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Published: April 19th 2011
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Funny!
Really?! Open 25 hours, eh? So after much contemplation, we were off to the south. El Calafate and El Chalten are along the famous Route 40 which runs a huge length of Argentina, sometimes on dirt road in the middle of nowhere. (We had a taste of that on our 4 hour bus ride between the two cities!) The town of El Calafate would remind you of Estes Park. It's on the edge of Lago Argentina, the biggest fresh water lake in the country. It was chilly, but not as bitterly cold as expected. But extremely windy! Here we visited a massive glacier. It's truly amazing. Perito Moreno is 19 miles long, 3 miles wide and 240 feet high. Best thing is that it's accessible and you can walk really close to it. In addition, due to the fact that the glacier is growing and in constant motion, there are constant "calvings" where bits of the glacier, some car-sized, some as large as skyscrapers, split off and plunge into the lake. Hard to capture on video because it happens so fast; a splitting crack and down into the lake it comes! I wont bore you, but there are some amazing facts about this glacier available online:
Flamingoes!!!
Can you believe it? All the way down here! {url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perito_Moreno_Glacier}
Only a short ride from El Calafate is El Chalten, famous for it's Cerro Torre and Fitz Roy peaks of sheer granite. These are known for being a technical climbers dream, but for us, it provided for some fabulous all day hikes and absolutely gorgeous scenery. See the pics, as they'll tell the story.
John thought that I might have died on the 50 hour bus rides between BA and El Calafate, so we flew both ways, but had a 20 hour bus ride to Salta from BA. Salta is wine region, second to Mendoza, and as you'll see it was wonderful...........
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Thomp A Romp
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Awesome
Salto Chorillo. Man, nice photograph. I think I want to go there. How were the people? Friendly? Why did you title the blog "Near the End of the World!!!!"? Just wondering.