Day 6 Our driver from yesterday has agreed to take us out to the famous Glacier Moreno. The drive takes about an hour and is well worth it. The paved highway is only 1 1/2 years old and was previously a gravel road. I thank God for the paved road because it is windy enough and with my tendency of motion sickness, I do not need any encouragement to become ill. The driver is well informed of all the local history and is our own private tour guide. He stops at all of the best photo opts and even waits for [View Full Entry]

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RUTA 40 19.-21.12.2009 Bariloche-Perito Moreno 823 km, Perito Moreno-El Chalten 663 km ja El Chalten-El Calafate 215 km. Yhteensä miltei 1700 km kolmessa päivässä. Patagoniaa ei ole vain yksi, vaan ainakin kolme: pohjoinen järvialue, aavikko ja Atlantin rannikkoalue. (Miltei kaikista asioista, olioista ja ilmiöistä maailmassa sanotaan, ettei se ole vain yksi monoliitti, vaan on olemassa monta Patagoniaa.) Barilochen järvialue vuorineen jäi taakse. Andit etääntyivät horisonttiin. Sitten alkoi kasvillisuus harveta, kunnes puita ei enää ollut eikä kohta puskiakaan vaan ainoastaan suoraan [View Full Entry]

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Boat trip to the Glaciers today!!!! Upgraded to First Class!!!! WooHoo!!! [View Full Entry]

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We really wanted to see Perito Moreno whilst in South America, one of the few glaciars in the world that is still moving. Therefore when we turned up in the little town of El Calafate and took a local bus to the National Park, we weren´t disappointed. It´s incredible, 60 metres tall with a 5 km frontage. One long river of ice, which left Jonty speechless, possibly a rarer occurance than the glaciar´s actual spectacular rupture which last occured in March 2004!!! [View Full Entry]

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OK No Bullets... From Fuetaleufu we ride straight back onto the dirt and ride some tough but lovely tracks to the start of the Carretera Austral. This is a largely dirt (They are trying to tarmac it slowly) road connecting the top of Chile to the bottom built by Augusto Pinochet's Chilean Army in the 70's and 80's. It was originally only there for the army but opened to the public in the late 1980's. It varies from deep sand and gravel, hard compacted surface two lanes wide, to rocky narrow twisty hairpins. Two stretches of newly graded sand catch at [View Full Entry]

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El Calafate is the small town from where everyone makes thir excursion to the Perito Moreno glacier - one of the few still advancing in the World. We had a great day visiting the glacier - seeing, and often just hearing, huge chunks of ice crashing into the lake. In the afternoon we spent two hours trekking on the ice, which was a beautiful experience, and ended with a whiskey on the rocks - the rocks being ice cut from the glacier itself! There isn't a great deal more to see or do in El Calafate and so we headed for [View Full Entry]

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Another fantastic Patagonian experience - this place is absolutley awesome !!! The Perito Moreno glacier is massive - in area its the same size as Buenos Aires (>250km2), the front face is ~8km long and between 150m and 180m high (40m - 60m above the water). Its also one of the few glaciers in the world to be still adding ice. It advances quite a lot (~2m per day) so is noisy and calves quite a few icebergs. Just looking at it is impressive but you can also ice hike up it - we had to do this. Its a bit [View Full Entry]

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hello again. this is slightly outdated, but we have been with out a proper internet connection and most importantly without time. I'll give it a go and see what I can remember... We arrived in El calafate after yet another long bus trip at night. We found our hostel on top of a hill and relaxed with a beer and some cards. The next morning we looked out one of the many large windows and saw snow capped mountains, a massive lake and a small village down below. Beautiful. We decided to use the first day to explore the village and [View Full Entry]

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There was a lot of debate whether or not we would attempt to get down to El Calafate. It's definitely not the easiest place to get to in Argentina. Our choices were a 36 hour bus ride with 4 different buses, driving down a closed route 40 (like in Motorcycle Diaries) or a dodgy 2 hour flight. We opted to fly. We arrived in El Calafate around 2 in the afternoon and spotted some other back packers to share a cab with into town. The place is pretty desolate. There's glacier fed lakes and some mountains but it's mostly sand and [View Full Entry]

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I arrived in El Calafate at 1pm on Monday 14 September and checked into iKeuKen hostel. I was in a 4 bed dorm but since the hostel was not busy, I would have the room to myself for my 5 night stay. Late afternoon, I walked around the small town and then went for lunch/dinner in Casablanca where they were showing the final of the US Open tennis. This great match was won by the Argentinean del Potro who beat Federer in 5 sets to the delight of the locals. I went to bed at 10pm as I had to wake [View Full Entry]

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