El Calafate

January 8, 2019January 13, 2019

More Glaciers!

Today we are taking a boat trip on Lake Argentina to see a few other glaciers that come off the Patagonian ice field. The boat is a large catamaran with a couple outdoor decks and an inside section with big viewing windows. It is very windy on the upper deck, so we spend most of our time inside – a lot of it playing Tichu. The views from the boat are spectacular – mountains everywhere with the beautiful turquoise water of the lake. Along the way we encounter blue icebergs just floating in the lake.

January 7, 2019January 22, 2019

Walking on Perito Moreno Glacier

On day two, we met our tour group at the office of Hielo y Aventura for mini-trekking on Perito Moreno glacier. The bus drove us to the Parque Nacional Los Glaciares where we got on a boat to travel to the glacier. The entrance fee is 700 pesos ($19) per person, but you get a 50% discount off the second day if you pay for two days up front. Since we are coming back into the park tomorrow, that works for us.

The ride out to the glacier is about twenty minutes and the view out the window as the glacier comes into focus is spectacular. We have definitely never seen anything like this before.

Perito Moreno Glacier – first view from the boat

January 5, 2019January 22, 2019

After a six-and-a-half hour bus ride from Puerto Natales to El Calafate, including a one hour process to leave Chile and twenty minutes to enter Argentina, we arrived in El Calafate at 2pm. Sol and Travis kindly tried to pick us up with a welcome sign at the bus terminal, but we were early and they were late, so we missed each other entirely. Only a brief stop for coffee at the hotel on our way out again delayed us enough to connect with them. Since we can each only communicate when we have WiFi, finding each other once we were out and about might have been a bit tricky.

Puerto Natales was the first place Eric and I saw dogs chase cars in real life. They do it in El Calafate too. The dogs stand in the road as the cars come by and bark and try to bite at the tires. The first time you see it, it seems certain the dog will be run over, but pretty soon you see they have this game figured out, and they love it.