Blogs from Santa Cruz, Argentina, South America - page 87

I've been very lazy sending emails, so I've been trying to setup this travelblog to make things easier. I'm actually in Puerto Natales which is in Chile. We're having a couple days rest before starting a 5 day trek in Torres del Paine Nacional Parque, so I'm using the time to finally get it sorted. After we got back to BA from Puerto Iguazu, we had a couple days before we flew to Ushuaia. We spent one of those at an estancia just outside BA, which is basically a farm. It was really tourist but we got to have an asado, which is an Argentinian BBQ. You can see from the photo on my homepage that a lot of meat was eaten. Ushuaia claims to be the southern most town in the world, when in fact ... read more

After a couple of lazy days in Puerto Natales (Chile) after the tree incident, I headed north to El Calafate in Argentina to visit the Los Glaciers National Park. This park contains a whole bunch of glaciers and also the Mount Fitzroy area further north near the town of El Chalten. The first thing on the agenda was organising a rental car - the cheapest option for visiting the Perito Merino Glacier. Paul and Eda (UK), Brian (Canada) and myself organised a car easy enough and the next morning we were off to the glacier. Getting up close to this enormous glacier was even more amazing than I expected (so cliche I know...). The glacier extends up into the mountains as far as you can see and the face of the glacier is more than 4 ... read more

after ushuaia, headed north to patagonia, made friends with a couple british chaps (ben and ross) in calafate and we promptly left that overpriced, touristy town for el chalten (via 5hr bus ride over unpaved road), a little nothing of town (one dirt road) at the southern entrance to the glaciar national park. (one of the things i love about argentina is that for years a combination of overvalued currency and unstable government have kept tourists out, so much of their absolutely incredible natural wonders, parks, etc are barely built up) at el chalten we rented some equipment (unbelievably cheap) and went hiking through the national park and camped out by a glacial stream that night. its great hiking there bc you dont have to carry water, you just drink out of the streams bc its ... read more

El Chalten is a really small village in the middle of nowhere, built on the slopes of the Fitz Roy massif just 20 years ago. There I had the pleasure to see the Fitz Roy massif, which in my opinion, is much more beautiful then the Torres del Paine massif. The big question on which everything depended there was the weather, as it really did change every day - from a completely sunny one, to a really windy or rainy one, so you could never plan ahead there, as it was almost impossible to trek in a bad weather. After arriving, I did an organized one day trek, to the glacier that feeds Laguna Torre, which included glacier walking and ice climbing. This was one of the best treks I have done so far, definitely worth ... read more

The Perito Moreno Glacier's size is really impressive - I think the biggest of all the glaciers I have seen. What's even more impressive is the fact that this glacier advances each day by entire 2 meters! Because of it's size, the advance is not equal in all its sections. This causes major parts of the ice to detach from it in amazing crashes, which are supposed to happen every day. There are several balconies in the National Park at different heights, from which you can observe the glacier. I spent 5 hours there, but by Murphy's law, witnessed only small crashes. What's more depressive is that friends of mine that arrived to the glacier a few hours before me, saw 2 major crushes. But I guess you can´t always have it all... ... read more