Blogs from Perito Moreno Glacier, Santa Cruz, Argentina, South America - page 15

The main (only) reason for visiting El Calafate is to take a trip to the incredible Perito Moreno Glaciar. Unfortunately, the glacier is located 75km away from the town and no public transport runs out to it!! Therefore you need to book on a quite expensive tour, or use your wits to get there. Fortunately, as James and I don´t have much in either of those two departments, we found secret third option C, which was to bump into some Israeli guys that I had met in Buenos Aires and for them to have 2 free spaces in the car that they had rented for the following day - resulto!! Thus we drove down to the Glaciar the next morning. About three quarters of the way to the glaciar, the road turned to winding gravel, and ... read more

Now I'm not one to be easily impressed, and after three or four of months contsant travel you can become a bit jaded by what you see, so when I say that I Moreno Glacier was one ice cube that was worth travelling half-way round the world to see, you can take that as being an exclamation of admiratrion of the highest degree. Seriously, we've seen quite a few glaciers on this trip, and I've been heli-hiking on the fox glacier in New Zealand, but compared to Moreno Glacier all the others put together were the equivalent of an ice cube in Antartica. This thing looked like it was designed as a backdrop to some scene in the Lord of the Rings, and to be standing on a boat 200 meters from the face of it ... read more

Mon.5th. Dec. Santiago is quite a big airport, but all the internal flight passengers are herded into 1 queue - absolute chaos. The pilot must have been having a bad day too, because the landing was really rough. Bumped into 2 Canadians from la Paz. It´s great to see familiar faces. We left them at Punta Arenas, the furthest south we´re going, but near enough to see the penguins. We haven´t made many mistakes planning the route, but this is one of them! The pace is utterly miserable. After 2 hours walking around in the bitter wind, looking for a place to stay, we decide that the penguins aren´t worth it , and catch the next bus to Porto Natales. 4 hours later and this place didn´t look much better, that is until a nice lady ... read more

Le voyage en bus est long, et pas forcément très agréable car la route est plus une piste qu’autre chose. D’ailleurs ce trajet est en fait fermé la moitié de l’année pour cause de neige. Nous traversons les immenses élevages de moutons patagoniens… et avons le temps d’apercevoir des ñandus, les autruches d’Amérique Latine. Nous arrivons à El Calafate qui en soit n’a rien de charmant. La ville se développe autour d’une rue unique, remplie de magasins chics. L’ambiance est celle d’une station de ski chic… mais nous ne sommes pas venus ici pour faire du shopping. Le seul vrai intérêt de la ville est d’être le lieu de départ de toutes les visites au Périto Moreno, nous en reparlerons demain. Nous découvrons le soir une petite lagune au nord de la ville, réserve naturelle d’une ... read more