Blogs from El Calafate, Santa Cruz, Argentina, South America - page 7

Hi Guys, So we have arrived in Argentina in the beautiful town of El Calafate! We took a 6 hour bus from puerto natalies which was fine and got checked in to our hostel America del sur which was a tad hard to find but otherwise very nice. We got talking to an Irish guy Alex who is working there he is from Galway and he was very helpful with telling us what there is to do in the area. We headed down into the town for some lunch, we struggled to get money all day the atm's all seemed not to be working so we had to put everything on the card. We had lunch in this lovely cafe and Laura just loved how they brought out some smarties when you got your tea or ... read more

Die naechste Station hat reichlich Bergsteiger-Historie: es ging nach El Chalten, zu Fuessen des Cerro Torre und des Fitz Roy. So viel Pech wie wir am Anfang mit dem Wetter hatten, so viel Glueck hatten wir in den letzten Tagen. Die Berge zeigten sich von ihrer besten Seite, und so haben wir unsere 4 Tage mit dem Zelt vollauf genossen. Es hat sich einfach ein WOW!!!-Blick nach dem naechsten gezeigt. Und wir koennen Andrea nur recht geben: der Fitz Roy ist der schoenste Berg der Welt. Die Fotos sprechen fuer sich ;-) Da wir offensichtlich nicht die einzigen sind, die den Fitz Roy toll finden, trifft man dort recht viele Leute; so z.B. auch die Heike von der Waldau! Wir kannten uns zwar bisher nicht persoenlich, aber erkannt habe ich sie trotzdem, und das war echt ... read more

We've reached the southern point of our two weeks Patagonian Odyssey...we've reached El Calafate. But first, there was the road from Menelik to El Calafate...some 480km with few gravels kms on the way. I did get 10 extra liters of nafta (fuel) from the Estancia Menelik at a serious premium, but that was what it was...long journey, without a single petrol station on the way. First, 80km on gravels...went smoothly, we left early...life was good... Than 40km on a proper road...nice....than it came...180km on gravels. Sometimes it's fun, when the gravels looks like stones, I don't really like it anymore! It went mainly smoothly...thinking that pretty soon, we are already doing this road one more time, on our way up. The gravels road finished at Tres Lagos...and 2km from Tres Lagos, I found a flooded track. ... read more

After leaving Rio we arrived in good old Buenos Aries, this place was beginning to feel like home. We had to spend a night here as we could not make a connecting flight straight to El Calafate from Rio. The next morning we had a flight at 6:30am to El Calafate which is down in the south of Argentina. The night before, Zac had gone out waving taxis down to find out the cost of a trip to the airport as we were leaving too early for any shuttle buses. We got up super early and by about 4:30am we were out on the street. We met another guy heading to the airport who wanted to split a taxi but he had been given a quote by the driver of 200 pesos! Zac had been told ... read more

It’s a cracker of a morning, the sun is just below the clouds low down on the eastern horizon, but it is lighting up the snow capped Andes far to the west. Maximo has just picked me up from the hostel and we are speeding west beside Lago Argentino to a favoured fishing spot. Maximo checks my shoe size and after a “wow” there is a hurried u-turn to get a larger pair of wading boots. We were soon out of town clipping along at around 140kph, hardly seeing another car on the road. Both guides (Sergio and Maximo) had Toyota HiLux’s with big cracks through the windscreens. I joked to Eileen later that a cracked windscreen is a badge of honour for fishing guides and that they probably hit the windscreen with a hammer as ... read more