Anyway, today's subject is El Calafate, back on the mainland in Argentina, where one goes to access the Park Nacional los Glaciers, specifically the Perito Moreno glacier. Bussing up there was a bit of an epic 17 hour affair, setting of around 5am from Ushuaia. On the bus I met two English guys (one of whom I'd spoked to very briefly getting off the bus into Ushuaia), I ended up spending my time there with them (Rod and Kieran). This 17 hour bus journey was quite annoying as it involed a lot of faff - 4 border post as we had to cross into Chile and back, 2 bus changes with waits and a ferry. It was late at night when we got to El Calafate (El Cafe Latte?) and there were hostel touts at the bus station so we got a free taxi ride to a hostel. Now if I was going to go and tout up customers for a hostel, I'd check there was room for them. For us there was not, even though Rod had a supposed online reservation (This also happened to a guy who'd reserved online in Puerto Natales, but the hostel was shut for winter... think I forgot that last time). They did however get us another free taxi to a different hostel, also seeming run by the El cafelatte rasta hostel mafia, yes we heard a lot of Bob Marley in this town, even some UB40 (okay so maybe that was during a wait in Rio Galleagos, but this whole part of the country has a reggae obsession going on... incidentally, in strange Argentinian Spannish, Galleagos is pronounced like ¨Hashegos¨). Anyway we got checked in and planned to do the glaciers the next morning, a 9am bus.
Well the glacier was pretty spectacular, we first stopped at a view point, then took a boat ride closer to the face, and then went on some wooden gangways down the hillside opposite to get a closer view. The glacier is damn big, 5km wide and you can see it stretching back 20km, but it goes further. It's also very blue, and at the centre advances 2 metres a day, so there are regularly bits breaking off. You could hear the glacier creaking from the boat and the gangway, or at least you could when the young excitible French girls that were legion on our bus shut up. On the return from our boat trip there was a large iceberg parked at the jetty where our boat was meant to go. So in a display worthy of the chucklebrothers (to me, to you) two of the crew attempted to lasso the iceberg and drag it away. Unfortunately the first attempt resulted in catapulting a big chunk of ice inco the front window of the boat, behing which we were all crouched, watching expectantly. Eventually it did seem to move a little and we were able to disembark. Cue desperate attemps to remember the name of the second Chuckle Brother, Barry and who? (It's Paul, Kieran remembered that evening). Didn't quite get to see the huge piece of ice calving off in front of us that we hoped for, but there was a reasonable sized one, that I missed due to my slow camera, but that Kieren got, so I must remember to nick that photo. All that said, the glacier was pretty damn amazing, and capped off seeing some amazing sights in patagonia, making me very glad I'd decided to go south from Santiago, which I may not have done at all.
That evening I went out for dinner with Rod (Kieren cooked his own, but we both had two days on busses eating biscuits to look forward to, so we fancied something decent). However, turned out the only restaurant open in town this season was exceedingly expensive. Well we went anyway, an I had the most expensive (and perhaps the nicest!) meal of the trip so far! Turned out Mauricio from the Navimag was there as well with some people, it's a small world, or rather a small circuit.
Our buses didn't leave till half twelve the next day so having seen people ice skating on the lake we made plans to give that a go in the morning. Kieren managed to miss his 5am bus to Chile, so was still around. We walked into to town (some shopping was needed too) and were followed by the two huge hostel dogs, and continued to pick a huge posse of barking, stinky, and occaisionally shagging dogs that followed us around for hours, diligently waiting outside shops. Well we never found the ice skating, if it existed at all, but we did explore a lot of the scenic, and non-scenic parts of El Cafelatte with our canine friends. Rod was on the same bus as me back to Rio Galleagos, there we had 3 or 4 hours to wait before he went off to Cordoba and I got on the 36 hour bus to Buenos Aires!
Photomagraphs:
It's not warm there you know, that's the glacier in the background.
The glacier and mountains from the boat.
The chuckle brothers attemps to lasso an iceberg.
That'll be a big bit of ice then.
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