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Published: February 27th 2009
We arrived in El Calafate late afternoon and quickly found our hostel, not too difficult, this place is not big.
The first evening in El Calafate we took pretty easy, when out for a lovely meal - had Patagonian lamb, delicious, wine great too We came back to the hostel, there was live music in the evening provided by 3 Brazilians on guitars and percussion, a lot of improvised. After playing some brilliant music the whole show eventually moved out side onto the terrace on the side of the hostel, and turned into a massive jamming session, with everyone taking turns playing on the various instruments brought by the musicians, brilliant.
The following day spent in town, there is not much to see or do as it’s a tourist hub, and the main attraction is the surrounding mountains and glaciers. After battling with the wind and full restaurants we finally settled on a lovely Italian restaurant for more fine food and wine, the deserts were as delicious as they looked, though Simons choice translated into English as warm milk jam…. Just sounds wrong, tasted great!
Early evening we got chatting to a Chelsea, a girl we met on the bus
to El Calafate and who was staying in the same hostel. We decided to book onto a tour through the hostel for the following day. Spent the rest of the evening chatting to Simon, Chelsea and Anouk over beers and finished the evening down at the local music festival.
We woke on the Sunday to the sound of the rain, and it didn’t really let up all through the day, so in the end we were quite glad to be on an organized trip. The glacier is amazing, it is hard to really get the size of this thing in on pictures. It’s the fastest moving glacier, advancing 2 meters a day, sometimes reaching across to the mainland blocking the river, which eventually cuts through with spectacular results. Unfortunately we wouldn’t see this event, but it was still fantastic to follow the walk ways around, taking different view points of the glacier. We hid from the rain for a little lunch and then made our way down to the boat; the ride gives a totally different perspective of the glacier and the rain stopped the whole time so we could be out on deck! We were lucky to see a
couple of seriously big chunks of ice fall off and crash into the water. It was a brilliant experience.
The evening was spent at the hostel with Simon, Chelsea, and Anouk, huge amount of ice cream, dodgy pool playing and far too much wine……
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