We had made good progress so far down the Andes by bus, but we still had one more leg to do. We decided to get an overnight bus to Comodor rivadavia, spend the day there and get another overnight one to Rio Gallegos, and then the final 5 hours up to El Cafelate. A big trip but we planned it well......... with the usual outcome. It poured rain the first leg and when we got into Comodor it was a miserable day. Not only that but it was a national Labour Day holiday, so nothing was open. When I say nothing well, the bus station was and the service station. So we had to spend a day in this town, with rain squalls driving everybody inside, only for us there wasn't an inside. We walked down to the service station, Jo had a cup of coffee, I watched. That believe it or not killed two hours. Then we walked around town a bit and saw a sign in an internet cafe saying it was open at 2pm. Sweet, we had a plan, hole up for a while and then do some internet stuff. Then things got infinitely more brighter, we found a bakery that was also open. Considering how many people were in there, we were guessing that this really was the only place open. After filling ours pockets with a variety of pastries, we headed back to the dry bus station to eat and wait for the internet cafe to open.
The bus ride from the coast to El Calafate took us through some snow covered Fields, actually there was a lot more snow than when we went skiing in Bulgaria last Christmas. Jo was pretty excited about everything being covered in white. We checked into our hostel and went to see what there was to do. The views from our hostel were fantastic. You could see snow covered mountains from our bed. El Calafate was going to be our base to see the glaciers, so we booked two trips straight away, one for tomorrow and one for the day after that.
This was as close to a penguin Jo could get, she was most upset.
The first one took us on a luxury boat trip on a lake that is fed by about ten glaciers. The water colour is incredible, the colour comes from the minerals that are scraped up by the glacier as it heads down the hill. We were very lucky with the weather as well, crystal clear day and no wind.
The second trip that we were taking was going to take us up onto a glacier. Yep that's right we were going to strap some nails to our feet and walk on top of a 400 year old ice block, which just happens to be sliding down a hill at 2 meters every day. Walking on a glacier is a whole lot safer than you would think We clambered over this thing, which must have looked a bit funny. You see to get a good grip with the crampons ( nails on you shoes) you have to stamp your feet. So there was a line of about 15 people stamping away, walking in a snaking line for two hours. At the end of the walk, we came around a block of ice to see a table set up waiting for us, heaps of glasses and a couple of bottles of scotch waiting to be drunk. So we had a tot of 8 year old scotch with 400 year old ice cubes. Not a bad way to end a walk. The only other thing of note that happened on the walk was a bit of a wind sprang up for 10 minutes, which blew snow off the top of the mountains. This was the first time Jo had seen snow falling, she was most impressed. Then it cleared up again, in fact we had another belter of a day for the weather.
Now that's the way to drink scotch.
The last bit we had to see was the Perito Moreno glacier. The great thing about this part of the world is that you can get so close to the glaciers without any equipment. To see the same glacial chain from the Chilean side, you have to hike for days and it is a real extreme thing. On this side you just take a bus, they even have wheelchair access for some of it. One of the biggest highlights of the trip.
This is an absolute must if you find yourself withing 3000km's of the place.
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