We came when there was only forest here.
Patagonia Eco Domes opened in 2014, fifteen kilometers from El Chaltén, on the road that climbs toward Lago del Desierto. We were among the first to stay the night on this side of the valley, where the village falls out of sight and what remains is the forest, the river and the mountain.
The project began with a simple question: how to welcome people to a place like this without harming it. The answer was light domes, resting on eight hectares of lenga beech forest and streams, powered by the sun and warmed by wood fires. A decade later, the question is the same, and so is the answer.
Warmed by firewood. Lit by the sun.
We do not do it to earn a label. We do it because it is the only honest way to live in a place like this: taking little, giving back all we can.
Wood-fire warmth
Each dome is warmed by its own wood-burning stove, and the hot tubs are heated with firewood too. It is the oldest warmth in the world, and still the best.
Sunlight
Each dome has its own 12 V solar system. Enough for the bedside lamp, and to charge the phone you will not be using anyway.
No signal, on purpose
There are no antennas and no wifi, and it is not an oversight. It was the first thing we decided, and the last thing we would ever change.
A light footprint
Domes resting lightly on eight hectares of lenga forest and streams. The project was born to leave the smallest possible mark, and that is how we still look after it.
For the season, this is our home too.
Every year, as winter loosens its grip, the team comes back to the valley. For six or seven months we live here, among the domes and the forest: we cook together, split the firewood together and, when the last fire dies down, we stay a little longer, watching the mountain.
We do not run a hotel from afar. We open a house in the mountains for a season. That is why those who come leave feeling they were invited.
We open. We arrive before the first guests, the peaks still white, to wake the domes from winter.
The longest days of the year. Dinner is eaten in daylight, and Fitz Roy catches fire late, when no one is expecting it anymore.
High season. The team is a family by now, the kitchen never stops, nor does the firewood, and conversations after dinner stretch on beneath the dome.
The mildest afternoons. A good month to stay one more day and do absolutely nothing.
The wind eases and the lengas begin to turn. The valley grows quieter.
The forest turns red and the season begins to say goodbye, around the last fire, with a promise to return.
Ten years on, the forest is just as it was.
No credential could say it better.