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Published: November 30th 2015
Road to Glacier
You cannot believe how straight you can make roads here.El Calafate and Spanish lessons
I write as we are leaving El Calafate, bound for Punta Arenas via bus. We are hammering down the well-known Route 40 which runs the entire length of Argentina. Out the bus windows is the wide, dry (12" of rain a year), and wind blown pampas of southern Patagonia. Several times the driver has struggled with the winds to keep the bus on the road.
Estancias (ranches) of thousands of acres stretch out on both sides of the road as far as the eye can see. It is a place you would not want to have a breakdown as we have only passed about three other vehicles in the first two hours.
The best part of El Calafate was the trip out to Glacier Pierto Moreno. It is one of the few in the world that is advancing and we were able to stand on a platform only about 150 yards from it while the friendly park ranger ("I try to practice my English daily.") explained that it was creeping towards us at the rate of about 2-3 cm. a day. So, no worries, at that rate it will take
Lunch spot
Glacier about 150 yards away, ice for drinks! 15 years for the glacier to crush the place we were standing.
Actually, it would not happen that way as the 'nose' of the glacier, which at this time is touching the Magallenas Peninsula, where we were standing, is damming up Largo Argentina--separating the east finger of the lake from the west. This means the east finger is filling up or rising above the west, which will lead to a giant rupture of the ice between the two fingers of the lake, called a 'blow out' for obvious reasons. There have been about 17 of these in the past 150 years, we did not get to see one, but we did see the glacier 'calve' repeatedly.
Low and behold, we met up with our young Danish friends from El Chalten here and gave them a ride back to town in our rented car.
We have been working on our Spanish. John does well, he listens well, asks lots of questions, and is managing the shifting accents and local idioms. Marcia and I, on the other hand....well, here are some examples.
In the hostel in El Calafate the sprinkler
New Friends
Here is where we ran into our Danish friends on this part of the trip. was running all day outside our window. Ever the gardener, Marcia thought she would help by asking if it should be moved. So confusing was the conversation that the hostel host almost ordered us a taxi to the movies!
The words for food to go and tap water are pretty similar, at least to me--so I keep ending up ordering water to go!
It has taken a while for Marcia to stop ordering meat pastries that you hit with a stick (as in em-pinatas versus empenadas).
And the only way to appreciate how bad my Spanish is would have been to follow me around the supermarcido
on Friday night, when everyone seems to do their shopping, as I navigated the meat and cheese counter. First thing I had to wait for my number to be called. Now I am getting pretty good with one to ten, and some of the twenties, but 36? No chance. So I stood near where they were stacking the numbers they had waited on and when I saw 35 added to the pile and heard them call a number I held mine up. Of course, that was a
Boat
See if you can find the very large boat... mistake as they assumed I could speak Spanish. Not only did I have no idea what the counter guy asked me, once I pointed out the salami I wanted I had to figure out how much, whether or not I wanted it sliced, and how to wrap it. Then the cheese.....you get the picture. I did leave with what I wanted, but the other customers were left at the counter chuckling (in a good natured way) and the mime show the deli guy and I had put on.
We are now in Punta Arenas, have the rental car, and are getting ready to drive to Terra del Fuego....but one more thing. You will never guess who was on the last bus with us--yep, the kids from Denmark. They were not sure where they were going to stay so we took them with us to the hostel we had reserved and luckily they had two beds left. The best part of travel!
Now we are on to Ushuaia, the end of the earth. Next report from there.
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