After the excitement of whale/penguin/sea elephant watching in Puerto Madryn, we headed south by bus to the town of El Calafate.
El Calafate is as far south in Argentina as we are going to go. It is possible to go a little farther south without being in the ocean headed to Antartica, but you can't go much farther. A number of the shops in the city have signs like "End of the World Gifts" and stuff like that.
We got into town and checked into a nice hotel that Chrissy had booked the night before. Its always nice to be able to clean up in a decent place after spending the night on a friggin´ bus.
We did have to take care of the usual logistics before relaxing for the evening, which included booking a tour to see this glacier thing in the morning. We found a tour company without any issues and still had time to devour some homemade pasta in a local italian place, La Coçina. We even had dessert.
The town of El Calafate has been discovered by tourists just in the past few years. The population in 2001 was 4,000. By 2005, that number had jumped to 15,000. The big draw is that this is where the Perito-Moreno Glacier can be seen. Before this trip I didn´t know much about glaciers and wasn´t quite sure what we would be looking at. For the similarly glacier ignorant, here is a brief rundown:
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There are two main types of glaciers: alpine glaciers, which are found in mountain terrains, and continental glaciers, which cover large areas of continents (think Greenland). The Perito-Moreno Glacier I am talkin about is an alpine glacier.
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The glacier is constantly moving, with new ice forming at the top of a mountain and slowly sliding down into a river below. This ending point in the water is what we came to stare at.
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Note that the Perito Moreno Glacier is one of only three Patagonian glaciers that are not retreating. Meaning it isn´t getting smaller due to global warming or whatever theory you choose to believe. New ice forms at the same rate that ice is getting dumped into the river.
The next morning we had to be up bright and early to be picked up for the tour. I was kind of stressed because we were supposed to bring our own lunch and also needed to buy tickets for our outbound bus trip before being picked up at 9:00 AM.
After an uneventful trip to the closed bus station, the next stop was the grocery store. This is a small town and I couldn't really tell if the local grocery place was open or not, so I just let myself in the front door. It took a few minutes to find a guy back in the produce section and as usual, I couldn't understand what he was telling me in spanish, but I was pretty sure he was saying they weren't open and to get the crap out of the store. No packed lunch for us.
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Chrissy: I like to let Bill periodically venture out on his own. It always makes for good entertainment.
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The bus picked us up at our hotel and we headed out. The tour was an all-day type of deal that had three parts. First part was walking around these deck terrraces on the land which is closest to the glacier. This was pretty cool because you had a great view of the glacier which is slowly sliding down into the water and every few minutes large chunks of ice would break off and crash into the water making a lot of noise. This process is called calving, and is what forms icebergs.
Apparently, a number of unfortunate people have been killed by the falling ice when they got too close. One of the tour guides later commented that he thought this was natural selection at work because you have to be pretty stupid to get near the front of a glacier.
We spent a good two hours walking around on these viewing decks checking out the glacier. Luck was with us and there is a snack stand there where we scored some sandwiches. Part II of the tour consisted of a boat ride to take a look at the glacier from the water. We boarded what was a really nice boat and sped over to a side of the glacier you can´t see from the decks. The boat ride was pretty cool, but you can actually get a better view from land.
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SIDEBAR FROM CHRISSY:
Bill was not exaggerating when he said that luck was with us with those sandwiches. I have to say that I am disappointed with South American sandwiches, but this one was much better than any other thus far. I can´t vouch one way or the other to the warm sandwiches, but I am talking your average run-of-the-mill ham and cheese sandwich. We are talking one slice of ham, one slice of cheese and mayonnaise. What´s up with that? I really don´t get it. Seriously. It truly, truly boggles my mind. I´m thinking about bringing someone from Buffalo, New York to show them a thing or two. I thought that everyone knew that you always have a MINIMUM 3:1 ratio of ham to cheese. And for goodness sake, ripple the ham. Anyway, this place actually put 2 slices of ham and gave us a piece of lettuce and a tomato. As an added bonus, I scored a packet of mustard.
I might further add that they pull the same crap in France and try and act like the baguette is going to make up for the sorry excuse of meat quantity.
OK, I feel better now.
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Our glacier assault continued, and Part III started when the boat dropped us off to one side of the glacier where this kind of wacky guy gave us a pretty good overview of the glacier formation and movement process, then we all put on crampons (if you have followed any of these links you have figured out that cool people think Wikipedia is cool) and took a hike around on top of the glacier. Crampons are basically spikes that you can strap on to your shoes that give you traction on ice. I wasn´t too sure about this idea. They had conviced me that a glacier can be dangerous, so walking around on top of it, not too far from the part falling into a river, didn´t seem like a good plan. But it turned out to be a pretty interesting experience. There are a lot of cracks and crevasses in a glacier, which make for cool canyon like spots that most of the time had water running through the bottom.
We spent about two hours strutting around on the glacier before they brought us over a hill that had some refreshments waiting at the bottom.
Nothing like whiskey chilled with glacier ice. That is a wooden table which served as bar and the guy in the top left is hacking away at the glacier to fill our glasses.
The boat then took us back to a waiting bus and we snoozed while being driven into town. This was our last night in Argentina and we thought one last round of Argentine parrilla (grilled meats) was in order. We found a nice place that was packed with locals and ordered up some wine and steaks. We are going to miss Argentina.
- Bill