El Calafate and the journey from hell

---

We arrived in El Calafate and booked ourselves into the local hostel and arranged our trip for the next day to see Perito Moreno Glacier.

El Calafate is quite small but seemed a cosy town be in apart from the numerous stray dogs that followed us around. There seemed to be a number of posh restaurants that would have been well within our budget but we felt that Bim would probably make the place alot less classy so instead we opted for a bar restaurant for a few cerveza's.

The day trip to Perito Moreno Glacier was quality. The glacier itself was spectacular to see and the sound it made when chunks of ice were falling from it were unbelievable. We could have spent all day there and I don't think we would've got bored looking at it. It certainly made the 28 hour journey from Puerto Madyrn worth while.

That journey doesn't even come close to the journey from hell when we left El Calafate. We awoke on the Sunday morning to fly to Buenos Aires on a 3hr flight which was fine until we then got on a 20 hour bus to Salta in the north of Argentina. Arriving the following day at about 1:30pm we grabbed something to eat and then got another bus to the border (La Quica) arriving late that night. This bus wasn't the luxury buses we were used to and we were happy to finally arrive at the bus station a stones throw away from Bolivia. We were unable to cross the border because immigration was closed so we were forced to stay the night in the run down town of La Quica. Led by two 10 year old boys across what looked like the aftermath of World War II we arrived in the the most disgusting hotel (if you could call it that) you could imagine. It smelt like there was a dead animal under my bed so I thought it was best not to look. Sleeping bags out and wearing most of my clothes due to the cold I tried to get some sleep dreaming of one day reaching Bolivia.

---