El Calafate

The bus ride to El Calafate was another experience in itself. Unfortunatley, when you are going from one onehorse town to another, you take what bus is on offer. The 5am bus to Rio Gallegos began with some seriously loud Argentine rap music. It didnt help that we were at the front of the bus right behind the driver so got it full blast. After a good hour or so of that he must have mellowed out as he played a CD of 80s and 90s cheese...which was soothing enough for a while but when we heard the Titanic song, Unchained Melody, Careless Whisper etc for the 7/8th time it really was time to change the record senor. The 12hr journey itself was memorable only for the fact that we must have driven for 5/6 hours without seeing any sign of life whatsoever, incredibly barren and drivng at 40mph on dirt tracks. Once in a blue moon you´d pass a car or a few sheep and that was it. We crossed the fiercely windy Magellan Strait leaving Tierra Del Fuego and via few hours stop in the very unremarkable Rio Gallegos, we reached El Calafate at 2am to be met by the incredibly friendly people from America Del Sur hostel. By a mile the best we´ve stayed at so far. Underfloor heating was especially nice which meant everyone went around in their socks so it felt like at home. The town of Calafate itself was pretty nice, a step up from Ushuaia and you could see it was very much set up for wealthy tourists with very fancy shops, restraunts etc. Due to time restraints and inaccessability, we decided to give Torres Del Paine and El Chalten a skip which was a shame but we´ve enough to be doing and its fair to say we wouldnt be the biggest hikers in the world. The hostel was great anyway and we had great craic with the very interesting mix of nationalities there the few nights we were there.
Of course, the only reason everyone was there was the Perito Moreno Glacier which did not disappoint. There´s not much you can say about it, the photos tend to do the trick. Apparantly its around 3km wide and 26km long, bigger than Buenos Aires which has a population of 11million people to give an indicationof the scale of it. And we were told it is one of the only ones in the world that is not reducing in size. In addition to walking around the glacier and seeing huge chunks fall off and crash into the water (a lot more spectacular than it sounds), we did a pretty expensive 3hr afternoon trek on the glacier. Worth every penny, Louise´s highlight of trip so far. We got a ferry to the far side of the glacier and right up to it before being dropped off at the starting point for our trek. We had a bit of a crash course in the history and safety matters, put on our ice crampons and off we went. It was class, walking up almost vertical parts off it with the grips of the huge spikes holding us in. We saw stunning deep crevaces and mini lakes all over the glacier. You could even drink the water from the pools which was handy given it was tough going at times. The trek was finished on a very classy note, scotch on the rocks. As in, a generous glass of Famous Grouse with ice the guide had hacked off the glacier in front of us, nice! Our time in America Del Sur was capped off on the best possible note, an all you can eat BBQ.