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Published: December 16th 2004
After a quick flight to Buenos Aires from Santiago (2 hours) - the second flight on our round the world ticket - we immediately went to the Aerolineas Argentinas ticket sales counter in the airport to buy our tickets to El Calafate. The flight left next morning, and cost only 300 pesos - about 50 pounds each, bargain.
I´ve dated this article 16th December, although we arrived in BA on 15th. We´ll add another article later when we´ve got something more on BA.
So, we got to El Calafate and shared a taxi into town with a couple of Frenchies. We found a rather crappy hostal (the Albergue Beunos Aires) but settled for it as it was quite cheap and had a good enough location. We weren´t going to be in El Calafate for very long so it didn´t really matter.
We had a bit of an explore and sussed the options for seeing the Glaciar Perito Moreno - our reason for being there. We had lunch in the sun in a nice café on the main street, and then wandered into a good internet café to do a couple of hours on the weblog -
DISASTER - the
512MB compact flash card (for the camera) had picked up a virus.
Myself and the guy in the shop detected what virus it was and had a go at cleaning it. Two hours later after thinking it had gone, it was still present and we gave up - the pictures were ok, but unreadable on the PCs in the internet café.
Pretty dejected we didn´t do too much for the rest of the day - thinking we´d maybe lost 512MB of photos was a bit disheartening. We took an early night in order to get the first bus to the glaciar in the morning.
The Glaciar (Glacier) Perito Moreno Surely one of the natural wonders of South America, the Glaciar Perito Moreno is about a mile wide and a good 300 feet thick - maybe more. The closest you can get without risking being flattened by a large chunk of thrown ice (approx 30 people killed in 25 years) is about 200 yards - close enough for most.
You can tell from the pictures the sheer size of the thing, but what you can´t tell is how actively and fiercely it calves ice into the Patagonian Lake below.
Small chunks of ice (feet across) make the most eery of noises as they clatter or splash down. Large chunks - many feet across - make the most impressive of noises as they creak and tumble almost too slowly into the icy waters.
It really is the most beautiful and spectacular place - the countryside is fabulous, teeming with boreal life, and the snowcapped hills in every direction are the icing on the cake. Excuse the pun.
Right, for those paying attention I will continue this article. We ran out of time last time, but now I´ve found a good café in Buenos Aires so I will pick up the story where I left off.
So, really - to finish off - we proceded down to the different viewing areas and were lucky enough to catch a couple of really big pieces coming off, creating huge surges of water (not unlike the Tsunami in Asia, just recently).
And that is where I popped the question, so to speak, much to Sarah´s total surprise - which was what I wanted.
Later we headed back to El Calafate on the bus and bought the tickets to Ushuaia (we knew
from our previous day´s exploits that there were plenty of tickets on the 4.50 flight), and basically packed and rushed off to the airport.
At the departure lounge Sarah bought a mini bottle of bubbly and we drank that on the plane to celebrate - and by that evening we were in Ushuaia.
We really were moving pretty fast and it was exciting having caught 3 planes in 3 days consecutively, going from the heat and humidity of Buenos Aires to the absolutely fantastic wonderland surroundings of the Southernmost City in the World - Ushuaia.
I believe Sarah is writing that article now so please, procede with interest to the next section!
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anonymous
non-member comment
Happy Christmas guys
Guys, a Christmas Day message for you! Hope your tummies are fully recovered for a proper Christmas banquet. I think you were planning on being in Uruguay by now, so look out for the pan dulces, they sound nice. And everyone should be on the beach. Hope the weather's nice!