Patagonia, like Ushuaia, El Chalten or Bariloche.
If El Calafate is your first stop in Patagonia and you’re travelling from outside of Argentina, you’ll first need to fly to Buenos Aires and then follow the instructions below.
How to get around in El Calafate
There are multiple different ways to get around in El Calafate, depending on how you are travelling through Patagonia and what your budget is.
Where to stay in El Calafate
El Calafate is centred around Avenida del Libertador, so unless you’re renting a car, you’ll want to use that as your anchor point when choosing where to stay.
There are plenty of accommodations in the centre of town, but just as many great options in the streets 10, 15 or 20 minutes walk from the main strip.
Once you get off the main road, the accommodations are more often self-contained cabañas, equipped with kitchens, which is very handy if you’re on a budget as eating out in El Calafate is expensive!
We stayed about 20 minutes walk from the main strip. Unfortunately, I can’t recommend where we stayed as we had some cash stolen from our bag – avoid Cabañas Ruca Tami – but we didn’t mind the walk into town and were happy to sacrifice a bit of convenience for a fully self-contained cabin and complete silence at night.
There are some beautiful accommodations along Lago Argentina. While this is still within walking distance (if you don’t mind walking!), it’s a decent way so make sure you check the map carefully if you’re thinking of staying in this area and don’t have a car.
🛖 If you’re not fussed about being in the centre of town and your main priority is visiting the glacier and immersing yourself in the Patagonian landscapes, there are some stunning and unique stays 1 – 2 hours outside of El Calafate. Check out Estancia Patagonia Pristine Luxury Camps for some stunning glamping or Estancia Nibepo Aike to stay on a working Patagonian ranch.
BUDGET OPTIONS 💰
America del Sur Hostel
Hostelworld | Booking.com
Hostal Schilling
Hostelworld | Booking.com
Folk Suites
Hostelworld | Booking.com
MID-RANGE OPTIONS 💰💰
Mabra Suites
Booking.com | Expedia
Brillos Patagónicos
Booking.com | Expedia
Hotel Kosten Aike
Booking.com | Expedia
HIGH-END OPTIONS 💰💰💰
Los Ponchos Hotel
Booking.com | Expedia
Kau Yatún Hotel
Booking.com | Expedia
Design Suites Calafate
Booking.com | Expedia
Things to do in El Calafate
1. Visit the Perito Moreno Glacier
The sole reason why most travellers visit El Calafate, the Perito Moreno Glacier is 1000% worthy of all the hype and attention it receives.
Located 90 minutes from town in the Parque Nacional Los Glaciares, a day trip here should be your top priority in El Calafate.
The glacier is bigger than the entire city of Buenos Aires and is one of the only glaciers in the Southern Patagonia Ice Field that is advancing, not retreating. I’ve never seen anything like it.
A network of elevated boardwalks provides excellent views of the glacier, close enough to hear the ice creaking and cracking as huge chunks of ice calve off into Lago Argentina.
There are various ways you can spend a day here, with a range of transport options and different activities. If you want to visit independently, you can take the bus or rent a car and simply stroll the boardwalks, but there are also opportunities for boat tours, trekking on the glacier or kayaking.
I’ve got a detailed post about how to visit Perito Moreno Glacier, explaining and comparing all these options, but here’s a quick summary.
- Visit independently to walk the boardwalks
- 🚌 Get a bus from El Calafate
- 🚙 Rent a car and drive yourself from El Calafate
- 🚕 Hire a taxi / remis from El Calafate to drive and wait for you
- Visit on a tour that includes transport from El Calafate
2. Explore town
El Calafate is a touristy town, but we actually thought it was pretty cute. There’s not much to it, but while you’re here, you may as well walk around and explore a little!
A few sights to pop into your map while you wander:
- 📷 Plaza de los Pioneros & Letras de El Calafate: a little park and lookout above the main road with the typical town letters that are common in many Latin American towns!
- 🌲 Intendencia Parque Nacional Los Glaciares: a very small park/museum/information centre with some old machinery and a little bit of the history of El Calafate and the Los Glaciares National Park. Nothing special.
- 🛍️ Paseo de Artesanos: if you want to buy some souvenirs, this alleyway has a handful of stalls selling all kinds of trinkets and handicrafts. Mostly open in the evenings.
- 🦆 Lago Argentina: you should make your way down to the lakeshore at some point. There is a lovely malecon (promenade) running for quite some way, which is lovely for a stroll. There is another set of ‘El Calafate’ letters on the waterfront too.
- 🦩 Laguna Nimez: a small lagoon/wetland area on the lake a couple of kilometres from town where you can see hundreds of species of birds, including flamingoes at certain times of the year. It’s on private land, and the entrance fee for foreigners is a little steep at 12,000 ARS (~$10 USD at current exchange rate).
3. Go horseriding
Situated in the flat and arid Patagonian steppe, the area around El Calafate is full of estancias. These large sheep and cattle farms are an intrinsic part of Patagonian culture, and horses are part and parcel of everyday life on the ranch.
These days, many of the estancias have added tourism to their repertoire, and you can take a ride around the scenic landscapes, overlooking the snow-capped mountains of Los Glaciares National Park and Lago Argentina.
This wasn’t something we initially planned to do in El Calafate, but at the last minute, we found a sunset horse ride with Cerro Frias, and it turned out to be such a highlight!
Watching the sky turn golden over Lago Argentina on horseback with a traditional Argentine gaucho next to us was a very special experience. We topped it off with a hearty dinner in the ranch house with a roaring fire and a glass of Malbec – it doesn’t get more Patagonian than that!
🐎 You can read all about our experience here or book your horse ride here
4. Learn about glaciers at the Glaciarium
El Calafate is known as the la tierra de los glaciares (the land of glaciers), and most activities around here involve glaciers, so it makes sense that you should learn a bit about them!
The Glaciarium is an interactive museum dedicated to glaciers. It’s not big, but we found it really interesting and well done.
Coming from Australia, we knew nothing about glaciers or ice, and we wanted to have a deeper understanding of what glaciers are, how they’re formed, how they change, etc., before we went to the Perito Moreno Glacier. The museum was the perfect place.
They also have a ‘Glaciobar’ where you can have a drink in a bar entirely made of ice!
Entrance to the Glaciarium is 20,000 ARS (~$18 USD at current exchange rate). If you want to also add the Glaciobar, the combo is 30,000 ARS (~$27 USD). It’s not cheap, but nothing is in El Calafate, and we thought it was worth the cost.
The Glaciarium is open 7 days a week from 12:00 pm – 8:00 pm.
The museum is located about 15 minutes outside of town, but cleverly they run a free shuttle from the town centre if you don’t have a car.
It departs this location every hour on the hour from 12:00 pm – 6:00 pm.
It returns from the museum every hour on the half hour from 1:30 pm – 7:30 pm, with one final shuttle at 8:00 pm when it closes.
5. Todos Glaciares boat tour
If seeing one glacier isn’t enough, there is a popular tour in El Calafate called the Todos Glaciares (All Glaciers) tour.
It’s an all-day cruise on Lago Argentina, where you will visit five glaciers, including Upsala, Spegazzini, and Perito Moreno. You’ll sail past icebergs almost as big as the ship and get a close-up view of these spectacular icy wonders.
The tour takes place on a big, comfortable catamaran with lots of outdoor viewing decks. You can come inside if you’re chilly and move back to the decks as you approach a glacier. Lunch is included on-board.
There is the option to disembark at Perito Moreno Glacier and have a few hours to explore the boardwalks. While you could combine both activities into one day, I personally think it’s worth spending a day at Perito Moreno Glacier on its own, so you don’t rush through the park’s boardwalks, and then do this tour on a separate day. Trust me, you won’t be sad to see it twice, it is that spectacular!
⛴️ Book your Todos Glaciares tour here
Where to eat in El Calafate
Eating out in El Calafate is expensive.
I think we had some major sticker shock, as this was our first destination in Argentina, and we weren’t yet used to the new normal of high prices with their insane inflation and loss of the Blue Dollar.
We couldn’t find many (really any!) sit-down restaurants where we could get a meal for less than 30,000 ARS (~$27 USD) each. If USD is your native currency and you’re on a short holiday, this won’t feel so bad for you. But as long-term travellers from Australia with our crappy currency, we found this insanely expensive and couldn’t justify the cost.
We got creative and found a few cheaper places for take-away options, but otherwise, we cooked all our meals here.
These recommendations are a mix of the cheaper spots we did find, and all the places we had planned to eat at before the prices went crazy (🥲). Hopefully your budget is a bit bigger than ours and you can enjoy them!
CAFES, BREAKFAST & SWEET TREATS
- 🥐 Panaderia Don Luis: a very popular bakery/cafe with great sweets, cakes, pastries and empanadas. You can sit down for a meal, but we just grabbed some empanadas take-away and they were best we had in town. 2,000 pesos and they were big and well-filled.
- ☕️ Miles Coffee House: the best coffee in town, with a proper espresso machine! They have a small range of pastries and sweet treats too.
- 🥖 Pantagonia: a German bakery/cafe, they have delicious sourdough bread, pretzels and all kinds of tasty sweet treats. They make nice coffee and have brunch combos with eggs, pastries etc.
RESTAURANTS
- 🍗 Doña Mecha: a very local, primarily take-away spot specialising in milanesa. They have a few tables outside but we were told we had to purchase a drink to sit there. The milanesas are HUGE and given everything else in town was so expensive, we easily stretched one serve into two dinners for both of us. They also do milanesa sandwiches and empanadas. 10% fee to pay on card, bring cash.
- 🍝 Buenos Cruces Pasta Bar: homemade pastas and a 4.8/5 rating – what’s not to love? It’s not cheap cheap, but very reasonably priced. You can choose from the chef’s specials, or build your own choosing which type of pasta and what sauce you’d like.
- 🥘 Isabel Cocina al Disco: ‘al disco’ is a traditional Patagonian dish, a stew typically cooked in a deep pan over an open fire. The perfect hearty meal for a chilly evening in El Calafate, the lamb and guanaco options here look delicious. The meals are designed to be shared between two.
BARS, WINERIES & NIGHTLIFE
- 🍸 La Oveja Negra: this gin distillery cum brewery looked super cute from the outside. We didn’t try it (budget, ya know), but it looked the funkiest of all the breweries in town.
- 🍻 La Zorra Taproom: a very popular brewery with outdoor picnic tables and festoon lights, perfect for a sunny day, but inside is cosy if it’s cold. They have happy hour daily from 5:00 pm – 7:00 pm with select beers on special and combos with food.
- 🍷 Baltha Bar De Vinos: if your Argentina itinerary extends further than Patagonia, chances are you’ll save the wine tastings for later. But if you’d like to dip your toes into the wine scene (from Patagonia and beyond), this bar does excellent tastings and provides great explanations of the wine industry in Argentina.
Things to know before visiting El Calafate
- 🌤️ Best time to visit: like all of Patagonia, the best time to visit El Calafate is generally in the warmer months between October – April. Although you should expect wild weather at any time of the year, with rain, wind, snow and sun always possible – this is Patagonia after all!
In spring (October and November), the weather is starting to warm up, and the crowds haven’t arrived yet. You should still expect a fair amount of snow around, but things are thawing, and flowers are blooming.
Summer (December, January and February) is peak season, and you should expect big crowds, both domestic and international travellers. Although temperatures are warmer, the famous Patagonian winds are at their wildest.
Early fall (March and April) still has beautiful sunny days, less wind, fewer crowds and stunning autumn colours. We visited El Calafate in mid-March and were blessed with absolutely perfect weather and didn’t find it overly busy.
- 🗓️ How long to stay: you don’t need a long time in El Calafate. There’s plenty to do, and you could stay a while if you wanted to, but chances are you will be doing similar activities in other destinations around Patagonia, and you don’t need to double up. Some people recommend just one night to see the glacier, but I think 2 – 3 nights is a safer bet and allows for bad weather.
- ⚠️ Safety: El Calafate, and all of Patagonia really, is very safe. We had no concerns or problems anywhere around town and felt very comfortable here.
- 🗣️ Language: Spanish is the official language of Argentina and of course, is the primary language in El Calafate. This is a touristy town, so some people do speak English, but probably not as many as you’d think. If you’re taking tours, many guides will speak English, but we found in most restaurants, shops, buses etc. people did not speak English. Brush up on your Spanish and have your Google Translate handy.
- 💰 Currency: the currency in Argentina is the Argentine Peso (ARS). The country is experiencing an economic crisis and major inflation, and there is the existence of a dual exchange rate known as the ‘Blue Dollar’. As of 2025, the Blue Dollar rate is not that different from the official exchange rate, despite being almost double in the past. Despite this, sourcing cash remains difficult as ATMs are rarely stocked, and even when they are, they dispense only a tiny amount for an exorbitant fee at the lower, official exchange rate.
So although bringing foreign currency to exchange is no longer as beneficial in terms of savings, it’s still a valid method for obtaining cash and you will find many ‘cambios’ (exchange houses) around towns. Most restaurants, tour agencies, shops etc. will also exchange US Dollars and sometimes Euros for Argentine Pesos, and/or accept these foreign currencies for payment.
You can pay by card pretty much everywhere in El Calafate but many businesses do charge a fee (up to 10%) or alternatively offer a discount (usually 10 – 15%) for paying in cash, so having some cash is handy.
- 💧 Can you drink the water: yes the tap water is safe to drink in El Calafate. Triple check with your accommodation before you go guzzling, but the water in Patagonia is some of the freshest and cleanest in the world.
Amenities in El Calafate
- 🏧 Western Union and cambios: there are a handful of Western Union branches in El Calafate, you can search the locations on the Western Union website. Don’t expect them to have any money – they were all out when we visited.
Most restaurants in town will exchange currency (US Dollars at the very least) and some have signs with their rate out the front. We successfully exchanged cash in El Calafate at Casimiro Bigua and we were told Pietro’s Cafe will also change money.
- 🛒 Supermarkets: the major supermarket in El Calafate is La Anonima, but we found it very expensive (it’s a great chain in other cities, just super pricey here!). We preferred Distrisur, which was up the other end of Av. Libertador. We found it much cheaper, and they had a better selection of produce and bakery goods.
- 📱 Phone stores: Movistar, Claro and Personal are the major phone providers in Argentina, and unfortunately, none of them have stores in El Calafate, if this is your first destination in Argentina as it was for us.
There is a lot of mixed information about purchasing and activating a SIM card as a tourist in Argentina however we were able to work it out. We purchased one Claro SIM card from the Panda supermarket, and followed the instructions to activate it online. The process was straightforward and the SIM was activated within an hour. We then topped it up at a kiosk. We also bought a pre-activated Claro SIM card from El Cubo Store FTE and topped it up on the spot.
Final thoughts: El Calafate travel guide
El Calafate was a necessary but lovely stop on our Patagonia itinerary.
The Perito Moreno Glacier is so outstanding that even if the town was a dump, I’d still encourage you to visit. Luckily, it’s a pretty charming, albeit expensive, base to visit the glacier from.
I can almost guarantee you’ll end up in El Calafate at some point during your Patagonia travels, and I hope this guide is helpful for planning your time here.
📍 Where to next? If you’re travelling through Patagonia, your next stop will most likely be El Chalten or Ushuaia in Argentina or Puerto Natales in Chile, depending on which direction you’re moving.
MORE EL CALAFATE POSTS
