Calafate and the Porito Moreno glacier

Well the journey down to Calafate wasn´t so bad after all, though it was long. We splashed out on what´s known as a "cama" seat, which basically means bed and is large and comfortable and reclines a long way, though not quite to horizontal. This ticket included food, but this turned out to be a lump of tired meat on a bed of dry mashed potato....yum. Good thing we had packed some fruit and biscuits for the journey!

Calafate was lovely, we stayed in what´s known as a Cabañita, or small cabin, which was situated in a lovely lavendar filled garden area near the centre of town.

From Calafate and ...

Calafate sits on the side of a lake of glacier water surrounded by dramatic hills. In the distance are the snow capped mountains of the Andes. The weekend we were there happened to be the date for the town to celebrate what I understood to be it´s 125th aniversary (might have got that wrong of course), which meant there was a huge stage and live music everynight, as well as food and craft stalls a plenty.

The main atraction is the Porito Moreno glaciar, which is an hour or so out of town by bus. It´s amazing. Awesome. Fantastic. If you can, go and see it! The bus trip gave us about five hours to gape at the vast sea of advancing ice, and gape we did. It seems to be a living thing with incredible echos and booms of the ice cracking and falling filling the still mountain air. We stood and watched as a 50 meter tall block broke off the face and slipped into the lake waters below with an enormous splash.

From Calafate and ...

In truth the three nights we gave to Calafate weren´t really enough as I would have liked to explore the surrounding hills a bit more. The flight we booked dictated that we move on however, so we packed our bags and left the South behind, marking as we did a turning point in our journey; from now on we´re pretty much heading due north!