The bus from Puerto Natales, Chile to El Calafate, Argentina
was on-time, comfortable, and inexpensive.
The five-hour journey included a fairly straight-forward border crossing. But crossing the border was noticeable: roads on the Chilean side were nicer, as was
the immigration building, and even the rest stop on the Argentinian side of the
border was a wee bit dingy. Despite
those little differences, Argentina is mostly just as nice as Chile. The country has similar beautiful scenery, a
European vibe, is very gay-friendly, and seems to have an abundance of gluten-free
and vegan options touted at all restaurants.
I didn’t go to those restaurants.
The town of El Calafate was super cute. Despite being roughly the same size as Puerto
Natales, El Calafate was a lot busier. There
were more shops, more restaurants, and just more stuff going on. I accredit this to the fact that many travellers
base themselves in the town and do day trips out to the sights. Puerto Natales, on the other hand, is more of
a stopping point for just a night before travellers make their way to spend a
few nights in the national park.
The most noticeable inconvenience about being in Argentina was
cash. It’s hard to come by. Argentina’s economic woes mean that the
government and financial system have implemented cash restrictions. The maximum withdrawal I could find at an ATM
in town was for roughly AU$48, plus an 18.9% fee (WTF?) I knew this would be a problem in advance, so I
brought actual cash and converted that to pesos. USD – and even AUD – were like gold, and I
got a fantastic rate by exchanging my AUD for pesos with some dude in a little
room upstairs from a restaurant.
It all seemed very sketchy at first, but it was actually really
easy. What an odd place.
I arrived in the evening, and I knocked off to sleep early
as the next day was a big day for me. I was
about to check-off one of my 103 Things:
the Perito Moreno Glacier!
I booked a fancy tour with Glaciar Sur because it was a
special occasion. Not just solely the
glacier, the tour also visited an estancia (ranch). Estancia Nibepo Aike was the one on the
agenda, and despite the pouring rain at the very start of the day, the estancia
was truly gorgeous: it had beautiful
flowers, horses in big fields, and a real taste of Patagonia: gauchos on horseback and border collies
herding cows into a paddock. A
sheep-shearing demonstration was performed and I was shocked that they take the
wool off all in one big pelt!
There were tons of historical photos to look at about the sheep
industry in Patagonia, along with plenty of old photos of the family who own
the ranch. The highlight, however, was
the lunch. What must have been the best
meal of my trip, they served us lamb straight off the spit, with a whole buffet
of fresh salads, and the most delicious bread which seemed as if white bread had
an affair with a sopapilla and out popped this deliciousness nine months later. The most delightful malbec was supplied to
wash it down, and flan with dulce de leche was served for dessert.
Fuck, it was all soooo delicious.
From there, the tour embarked to see the main event. The Perito Moreno Glacier is one of the world’s
most stable glaciers – it’s not shrinking – and it’s also one of the world’s
fastest glaciers, moving about 2 metres per day. It empties out into Lago Argentino (Argentino
Lake).
The tour started off with a little boat ride. We rounded a corner to see a bit of the
glacier at a distance, but then veered back into a cove to step ashore for a
short hike. The hike ended at a great
viewpoint of the glacier. From there, we
re-boarded the ship and were served a bit of whiskey in a glass with glacial
ice (or so they said) as we approached the glacier.
The glacier is truly spectacular. The glacier face is about five kilometres
wide, though we could only see about half from where our little boat was. From the water level, the glacier didn’t look
enormously tall, but then I noticed the triple-decker tourist ship right in front
of it. The ship – which was many times
larger than the little boat I was on – was dwarfed by the glacier towering over
it. Ranging from 40 to 70 metres high,
the glacier suddenly became immense. At
one point I guessed that we were 300 metres from it, but in reality, we were
two kilometres away. It’s just so enormous
that it plays tricks on your mind!
After cruising on the lake for a bit, we docked and then
took a minibus to the main visitor centre.
There are kilometres of viewing platforms to walk around: some way up
atop a hill; others almost at lake level.
We had less than 2 hours here which was disappointing. I could have spent all day. But the time I did have there was amazing. I went toward the right, which was away from
the side of the glacier that we saw from the boat, and gained a whole new perspective
on just how massive it was. From the
upper platforms, you can see the glacier reaching far, far back into the
mountains. It looks like it never ends. Then, out of the silence, came a big crash
and splash as a chunk of glacier calved into the lake and became an
iceberg. This happened every few minutes,
though none of the calving I saw was notably large compared to videos I had
seen online.
The drive back to town featured creatures that I had
forgotten about after living in Australia for a decade: skunks!
Some car hit a skunk or two in the road, and a whole bunch of other
skunks were in the road mourning.
Everything just smelled terrible.
I had a whole day and a half more in El Calafate, so I
visited the Glaciarium the next day. It’s
basically a museum dedicated to snow, ice, and glaciers. It has a ton of information on the impacts of
climate change (including terrifying maps of glacier recession in the Southern
Patagonian Ice Field), and overall it was arranged logically and in a digestible
way. I spent a few hours there and
really enjoyed it.
Aside from that, I spent quite a bit of time checking out the
plethora of souvenir shops, boutique alfajor shops, and restaurants. I even ate guanaco tacos! And then it was time to travel a wee bit north,
a bit deeper into the mountains.
But first, let me take a selfie.
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