For Travel + Leisure. ‘On the Patagonian steppe, beauty reveals itself in whispers, not screams.’ The once sleepy El Calafate and El Chalten, now Argentina’s trekking capital, are both launchpads to the South Patagonian Ice Fields. The region’s unrelenting wind and streams of water have turned snow into ice, set against a backdrop of bald-faced granite domes and teal lagoons.