Patagonia I love you

El Calafate

I flew into El Calafate – a small town around 3,000 km’s south from Buenos Aires, which is the gateway to Patagonia. Looking out the plane window as you descend you see gorgeous blue turquoise water with smaller streams running off into the distance. This is Lake Argentina on whose shores El Calafate was built. 

The airport feels new-ish and there are some great maps in the baggage claim area showing those who perhaps have not done enough pre-study of the area exactly where you are and what is around you – highlighting distances between the towns in hours and km’s. This is quite interesting and I am grateful for these maps as well as all the other advertising as it’s all providing some handy education as the bags took about 30 minutes to come out. By this time I have a far better indication of  tours options, dinners and treks that may be of interest. Best ‘delayed baggage time’ ever spent. 

Getting into Town

I had no transport booked upon arrival but it was more than easy to arrange, with a string of companies waiting for my money as I came through the exit gate. You could take a bus to your hotel, a bus to the main terminal if you wanted to go straight to El Chalten or other destinations or hire a car or a taxi.

But by far the most economical was to get a fare with the bus that took me straight to my hotel for 70 pesos, just under $10 AUD. Nothing like being dropped off at your front door (the airport is 20km’s out of town) and thankfully I was only the 4th stop along and it didn’t take an hour to drive around all the hotels before they got to mine. As it turns out my last minute booking of a hostel is only a 5 min walk from the main street so it’s quite convenient. 

Am I in the right place?

Looking around, I feel like I have walked off the plane into a Scandinavian country or an alpine village at least, all the houses look a bit like Norway or Sweden, some with the wooden log roll houses  and others in the triangular shaped roof that you see so often over there. I guess the weather here in Winter is pretty unforgiving with lots of snow, perhaps the triangular roofs help the snow fall off.  However the hills that surround the town are bare, stark, like most ice or snow fields in summer.

It’s pretty clear that this town has been created pretty much for the tourism trade with what looks like hastily put together buildings scattered about and many more seemingly still under construction. 

I took a walk around the very cute main drag – nothing but restaurants, souvenir shops, travel agents, adventure clothing stores (who also rent trekking and camping gear) and a whopping sign and entrance for a Casino (?). What else are you going to do with your nights in the snow and ice fields I guess.  All this just cements the value that tourism alone has to this town, it exists to service the tourist spots in this region. It must be pretty dead in winter. 

Remember that thing called cash?

Booking a tour is easy when you arrive, I had nothing but my first two nights booked when I landed but a stroll through town and discussion with my hostel peeps and I was all done and dusted for the next 6 days.

Apparently the National Park only gives out a permit to one tour operator to do certain tours inside the park so the costs of all tours are the same – there’s no competition between tour agencies which helps by not having to traipse around to find the best deal. The difference is what % of the cost the agents or hostels put on top of the set price for their additional commission.

Here, cash is king. So many places do not take credit card so it’s cash only. Too bad if you don’t have any on you, so if you pay via this method you can be charged up to an additional 10% for the privilege! They only set up credit card facilities in the last year or two apparently (this is 2014)!  So if you are in Buenos Aries before coming here and the blue market rate is good, it may be a cheaper option to change some USD there before coming down. I did. The official rate was 7.4 here today and one place up the road was changing dollars for 10 to one (whereas I got 11.5 in BA before I left), so you could still get a bit of a better deal, else the AUD exchange rate if you withdrew from an ATM was around 6.9 plus your international withdrawal fee.  Anyhoo, enough about exchange rates. 

Overall though, El Calafate has a good vibe to it. There’s musicians around playing in parks as there is a local festival in town this month. The weather is decent and people are out and about. I love it when people are in happy holiday mood. I quite enjoyed this town for the three nights I ended up here.

The Internet or WiFi is all pretty iffy down here. I read about this in a number of hostel reviews when trying to book, same goes for El Chalten, even in this restaurant (where I am having dinner and logging onto their free wifi) I lost connection within 30 mins and it didn’t come back. (Sad as it is, I am catching up on all the days happenings and news on social media).

Just a little side observation here….

Oh dear, I just saw the worst mullet ever… on a woman. Short all over the front, when I say short, it was a long short, enough for curls of sorts but the back of her head was something to behold. I think I was in too much shock to remember to get the camera out. I know I’m  not supposed to judge, but I couldn’t help it, it was too bad not too.   Then following her was a mullet with 5 x dreddies down the back. Very interesting viewing. You see all sorts. 

So what’s this area all about?

The reason for my stay in this town was to visit the well-known glaciers of the area, the main one being the Perito Moreno Glacier. This is the most famous one and has been photographed time after time, most recently in 2012 when part of the glacier collapsed into the lake below. 

I wanted to do a particular tour here that allowed me not only to see the glacier from land, but also from the water and then allow me to do a trek on the ice. As it turned out, it was right up there as one of the best days of my trip. 

Perito Moreno Glacier

It’s about 80km’s from El Calafate and a 1.5 hr drive through some lovely countryside. As we get close we’re are able to sneak a peak out the bus window at the glacier and this only makes us more excited. 

Our first stop is to the Balconies at Perito Moreno Glacier – my first real view of this magnificent natural formation. The balconies offer glorious views directly in front and to the side of the glacier and also start up high and slope down to a lower level so you can better appreciate the sheer size of the structure.  It’s amazing, I’ve never seen anything like this in my life. The blue hue of the ice is incredible and gives it a mythical look. 

This particular glacier apparently has the following dimensions and is the only glacier in the world that is still actually growing – the rest are receding.

• 5km wide
• 50-60m high
• 14km  length
• 300+ years old

…and she’s not the biggest glacier in the region. I saw the biggest the following day on a cruise that included three glaciers, seeing them only from the water, but still you could see how far uphill some of these went, it’s phenomenal to witness.

The in’s and out’s of the Glacier

Back to Perito Moreno… as I was walking along the balconies I heard what I thought was a clap of rolling thunder but it was in fact the glacier cracking somewhere within that vast space. There were also shorter sounds like pops of thunder. When these noises happened everyone stopped what they were doing and whizzed around to see if these noises meant that ice would fall off the glacier creating a spectacular view as it falls into the lake below. I was fortunate to see this no less than 6 times over the two days I was there. It really is a sight to behold. The noise is deafening each time. Mother Nature at her best.

The lake surrounding Perito Moreno is a stunning bright turquoise colour caused by the sediment from the glaciers. It changes colour as the sun rises and falls, as does the ice itself and the blue just seems to get more beautiful as the day draws to a close. Sunset streaming through the ice creates such a glorious hue across the sky and ice.

Next up was the boat ride over to the other side of the glacier to do our Ice Trek. Sailing past her vertical ice blue walls again hit home about how nature can be such a beautiful thing and a force to be reckoned with at the same time.

Glacier Trek

Once off the boar we walked for a bit to get to the side of the glacier with our mountain guides who then attach crampons to our boots. These little suckers are going to keep me upright on the ice so I want them on as tight as possible.

Then we were on the ice and shown how to walk properly to stop accidents happening. There is a real art to this – who knew? Feet apart as much as possible to avoid the crampons catching our trousers and causing us to fall. Uphill is with feet turned out and leaning forward. Downhill is the whole foot landing solidly in a downward direction at the one time so the whole crampon can catch the ice., leaning slightly backwards.

Easy enough right? So off we trek up and into the ravines of this magical structure seeing holes, cracks, mini creeks and hearing interesting noises from within. A few ‘ummm-what-was-that’ looks from us all are immediately eased by our guide who assured us that we are on a very safe part of the ice.  

Then, stunningly and almost faster than I realised, we were low enough that we were completely surrounded by ice. I couldn’t see land anymore – only sky and ice – and it was such an unusual but amazing sensation. Everyone was pretty silent at this point taking in exactly where we were and how unique this experience was. 

As we climbed higher along some of the peaks I realised that the sun was starting to go down and as I said before, the colours around us started to get deeper and others lighter. It was quite surreal and everyone stopped for more photo opportunities, because I need 20 more photos of the same thing.

And to finish off….

About an hour later, when we thought it was all over our guide tells us that we are now going around to another part of the ice. Here we were surprised with an Argentinean whisky and an alfajor (local version of a Tim Tam). The ice for the whisky was chipped straight off the glacier and into the glasses, the whisky freely poured then shared. It blew my head off but I got through most of it.  This was indeed a great way to finish and really celebrate what and where we had just been.

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What a day!  This has been a truly unforgettable experience.

Travel REALLY is the best.