We are currently in El Calafate for a few days and going to Torres Del Paine from here for a few days. When we return to El Calafate, we were considering going to El Chalten and then making our way to Bariloche. As I research some more, it is quite a distance - even in broken stages by bus.
From Bariloche, we planned to make our way to Santiago.

Any advise from someone who has taken a similar route ? We do have time on our hands as we have another 5 weeks in South America. However, we do not want to waste days travelling on buses - even though we are open to do some overnight travelling. Are we better to drop El Chalten - and fly to BA, then Bariloche ?

Any ideas ?

We didn't make it to El Calafate during our 3 months in Argentina but we did travel all over the country by bus. I think our longest trip was around 20 hours from Peninsula Valdes to San Raphael in Mendoza. Not quite as bad as it sounds as all of our journeys were overnight. I would highly recommend booking a few days in advance and choosing Full Cama which has a large lay flat bed equivalent to, or better than First Class on many airlines. Generally the food is pretty reasonable and one bus company even provided champagne! The cost is usually around a third of teh air fare for foreigners. Most of the films are shown in Spanish with Spanish subtitles so take a few books.

Forgot to mention another option. We arrived in Argentina from Chile at San Martin de los Andes and to get to Bariloche we rented a car and drove and dropped off the car in Bariloche. We had met another couple travelling to Bariloche so the cost was shared between us and wasn't too bad plus, we rented the car for a couple of extra days the flexibility to go where we wanted was great.
some more details on our blog:

http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog...ai/1/tpod.html

You can fly direct between El Calafate and Bariloche on either Aerolineas Argentina or Lade Airlines.

Flight time is 1 hour 45 minutes and a long, long bus ride.