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Published: February 12th 2010
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We arrived into El Calafate ahead of time which was quite a surprise to us. It was 11pm on the dot when we pulled into the bus station! Thankfully the luck was still on our side and the night was crisp and dry. We quickly made our way to our campsite to head to bed as we had been in transit for 18hours all of which was during the day!
The campsite was nice and we found a nice sheltered site for our new tent. We had a quick shower and headed to bed.
The following day we had a good look around the city which is beautiful but as with everywhere else in Patagonia it is expensive due to the amount of tourists with money to burn!! There is a nice reserve 15 minutes out of the city so we went there to have a walk for a couple of hours. In the reserve was two lagoons filled with many species of birds including dozens of Flamingos and Hawks etc. The day before on the bus I saw a hawk or Eagle with a fox in its claws, unlucky fox!!! There was also many horses in the reserve, a couple
of which were particularly excited around the female horses! We finished with the reserve and made our way to the bus terminal to organise what we really came to this town for.......to see the mystical Perito Moreno Glaciar! We got our bus tickets for 9am the following morning and also bought our bus tickets for Puerta Natales!
That night we had dinner in the restaurant in the campsite and ended up getting a free bottle of wine, what service!!!
The morning arrived and I was up at 7.30am getting breakfast ready for Anne who is suffering a little from a cold, think all the camping in Ushuaia is taking its toll. We got our gear ready and made our way to the bus. The journey to the Glaciar was around a hour and a half and most of it was through the national park. This was beautiful as the whole lake comes from the glaciar and the colour is magnificant. All the mountains in the area a snw capped and you could just sit there for hours once theres no noisey tourists there!!
Around 15minutes from arrival we finally got a glimpse of the glaciar from a distance and I
feel it was one of the best views of it as we got to see it size right to the end as we were quite high up.
On arrival we jumped off the bus and headed to the dock and jumped on a boat to bring us up close and personal to the glaciar. The strange thing about this glaciar is that it is not receeding, its growing and at quite a fast pace. There are constantly ice blocks falling off and creating Ice Bergs in the water which is beautiful. The sound of the Ice as its breaks off is like being in the middle of a thunder storm. The Glaciar itself is on average 70 meters high so think how big these bergs are that break off.
After our boat trip we walked around the park and enjoyed the scenery and mainly just looked in awe at the huge glaciar in front of us. After a couple of hours of Glaciar watching it was time to head back to our bus and to El Calafate.
In El Calafate it will just be having dinner a few drinks as our bus is at 8am tomorrow so another early morning.
I hope to have some photos up soon but the internet connection in all these towns is useless. I have some beautiful photos from the last few weeks so be patient 😉
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