Ice Ice Baby

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I joined my tour on the 30th of January and was pleased to see that we had gone from a little group of two to four. Lauren, Steve and Allan were to be my travelling buddies for the next 15 days along with our tour leader Juan. We had a great dinner on the Sunday night, I ordered lamb with potatoes and was surprised to see my whopping big piece of lamb dished up with potatoes cooked in every different way i.e. chips, roasted, boiled...seriously I had enough potatoes to have feed the entire table!

Monday we flew to El Calafate, a small town which was to be our home for the night. El Calafate, despite it's size, is a gateway to Patagonia and therefore pretty much everyone in the town relies on tourism. There were a number of shops and restaurants in the main street, and nestled right in between was a casino! Yes, that's right, an actual casino!! On the plane flight, I mistakenly took photos of Perito Moreno from the air, the pilot did a flyover the glacier (something I'm told they never do) and I just happened to have my camera out and I thought I was looking at a snow capped mountain, only to realise as the plane kept moving that it was the glacier.

Tuesday morning we met Gustavo, our local guide for the day, and boarded a bus which would take us to Perito Moreno glacier - a glacier that is about 5km wide and sits about 80m high (with a depth of 160m below water). On our way out we stopped at a local roadhouse to fill up on hot water for the mate (a local tea) where there were goats roaming freely about. After tasting the mate, definitely an acquired taste, we arrived at the glacier.

We took a cruise out to the glacier where we got an idea of how big it actually was and Gustavo explained that when a piece of the glacier fell away the ice below it turned a darker blue. After two hours near the glacier, I was getting a bit impatient that I hadn't yet witnessed the extraordinary spectacle of the shards of the glacier breaking away, I had heard the loud cracks several times but had not been in a position to see it occurring.

We stopped and had lunch on the lowest deck of the walkway and that was when I got to see the spectacular sight, not once but twice. The sound of the ice cracking is like a whip and then to see the ice break away and crash into the water is great. I never got to see a really big piece of glacier break away, however I can imagine the sound that it must make.

From El Calafate we travelled to El Chalten to begin our hikes of Fitz Roy.

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