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Published: December 23rd 2011
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We flew from Esquel to El Calafate in Argentina. Calafate is the jumping off point to get to places like Perito Moreno Glacier, into Puerto Natales (Chile) and also out to El Chalten - and I did all of these!
We stayed in some small cabanas in Calafate and checked in. It being Thanksgiving in the States, Jess wanted to do something special to celebrate. As nowhere seemed to have roast turkey, we booked into a steak restaurant for dinner.
However, we had arrived close to lunchtime and so opted for a ´light lunch´of pizza. It turned out to be patagonian lamb pizza and amazing, huge chunks of beautifully marinated, cooked and seasoned lamb, and smothered with cheese. I like these 2 ingredients seperately and never thought to combine them - wow, what a combo!!
We spent the afternoon shopping just generally mooching around which was nice, after the stress of the previous evening and the forced early morning rise.
We went our for our steak dinner to a place called La Tablita that was cited in Lonely Planet as some of the best steak in Calafate. It was full of tourists (as most restaurants are here)
and we were disapponited by the service. Unfortunately, we were also disappointed with the steak - it being overcooked. I think Argentina is the reverse of France - they like to overcook their meat (whereas the French like to undercook it) so my lesson is to order it more bloody than I would like! Fortunately the Malbec we ordered was great (as always!). Also, thankfully we ordered the half serving of steak, which is 250g and still too big!!
The next morning we were picked up for our day trip to visit to Perito Moreno glacier for trekking and viewing of the glacier. We were picked up 45 mins late and were convinced they forgot us. ´Argentinian time' cannot be that bad! Thankfully we kept harrassing the guy at our hotel to keep calling the company.
Again, it was raining and not the nicest day. However, we had been assured that this meant the glacier was more likely to calve (split off huge chunks) later in the day, so we crossed fingers for that. I did my usual thing of falling asleep on the bus straight away, but was lucky enough to take in some of the scenery
along the way - including numerous rainbows due to the rain. I´m not sure what it is about Patagonia, but we have seen so many rainbows it´s not funny!
We finally reached the jump off point from the bus and boarded a ferry to head to the glacier. It was raining pretty hard and it took me about 5 minutes to realise we were right in front of it - and I was the first person to notice! The boat windows were all foggy and it just looked like a big white mass upfront. It is absolutely massive, being 250km square, 30km in length and one of the 48 glaciers to feed into the Southern Patagonian Ice Field. It is just spectacular, it´s edges average at 75m above the water so you can imagine the sheer size of it as it loomed before our boat.
We landed on the south side of it, and headed up to some huts to get ready for our ice trekking. We hiked along a track that led right up to the glacier, and before jumping onto the ice had crampons strapped onto our shoes. It was still windy and raining so not
the best conditions, and I was a little apprehensive about going on the snow. My last experience had been London 'snow' and I had slipped over on it which was not nice!
However, using the correct technique with the crampons made it so easy. The trick is to walk with your feet wider apart than normal (so the crampons don´t get caught on anything ie each other!) and to put your feet flat on the ice. This means diagonally downwards when going down, and you need to bend your knees and lean backwards. Took a bit of practise, and they told us that when we started to feel comfortable, the trek would be over. Very true!
it was an amazing terrain to be on. We walked up and down slopes, looked into very deep crevasses (I only got so close!) and the structures we saw were just spectacular. Unlike anything I had ever done before and very enjoyable once I got my crampon tecnhique down pat! Towards the end a table materialised and on it was whisky and glacier ice for us to enjoy and some yummy chocolates. After almost 2 hours on the ice in freezing conditions,
it was very welcome, even though I am not a whisky fan!
We finally came down and took our crampons off. It was a strange feeling at first - like when you take ice skates off after using them. We headed back to camp and on the way could hear loud cracking sounds - this was the sound of the glacier calving! Luckily we hadn´t heard it while on the ice- it would have been a very unnerving sound!
We made it back to the huts and while we waited for our ferry to pick us up everyone was on the beach watching for pieces falling off. We spied a couple which was very exciting. As our ferry drew in close to land, a huge piece cracked off and the ferry had to back up very quickly. Of course, when a huge piece of ice calves off the main glacier it hits the water and is very heavy, causing what they call a tsunami. The boat was almost at dry land (well, rocks actually) and would have been washed directly onto them, so had to reverse very quickly while we watched the ice fall into the lake and for the waves to ripple out. Amazing!!
On the way back to the bus we saw other chunks fall off so we were very excited to head to the observation platforms for more action! They drove us around to a network of platforms which have been buitl into the hillside opposite the glacier. Now not only did we have a view of one side of the glacier, but we could see the whole thing from above, and also the other side.
Jess and I headed for the platforms in front of the ´calving zone´ - and camped out there for the hour that we had, spying huge chunks ready to fall off and waiting with baited breath and my camera on 'continuous shoot' mode to get the action! We were rewarded with a couple of massive chunks calving off - there is a huge crack and then you see the ice fall into the water. We were also lucky enough to see a huge floating iceberg turn 180 degrees in the water, amazed at how much of the iceberg is underwater, and the deep blue colour of it as it turned upside down. Awesome!!
The day was topped off with probably the best hot chocolate I´ve ever had. The Argentine´s do chocolate well in general, and their hot chocolates are legendary. This one was hot, strong and really rich. Heaven!!
And if the day couldn´t get any better, we headed out to another parilla for dinner. I ordered the Patagonian lamb and got a small platter of different lamb pieces (yum!). Jess had a steak and we of course had Malbec as an accompaniment.
The next day we headed back to Chile and Puerto Natales - more shortly!
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