El Calafate, Patagonia
Argentina
From Puerto Madryn we had decided to head to a place called Puerto Natales in the Chilean Andes, famed for it's breathtaking scenery and excellent trekking. We thought it was about time we experienced the great outdoors proper, although 3 to 4 days in a tent and trekking over 60km, through trecherous terrain, in unpredictable weather and carrying everything including the kitchen sink could well be considered jumping in at the deep end. As you well know, my experience of 'outdoors' is usually limited to what I see walking home from the pub. If you can't get a pizza delivered at 2am then I don't want to be there. How would I cope eating beans out of a tin and bed by 9pm? Well fortunately I've not had to find out yet, and the reasons why will be dragged out below.
To get to Puerto Natales, we would first have to reach Rio Gallegos in the deep south of Patagonia, a mere 20
hours away by bus (it seems that in this country, every town is 20 hours away from it's neighbour). From there we hoped to head straight into Chile. Being the dingbats that we are we left it too late and couldn't get a big seat on the bus, so we had to travel upstairs in the small seats. The journey itself wasn't actually that bad, even though the food had been imported specially from British Rail (although it didn't look like it had already been eaten once) and the toilets were bought in secondhand from Vietnamese National Railways, complete with toxic aromas and unidentifiable stains. Although a bit narrower and shorter than previously experienced, the seats turned out to be quite comfortable. Put Cara in any moving vehicle and she almost instantateously falls asleep, because of some wacky Pavlovian reflex she's acquired. I also have a conditioned response to long bus journeys, but mine tends to manifest itself in restless fidgeting, sleeplessness and mental challenges where I count in how many languages I can threaten the young boy who keeps jabbing his feet continuously into the back of my chair.
As we left P. Madryn the landcscape out of the window was of the flat, dry and haunting looking Patagonian Steppe. 20 hours hard driving later, a glance out of the window showed the same flat, dry, dusty expanse. Either this place is enormous or the driver was lost and had been driving around in circles for a day. We finally arrived in Rio Gallegos the next afternoon, two hours late, by which time our bus to Chile had gone. The next bus was not for another 2 days, so we made an executive decision and bought a ticket to El Calafate, 4 1/2 hours to the west on the Argentine side of the mountains and the jumping off point to see the Perito Moreno glacier. The El Calafate bus was not leaving until 8.30pm so we took a taxi into town to find an internet café, try and arrange a room for the night in Calafate and get some food. Rio Gallegos is where concrete goes to die and that's the only nice thing I can say about it, other than the bus left on time.
El Calafate is a pleasant enough place, built on the southern side of the valley formed by Lago Argentina, the country's largest lake. We spent the first day there
mooching around, eating and trying to figure out how to get to Puerto Natales. We had dinner in yet another parilla restaurant, and back at our hostel we polished off another bottle of wine chatting to an Irish guy we were sharing the dorm with. I'm really not handling this dormitory thing very well. It's not so much that I mind having to share a room with a stranger, but rather I feel sorry for them having to share with me. I don't know how but my body can produce a spectacular range of unctious odours. After a day in walking boots my feet smell like decomposing haddock and I fart in my sleep as a matter of principle. Now would you be happy to pay hard cash to experience that? Didn't think so. I still don't understand how Cara puts up with it without having her nose surgically removed. She needs nose plugs, not ear plugs! Sometimes I think I'm lucky to have no sense of smell.
First thing the next morning we were up bright and breezy for our trip out to the glacier. With our winter woollies on, packed lunch and thumping hangover, we were ready for anything. On the way to the Parque Nacional Los Glacieres, our bus took a gravelly back road so we could see the local wildlife and get a bit of a geology lesson from our guide, Mariano. We managed to see eagles, flamingos (!), condors, vultures, a little brown thing, rheas (which are similar to ostriches), guanacos (similar to llamas and members of the camel family), hares, Patagonian grey foxes, a small red thing and lots and lots of sheep. The soil here is so dry and barren that each sheep needs 5 hectares of land to be able to graze. I have no idea how big 5 hectares is, but apparently that's a lot.
Once inside the park we drove on for a little while. The hills turned into mountains and forests sprang up on their slopes. All of a sudden we turned a corner and there was the glacier before us and it was enormous. It is,
so I read, 24 kilometres long, 2 kilometres wide at the mouth and 150 metres deep when it reaches the water. That is a lot of ice. I did a quick mental calculatiuon and I reckon there was enough ice to make something like 500 to 600 ice cubes !! Maybe even more. And that's a lot. We drove to within a few kilometres of the base, then walked the rest of the way around the shore of the glacial lake into which it eventually melts. At one of the observation points, just a few hundred metres from the leading edge of the ice, we saw a huge chunk of ice break off from the glacier and fall into the lake. The noise was immense, as were the waves in created when it hit the water. Obviously, I had just seconds before switched off the camera and put the lens cap back on. Bollocks ! We had lunch looking out over the glacier then drove back down to the lake edge for our boat ride along the south face of the glacier. While we were on the boat, Cara was taking a picture of the glacier face when right in front of her, an even bigger chunk than before broke off and dived into the water, like a bus off a springboard. Fortunately for us, she was more successful at getting a picture of it than I had been earlier. Once back at our hostel we made ourselves dinner in the hostel kitchen for the first time. Patagonia is quite a bit more expensive than northern Argentina and the sightseeing was taking it's toll on the budget. We popped into the local supermarket to buy the obligatory tomato sauce and beef mince that by law must constitute the majority of hostel dinners. When Cara asked at the meat counter for the mince, the fella behind the counter just grabbed a huge lump of steak and threw it in the mincer. I almost cried. Back at the hostel I whistled up a 
quick gnocchi with bolognese, washed down with a couple of litre bottles of Quilmes beer. The whole lot cost around four quid. Who needs fabulous steak restaurants when you can knock out that kind of slurry every day and save about a fiver !
To get to Puerto Natales, we would first have to reach Rio Gallegos in the deep south of Patagonia, a mere 20
hours away by bus (it seems that in this country, every town is 20 hours away from it's neighbour). From there we hoped to head straight into Chile. Being the dingbats that we are we left it too late and couldn't get a big seat on the bus, so we had to travel upstairs in the small seats. The journey itself wasn't actually that bad, even though the food had been imported specially from British Rail (although it didn't look like it had already been eaten once) and the toilets were bought in secondhand from Vietnamese National Railways, complete with toxic aromas and unidentifiable stains. Although a bit narrower and shorter than previously experienced, the seats turned out to be quite comfortable. Put Cara in any moving vehicle and she almost instantateously falls asleep, because of some wacky Pavlovian reflex she's acquired. I also have a conditioned response to long bus journeys, but mine tends to manifest itself in restless fidgeting, sleeplessness and mental challenges where I count in how many languages I can threaten the young boy who keeps jabbing his feet continuously into the back of my chair.As we left P. Madryn the landcscape out of the window was of the flat, dry and haunting looking Patagonian Steppe. 20 hours hard driving later, a glance out of the window showed the same flat, dry, dusty expanse. Either this place is enormous or the driver was lost and had been driving around in circles for a day. We finally arrived in Rio Gallegos the next afternoon, two hours late, by which time our bus to Chile had gone. The next bus was not for another 2 days, so we made an executive decision and bought a ticket to El Calafate, 4 1/2 hours to the west on the Argentine side of the mountains and the jumping off point to see the Perito Moreno glacier. The El Calafate bus was not leaving until 8.30pm so we took a taxi into town to find an internet café, try and arrange a room for the night in Calafate and get some food. Rio Gallegos is where concrete goes to die and that's the only nice thing I can say about it, other than the bus left on time.
El Calafate is a pleasant enough place, built on the southern side of the valley formed by Lago Argentina, the country's largest lake. We spent the first day there
mooching around, eating and trying to figure out how to get to Puerto Natales. We had dinner in yet another parilla restaurant, and back at our hostel we polished off another bottle of wine chatting to an Irish guy we were sharing the dorm with. I'm really not handling this dormitory thing very well. It's not so much that I mind having to share a room with a stranger, but rather I feel sorry for them having to share with me. I don't know how but my body can produce a spectacular range of unctious odours. After a day in walking boots my feet smell like decomposing haddock and I fart in my sleep as a matter of principle. Now would you be happy to pay hard cash to experience that? Didn't think so. I still don't understand how Cara puts up with it without having her nose surgically removed. She needs nose plugs, not ear plugs! Sometimes I think I'm lucky to have no sense of smell.First thing the next morning we were up bright and breezy for our trip out to the glacier. With our winter woollies on, packed lunch and thumping hangover, we were ready for anything. On the way to the Parque Nacional Los Glacieres, our bus took a gravelly back road so we could see the local wildlife and get a bit of a geology lesson from our guide, Mariano. We managed to see eagles, flamingos (!), condors, vultures, a little brown thing, rheas (which are similar to ostriches), guanacos (similar to llamas and members of the camel family), hares, Patagonian grey foxes, a small red thing and lots and lots of sheep. The soil here is so dry and barren that each sheep needs 5 hectares of land to be able to graze. I have no idea how big 5 hectares is, but apparently that's a lot.
Once inside the park we drove on for a little while. The hills turned into mountains and forests sprang up on their slopes. All of a sudden we turned a corner and there was the glacier before us and it was enormous. It is,
so I read, 24 kilometres long, 2 kilometres wide at the mouth and 150 metres deep when it reaches the water. That is a lot of ice. I did a quick mental calculatiuon and I reckon there was enough ice to make something like 500 to 600 ice cubes !! Maybe even more. And that's a lot. We drove to within a few kilometres of the base, then walked the rest of the way around the shore of the glacial lake into which it eventually melts. At one of the observation points, just a few hundred metres from the leading edge of the ice, we saw a huge chunk of ice break off from the glacier and fall into the lake. The noise was immense, as were the waves in created when it hit the water. Obviously, I had just seconds before switched off the camera and put the lens cap back on. Bollocks ! We had lunch looking out over the glacier then drove back down to the lake edge for our boat ride along the south face of the glacier. While we were on the boat, Cara was taking a picture of the glacier face when right in front of her, an even bigger chunk than before broke off and dived into the water, like a bus off a springboard. Fortunately for us, she was more successful at getting a picture of it than I had been earlier. Once back at our hostel we made ourselves dinner in the hostel kitchen for the first time. Patagonia is quite a bit more expensive than northern Argentina and the sightseeing was taking it's toll on the budget. We popped into the local supermarket to buy the obligatory tomato sauce and beef mince that by law must constitute the majority of hostel dinners. When Cara asked at the meat counter for the mince, the fella behind the counter just grabbed a huge lump of steak and threw it in the mincer. I almost cried. Back at the hostel I whistled up a 
quick gnocchi with bolognese, washed down with a couple of litre bottles of Quilmes beer. The whole lot cost around four quid. Who needs fabulous steak restaurants when you can knock out that kind of slurry every day and save about a fiver !While in El Calafate we met up with a Canadian couple, David & Lisa, that we had met in Puerto Iguazu. We spent the night in a local bar with them, getting plastered and having a great laugh. We made it back to the hostel in the early hours of the morning desperately trying not trip over every obstacle we could blunder into in the dark and wake up everybody else. We had to be up early the next morning to pack up and check out as we were heading to a place called El Chalten 4 hours away at the foot of the Andes. It was apparently a great place to do day treks up the mountains and still be back in your comfy bed by evening. We wisely thought this would be the best way to ease ourselves into the trekking habit without our legs falling off.
Mik
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