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Published: November 16th 2009
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After a 3 hour bus ride from El Chalten along the famous Ruta 40, a scenic, bumpy, dirt road, we arrived in El Calafate, home of the famous Perrito Moreno Glacier. We arrived in the evening, so we only had enough time to find a hostel, get dinner, organize a trip to the glacier for the following day, and go to sleep. We ended up deciding to make this our one special occasion where we spend a little more money that usual and sign up for a cool ice-trekking tour to the glacier.
So, the next morning, the tour bus picked us up at 7 a.m. and we headed out to the Parque Nacional del Glacier Perrito Moreno with the rest of the group. We arrived at the park, took a 15 minute boat ride up to the edge of the glacier where it meets the lake and then got off the boat at a piece of land attached to the glacier. There, we had a 30 minute glacier tutorial and then put on our crampons to go trekking on the glacier. The sound of it seems really cool, which it was because the glacier itself is absolutely incredible, but
El Calafate: El Glacier Perrito Moreno
Bo and me getting ready to go ice-trekking on the glacier with our crampons on our feet just not as spectacular as we thought it would be when signing up for it.
We walked on to the glacier about 10 minutes up to a scenic look out point, stood there for a bit chatting and taking pictures... then walked another ten minutes to another pretty area where there were some massive glacier holes that we were able to look through (you can see in the pictures although it looks much better in person, but the glacier holes have the most brilliant blue and violet colors... really pretty)... and then walked another 10 minutes up one of the ice hills on the glacier to get a better view at the structure of the glacier... and then another 10 minutes to a table set with shots of whisky which were topped with ice straight from the glacier and alfajores, the typical Argentine cookies. And that was pretty much the highlight of the excursion! Definitely very cool, but we decided we could have done without it and saved a little more money.
After the trekking, we went over to the part of the national park where all the lookouts are and spent time walking around the look outs
and getting all different views of the glacier. I could have sat there and just stared at it for so long.
We got back to the hostel by dinner time, so we went straight up to the kitchen to cook our dinner and ended up running into friends we had met in El Chalten (it's funny how wherever we go in our travels, we always run into tons of people we have met previously in other places). We cooked dinner, and then had about 6 hours to kill before we had to catch a bus boud for Ushuaia at 3 A.M., so we decided to put a movie on the tv in the common room of the hostel. We looked through the movie options, one of which was the Lion King. We put it on anyways, and we embraced ourselves for everyone in the hostel to think we were freaks for putting on the Lion King, but instead the ENTIRE hostel gathered around the T.V. to watch with us. So we enjoyed a movie marathon until it was finally 2:30 a.m. when we walked over to the bus station and got on the bus for Ushuaia.
Ushuaia is
a port city, the southern most city in the WORLD, on the island of Tierra Del Fuego at the very bottom of Argentina and Chile (Cape Horn is at the bottom of Tierra Del Fuego). We had to switch busses in Rio Gallegos, the city at the end of mainland Argentina, then cross into Chilean territory, take a ferry on the bus from mainland to Tierra Del Fuego, cross back into Argentine territory, and then finally arrived in Ushuaia by around 9 p.m. We check into the first hostel we could find with space, went out for some seafood (really nice change after being in mainland Argentina where everything consists of steak and potatoes), and then went straight to bed.
The next morning, we woke up early to catch a bus out to the Parque Nacional Tierra del Fuego to do some hiking. We decided to do the sendero de la costa, a pretty trail that runs down the coast along the water. BEAUTIFUL! Right along the ocean, lots of pretty wildlife, snow capped mountains along the water... very scenic.
We got back to the hostel late afternoon and decided we would take advantage of the fact that
we now had more options of food to cook with and went out and bought some fresh fish to make for dinner (it was a lot more exciting that it sounds).
The next morning we went to la Isla Martillo on el Canal Beagle to see the penguin colonies. The two colonies that leave Antarctica to come to this island for the winter are Los Penguinos Magallenos and a small colony of Gentoo Penguins. We spent a couple hours on the island just walking around and watching the penguins; the are very amusing animals to observe. Watching them waddle around is particularly entertaining, but also watching them dive for food or protect their eggs and their young is also interesting because if you have ever learned about the life of a penguin, you know how hard they have to work to survive.
The next day was my birthday, March 20. We decided to take a boat ride down the famous Canal Beagle, or Beagle Channel, that cuts through Tierra Del Fuego and extends from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean. We saw a lot of really cool arctic wildlife like sea lions, "lobos maritimos," and arctic bird
Ushuaia
along the Sendero de la Costa colonies that all come north from Antarctica for the winter, the famous light house from which you can see both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, and an island where the Yamana tribe used to live before the Europeans came to Tierra del Fuego. The Yamanas were one of 4 tribes that inhabited Tierra del Fuego. There is only one pure Yamana person left, a 90 something year old woman. All the other people left with Yamana blood are Mestizos.
That night we went out for my birthday dinner with some friends from the hostel, a group of Americans studying in Buenos Aires for a college semester abroad who flew down to Ushuaia for the weekend. We went out for a seafood dinner, and of course tried the King Crab, which Ushuaia is known for. It was a lot of fun... definitely a unique birthday, in the southern most city of the world.
The next morning we left Ushuaia at around 8 a.m. on a bus bound for Puerto Natales, Chile.
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