Share El Calafate, Argentina
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Very relaxed and chilled out little town full of hiking shops, ice creams and tourist agencies. Quite a small town with pretty much everything in town within the space of 9 blocks.
After arriving in the middle of the day for a change we decided to walk to our hostel. Great little hostel, best we have stayed in so far for sure. The staff took us through the map, tours and local restaurants etc on arrival, all in perfect English. Nakel Yenu Posada Patagonica if you are ever in town.
BBQ Day
Chilled for most of the day after finding football in an amazing ‘Parrilladaria’ (Grill) called La Fonda. The cheapest place we could find but the food was unreal. Few beers later and we went to our hostels BBQ. Met some people while eating our way though steak, chicken, chorizo, lamb chops, black pudding, a light salad and ‘unlimited’ beer and wine.
Made it across the road to a bar and guy from NZ brings over 8 Grappa’s, not impressed, down in one. Few drinks with the people from the hostel and when the bar staff tried to overcharge us it took us a while to make them see it right. Stayed up til 4AM with Victor (Sweden), so glad I didn’t have the tour next day!
Chill
Chilled out next day with pizza and ice cream then made food back at the hostel with my first ever half bottle of red wine! A decent Malbec is about £2, 100% starting to get into red wine.
Glaciers & a Random Pony Tail
Made our way to the Moreno glacier the next morning. We got picked up by a guy with a scouser style perm but then from the very centre of the back of his head a very thin pony tail that kind of looked like a rat had hidden in the perm and then died, a very strange ‘do’.
Saw some wildlife on the way with some huge birds on the hunt. Then made our way into the national park to get our first glimpse of the glacier. Huge white mass of snow coming down from the mountains is, so I was told, moving at a rate of 1.7M per day. It is also gaining the same amount of snow per day at the top as it is losing at the bottom, constantly calving off into the water, it makes quite a noise and if you blink, you most definitely miss it. We saw a couple of smaller sections calve off but some of the bigger ones were missed.
Had 3 or 4 hours walking round to see the north and the south face of the glacier and then went on the Hielo y Nautica to see the glacier from Lago Argentina (Lake). Great view from on the water, you really get a feel for how big it is from there when it towers over you!
More Chill, More Grill
Just as the title suggests we made our way back to La Fonda for the 2nd time, oh, and the 3rd time the morning after! It really was that good! Walked round the town for a while then made dinner at the hostel. Sat up again til about 4AM drinking with Victor, this time joined by Mari, his girlfriend, and Brogan.
P.S there are a couple of panoramic images in the gallery. If you haven’t viewed the gallery in full screen yet then it might be best for those two especially. It’s the button with the two outward facing arrows in the top right corner of the gallery.