El Calafate

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We love El Calafate. The primary reason for this is that El Calafate is not a bus. The journey here took a total of 46 hours. We got off the bus in a haze, closely followed by our stale odours. Through carpet mouths we direct our taxi driver to our hostel - he drives fast, seemingly keen to get us out of his cab asap. We have definitely had fresher feeling days than today.

Our hostel has been recommended to us and arrived to a chilled out scene with
great tunes being played in the open areas. Underfloor heating toasts our tired feet and we´re happy to take in the serene views of the snow-clad Andean peaks and the 1,600 square kilometre Lago (Lake) Argentino. A wander through the town reveal it to be brazenly touristy. It´s the base for visitors who wish to see the main attraction - the Perito Moreno Glacier in the Parque Nacional Los Glaciers. But we like the feel of it, perhaps becuase it means more time with like-minded people in the great outdoors of Patagonia. Kishwar cooks us veggie pasta and we enjoy a bottle of red wine over dinner. We´re keen to try to erase the memory of the plastic cheese and horrible white bread from the bus. We crash out.

We wake the next morning feeling much more like our normal selves. Though it´s low season and the town´s dusty streets seem quiet, we find that loads of poeple have come out of the woodwork on our first morning to join our bus ride to the national park. It´s dark when the bus picks us up at 8am and the sun is not long up when we arrive at the park at 9.30am (dawn is getting later and later the further south we go). We park up within walking distance of one of the national wonders of the world. The glacier sits nestled in a valley between two mountains and it´s blue, crack-lined face is within 150 metres of a series of viewing platforms and boardwalks that have been created to allow people to marvel at it from many different angles. Passengers scramble off the bus as if the glacier is about to melt, a seemingly ridiculous notion until we hear the dynamite-like booms of cracking ice that reverbarate around hundreds of deep crevaces. Chunks of ice fall into the lagoons below.

We´re making our way down the boardwalks when darkness begins to set in. We can scarcely believe that there in only half an hour of daylight here. We look up to see two condors almost directly above us, who had been partially blocking out the sun with their immense wingspans. They bank to the left and cruise gracefully upwards on a rising thermal that takes them high into the mountains. It´s our first sighting of a condor and it´s a pretty spectacular one.

The boardwalks provide endless view points of the glacier and we trek them taking in the numerous angles of the face. It´s huge - 60 metres high - and its shepherd-pie like top stretches as far back as the eye can see. The colour is incredible and difficult to describe. The overall impression is of an unearthly blue. A sign tells us of the dangers of the falling ice, and of the 30 lives lost as a result between 1965 and 1985 (presumably before the viewing platforms were built). But we´re more than content to stick to the marked paths - they offer all the views we need.

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