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Published: November 9th 2006
Greetings friends,
After six entire months enjoying (and at rare times not) SudAmerica's culture, characters and climates we decided that Antarctica and Tierra del Fuego would remain unseen by us and thus give us a trip to look forward to in future. But we did want to get a little flavour of the ends of the Earth...
So as an early anniversary trip (Nov27- two years) we made the journey via air to Patagonia 's El Calafate and the Perito Moreno
Glacier located in the state of Santa Cruz.
It was an unusually hot day Tuesday (32'C) so we where eager to get to the cooler climes of wind-swept Patagonia. This would also be the furthest Southern point of our travels to date. Con mucho suerte nos fuimos a El Calafate.
Rising early Wednesday to get a cab to the aeroparque to check-in for our domestic flight which is has a built in foreigners' tax so a lot more expensive than for the native Argentine - fair dues I suppose.
With a bit of time to kill prior to boarding we had a fresh squeezed O.J. and cup o'tea, you probably can guess which drink was
for who? Then crossed the street from the Aeroparque to take in the vastness of the river Plate, near by there where a couple of fisherman seeming to just be beginning their day, it was a cloudy gloomy day as a storm was expected - welcome to bring down the high tempature.
So like frogger we managed to cross the four lanes of trafficc and re-entered the terminal, went through security and waited for boardings to be announced.
This definately wasn't a backpacker journey for us - Sean upgraded our accomodation to four star prior to booking and I'm not complaining either. And as we discovered to our curiousity that we must have been the youngest people checked in to Calafate Parque Hotel that weren't there with their parents!
During our transfer from the airport to hotel we signed up for a ranching experience of sheep shearing, shepherding and walk along the wetlands to get a binocular view of the birdlife. Again the visitors to the ranch seemed to be skewed towards retirement age folk but their was also a good amount of younger people.
To my surprise we were greeted to a very nice buffet
of pasteries, cookies, cakes set out for tea time - very nice indeed. Once everyone had their fill the anouncement was made to gather round the next part of the days events - the sheep shearing.
The equipment was original English-made, over a century old and still in use. The ranch was no longer rearing sheep as in the olden days it is now dedicated to Agro-Tourismo, providing a show for the city folk who visit. I don't know what I expected - maybe that the sheep would stand in one place while the shearer removed his winter coat revealing a 'mary-had-a-little-lamb' white as can be lamb but this was not the case - like a rag doll the helpless animal was repositioned throughout the process until his dirty coat was removed yielding about six kilos of wool.
The guides continued to parade various sheep of differing breeds and wool quality, two native, one Finnish, and a couple of English all eager to eat the grains in the trophs before them. The largest one would just ram into the others to get at his share of the grub.
Next it was time to watch the herdsman and
his dogs do their thing in the open field with a ready made obstacle course of fences and a bridge. There are two dogs one of which is a shetland-dingo mixture his job seemed to get the straying from the herd sheep back in line with one leading shoulder to shoulder in a tight pack by the other dog. Photo ops with sheep was available but not so many people were that eager to take it. We also learned that Benetton has five ranches in Argentina totalling one million hectares (4 in Patagonia, 1 in BsAs) that produce 20% of the wool used for their products.
Now time for walking along the property to view the calafate plant that named the town. They say if you consume calafate berries you are destined to return to Patagonia and if you eat a lot you are destined to return and live always in Patagonia. So you've been warned. The walk-talk was good and the view was spectacular.
Back in the main hall hot grills prepared our dinner - an all you can eat lovers dream. The salad bar was colourful and nutritious, the best I can recall seeing for a
On the way there: River fort
on the Plate, just outside the airportbuffet. Everyone had a wooden plate to hold the hot plate for the meat dishes. All was available to eat: ribs, lamb, steak, sausages and something really dark maybe liver not sure. And oh yeah, my favorite - chicken. During dinner we took in the amazing panoramic views and the changing blues of the skyline before going dark. The blues of the sky were just amazing!
The meal was wonderful and followed by folk dancing and the grand finale of a Tango very European influenced costumes. Once the performce was completed after an encore of course. Everyone gathered their belongings and headed for the buses that would take us to our hotel.
Sleeping like a dream we had breakfast with all the other guests then a short walk downtown in search of windbreaker type trousers for me but to no avail thankfully. The day turned out great - super sunny - a lot of people were carrying their coats and enjoying the lovely sun from the platforms across from Perito Moreno Glacier.
The Glaciers National Park is about 90 minutes South of El Calafate in Patagonias' Santa Cruz (state) area. Our guide picks us up at high
noon we get aboard, greet our fellow silver haired adventurers then proceed to pick up the remainder of our group before heading out past the ranch from the previous night's activities on to the open and barren road.
As we drive along Pablo our guide tells us about the terrain and plants. Basically very dry, minimum moisture, little rain and no trees for the most part. Until you within the national park where due to the glacier waters there are evergreens and other varieties of trees which change with the seasons, and must be beautiful to visit in the Autumn.
We stop at the first view point overlooking the glacier. Oh yeah, if you didn't know it too is a World Heritage Site, South America has sooooo many of these. We take photos in awe at the view. To me the wall of the glacier resembles the end of a brides veil, shimmering with specks of beautiful blues that have been compressed over the years mixed with the softer, newer white of fresher snow from end to summit the glacier veil is a whopping THIRTY kilometers! Whata train, huh?
Perito Moreno Glacier is one of the few
glaciers that seems to remain in balance still pushing forward or growing so to speak while most other glaciers seem to be receeding - melting away due to global warming. All the other interesting facts from the tour have since been forgotten... but I have a link to the article Sean wrote for the European Space Agency back in 2004:
Patagonian ice dam studied from space cracks open - great images too.
By the time we arrived at the glacier we where pretty hungry so headed for the snack bar as we didn't pack a box lunch as advised by the tour guide previously. We met some nice Cubanos (expats) who livied in Miami Florida. Good folks to talk with over lunch but as it goes we ended up speaking politics - Castro and Kennedy - which led to a long interesting conversation over lunch before heading down to the viewing decks. The whole time you could hear the growing aches, moans of the glacier and huge sounds of splashes as bits of the wall crashed into the water.
We were fortunate to have an exceptionally sunny day, most people where running around in their T's while some were wearing extreme all weather gear -
Sean kept teasing me cause I thought it would be freezing and we went round the shops to see about fitting me up with all weather pantaloons but thankfully they were not very stylish or short for my size so I went with my original outfit and took along my wooly leg warmers that stayed in the bag all day! At least they were there if I needed them, right?
Getting to the boat what a short bus ride followed by a gentle walk down to its location. I was very impressed with these three older women on our tour. They are silvier-haired elders one with a cane who seemed like she shouldn't be walking as much as she was but she did everything we did and they seemed to be thoroughly enjoying themselves while in my mind setting an example for all of us younger than them which was basically everyone!
The afternoon cruise was also brilliant, getting up close to the wall, viewing the lay of the land and the floating mini-bergs, and the deep gorges on the moutainsides from the glacial waterfalls. Very serene.
I mostly slept on the bus ride back to El
our digs
for our time in Calafate Calafate, back at the hotel we took a catnap then had a nice dinner before making use of the jacuzzi (Sean not I) and sauna. I had had a great massage before going on the excursion which was ever so relaxing and great.
We came away from our visit wanting more of Southern lands of Argentina but figure they will need to be a unique visit that would include Antarctica - the univeral land without borders...
PS stay tuned for our first week returning to civilization in good ole England (more next week)
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Chris Ross
non-member comment
Amazing...
That ice is simply amazing.