A no-frills Andean town in Chubut where an old steam train still hauls tourists across the Patagonian steppe.
Esquel doesn’t try to charm you, and that’s precisely what I liked about it. After the postcard perfection of Bariloche, a few hours north, arriving in this working Andean town felt like exhaling. Lia and I got off the bus into a grid of unassuming streets, sheep-wool shops, and a mountain backdrop that nobody had bothered to advertise. It’s a town that exists for its own residents first. Tourists are a secondary consideration, and I mean that as a compliment.
Riding La Trochita
The reason most people detour here is La Trochita — the Old Patagonian Express — a narrow-gauge steam railway built in the 1940s to serve wool-shipping estancias before roads made sense of the distances. It still runs a short tourist route out of Esquel, and boarding it felt less like a museum piece and more like time travel with a working engine. The carriages are wood-paneled, heated by a potbelly stove, and the whole train rattles along at a pace that makes twenty kilometers feel like an afternoon well spent. I loved every inch of that slowness.
Lia struck up a conversation with the conductor, a man who’d worked the line for over two decades, and he told her the train nearly closed for good in the 1990s before locals and rail enthusiasts fought to keep at least this stretch alive. Listening to him, I understood the train isn’t really about the destination — it loops back to where it started — it’s about protecting something that refuses to disappear quietly.
The Town Around It
Beyond the railway, Esquel is a springboard into Los Alerces National Park, a cathedral of ancient alerce trees and turquoise lakes that gets a fraction of Bariloche’s crowds. We didn’t make it that far on this trip, but the guesthouse owner where we stayed spoke about it with the kind of quiet pride locals reserve for things they don’t need outsiders to validate. In town, we ate a lamb asado at a family-run parrilla where the fire had clearly been going since morning, and the smoke smell followed us back to the hotel.
When to go: December through March for the best weather and full rail schedule, though La Trochita runs a reduced service through the shoulder seasons too. I went in January and had warm days and cold, clear nights — ideal for a town that rewards slowing down.