Un día viajando

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I wish that I could write more for you today, but unfortunately there's not a lot to tell you about. We woke up at 5:30 for a 7:00 meeting time. Once on the busses, we went to a hotel, where those of us who didn't need them dropped off our big bags to store while we're in Patagonia. We then went to the airport for an 11:00 flight out. Our professor is very determined to get there at least 2 hours ahead of time, if not earlier, so we just hung out and talked for a while at the airport. As Aerolíneas Argentinas is apparently prone to doing, we left about 40 minutes late for our 3 hour flight.

About 2.5 hours in, the captain came on the speaker, saying that the airport at our destination, El Calafate, was closed due to weather, so we were diverting to Rio Gallegos, which was supposed to be the plane's second stop. We hung out there for about an hour on the plane and another hour in the airport before finally boarding to head to El Calafate, where we were put in a holding pattern for about 45 minutes before finally coming in to land. Our 3 hour flight took us between 6 and 7, but at long last we made it in!

It's cold here. We're at a larger latitude than the southern point of the Hudson bay (so much further out than Boston or Vermont), and in a quasi-tundra. While it's not freezing (well, okay, it's literally freezing, but 25^o is really not that cold), it's certainly not warm, especially for July. It's also a very foggy area; most mornings and nights are too dense to see more than about 100 yards, and often during the day it's not much better. This probably is coming from the glacial lake the city sits on, which feeds from the ice field on the Chile-Argentina border. I'll give you more info tomorrow, as we actually get to go out and explore!

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Photos

Straight tundra flying in
This in Rio Gallegos, but same idea in El Calafate