El Calafate

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El Calafate

On Marcel's Birthday we left Peurto Natales after a birthday (compleanos) hug from Omar and ran for the 5 hr bus to El Calafate. Oh what a birthday treat. There's nothing like a good bus journey to spend on your special day.....

El Calafate is basically a high street full of parilla restaurants, ice-cream parlours and sourvenir shops, one notch higher on the tourist gear than Ushuaia, pleasant but really just a good place to move on from.
We had uknowingly booked ourselves into what can only be described as a 'Megahostel'. Where the receptionist meets and greets you and as you view the 180 degree view of the mountains she shows you around the huge atrium like communal space, with big lounges, magazines, computers etc.

The hostel was like a modern swiss chalet, not at all like the cosy familly run hostels we had been used to, but it was a change and you had to do very little thinking as the hostel booked all your travel for you for the same price as walking up to the bus station and doing it yourself.

That evening Marcel ate an 'each as much as you can' birthday Parrilla where they just keep bringing out the meat until you tell them to stop. Well you can imagine....He looked happy unntil the final plate that is where he began to resemble Jeremy Clarkson and his features started to turn red.

We were both excited about our trip the next day to Perito Moreno Glacier, apparently the only glacier in the world to be still advancing.

Oh my god, it was one of the most amazing sights ever. We are a bit new to the world of looking at glaciers and this blew us away...60 metres high (that's a 20 storey building), 5km wide and 30km long, that's further than our eyes could see. Sorry for the stats but this is where we can use the word "awesome" without feeling stupid as it truely is 'awesome'.

We arrived in the afternoon when most vistors have left and the sun is not so warm, so it's pretty cold, you are looking at a glacier after all. The blue of the glacier is strong and intense and all you can hear is it creaking, pinging, cracking, then big roars where the galcier is compressing, finally tumbling into lake.

We became addicted to watching it, as small pieces splintered off, crashing into the grey/blue water below. We stood at a section of its face for hours with Marcel saying "it's coming" "it's about to happen" and Karen thinking 'mmmmm, I'm not sure'....

Then a huge piece the size of a 20 storey tower block came crashing down (hopefully we have uploaded the film we took of it) like a huge explosion with ice flying everywhere and the noise...It created massive waves for about half a kilometre and the piece just disappeared under the water.

It was hard to leave the glacier, knowing we may never see such a thing again.

That eveing back at the megahostel we ate homemade lentil soup (Richmond/Daniels stylee) and drank some good argentinian wine and just sat there smiling at the day, thinking we are very lucky people.

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