Argentina - El Calafate


Hello all!

This is going to be a regularly updated blog to let you all know what is happening in our trip to South & Central America.

We arrived into buenos aires - Argentina at about 5pm local time, after 15+ hours on a plane from Sydney. Needless to say, our first night in Argentina was non existant, we went straight from the airport to the hostel and passed out. The next morning we boarded a plane early and flew 3 hours south to the beautiful town of El Calafate, home to the world famous Perito Mereno glacier.

We arrived to find Grant and Eliza standing on the side of the road with signs for us! what a great way to start the south american part of the trip ;)

The first day was basically relaxing and catching up with our friends, then a quick walk to the town itself to have some lunch.

El Calafate is a relatively small town situated near the southern part of the andes, down near the bottom of Argentina and Chile. The town itself is a lot like you would imagine a small Swedish village would look like in the summer; lots of wooden buildings with steep sloping roofs, surrounded by desolate mountains, with clean moutain air, and a laid back attitude. There were dogs wandering around everywhere (pretty standard for all the places we been so far!) friendly, laid back locals going about their daily business.

PERITO MORENO GLACIER

We got up early and jumped on a bus to go further into the Andes for a trip to the most famous glacier in Argentina - Perito Moreno. After about an hour, we finally entered the national park, now right on the outskirts of the Andes proper, the mountains starting to rise around us, brown and seemingly devoid of animal life. Although on closer inspection, the harsh brown scrub that covers this entire area of Patagonia is teeming with wildlife, along with a few circling Condors.

We drove down towards Perito Moreno to start our days adventuring, the white wall of ice looming closer and closer every minute, spilling down between two mountains and out onto a lake of its own making. We eventually made it down to the edge of the park, where we were greeted by a network of catwalks built into the side of the cliffs directly facing the glacier, at times barely 100 meters away from its sheer 50-60m tall face.

The plan for the day was to spend 2 hours on the catwalks, taking photos and having lunch, before catching a boat over the lake, where we would don Crampons, and get up close and personnal with the glacier by hiking out on to it.

The size of the glacier is truely immense. Once you get out on to it, its hard not to feel humbled by nature at its finest. Although it looks sort of like soft sculpted light blue ice cream in places, its actually very hard, and walking on it makes a crunching sound as you stamp you´re spiked feet into it.

We hiked around on top of Perito Moreno for about an hour and a half, observing the bizarre way that the constantly melting ice has created valleys, holes and crevasses over the entire glacier. There were a couple of areas that were like giant slashes and holes in the ice, where the water had carved its way into the interior. If you fall down there - theres no coming back...Luckily our guides were very experienced, and we were in no danger of that happening, but the thought to be careful is always there.

We ended the hike by taking a slightly different route. There were a few other groups on the glacier at the same time, we all started converging to one particular spot, just over a large rise in the rise. To our absolute surprise (and joy!) we crested the peak to find a few wooden tables in a large flat area on the ice, laden with glasses, chocolates, and scotch!! What a way to end an amazing experience - scotch on ice hahahaha!

To see the full range of photos from Perito Moreno - click below

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=157085&id=553896164&l=068bffcd97


The rest of our time at El Calafate was very relaxing and laid back. We hung around the hostel, with the awesome friendly staff. It was Grants birthday the night we were due to catch the overnight bus back to Buenos Aires, so we celebrated the night before. The hostel put on a fantastic BBQ, and plenty of beer was drunk by all!

Next stop, Buenos Aires, the capital of Argentina, then west on another overnight bus to the foothills of the Andes mountain range to the beautiful wineries of Mendoza.