Parador La Leona
At the halfway point between El Calafate and El Chaltén, where the Río La Leona flows between Lago Argentino and Lago Viedma, a corrugated-iron building sits beside the road looking exactly as it has for well over a century. Parador La Leona was founded in 1894 by a Danish immigrant named Jensen, who recognised that the river crossing — then served only by a ferry capable of carrying 200 sheep per trip — created a natural resting point for colonists moving livestock across the steppe. A bridge replaced the ferry in 1974, but the parador survived, and today is listed as a historic and cultural heritage site of Santa Cruz Province.
The name traces to an encounter in 1877, seventeen years before Jensen arrived, when the explorer and scientist Francisco Pascasio Moreno — the Perito Moreno of glacier fame — was attacked and badly wounded by a female puma while camping near the river. La leona, in Patagonian usage, was the animal that gave the river its name; the river gave the parador its name; the parador gave a generation of outlaws and mountaineers a place to stop. In 1905, three foreigners lodged here for nearly a month, departing shortly before police arrived with wanted posters. The guests were Butch Cassidy, the Sundance Kid, and Etta Place, who had recently robbed a bank in Río Gallegos and were riding north toward Bariloche and eventually Chile. Photographs from the period, along with documents tracing the building's history, are displayed inside.
The parador serves coffee, tortas fritas, empanadas, and the celebrated lemon pie that regulars insist upon ordering. The adobe walls and iron roof have been maintained without sentimentality — it looks lived-in and a little rough around the edges, which is exactly appropriate. This is the only stop between the two towns.