This is our third border crossing between Argentina and Chile with more to come in the coming weeks. So our passports should be filled with stamps from the two neighbouring Andean nations.
The border crossing went well, we where greeted with a huge sign on the Chilean side saying don't bring oranges and a slice of beef into Chile. What if I have an apple, can I bring that? he he he.
The bus ride went pretty smoothly with most of the roads being asphalt, but there where times when the road turned gravel and it got you thinking whether you were actually on a bus headed for Wolfe Creek, instead of El Calafate, but none the less we made it into El Calafate safely.
We had no accommodation booked but our friends Bernie and Mark had mentioned the hostel name of where they had stayed at when they where in El Calafate, so we where hoping to find the same hostel at the bus station. The povo accommodation system works the same way here as it does in Dubrovnik, you rock up at the bus terminal and someone's grand mother will be there to meet you with room options :-)
The hostel we were looking for was called Hostel Los Nina's. From the bus we spotted a man with a sign showing the hostel name and hooked us up.
We have been staying in private accommodations to accommodate Bernadette's bowl movements so it's a bit pricey, but hey, when you gotta go, you gotta go!!
Typically, though a bed in a dorm would cost 40 pesos (20 dollar ozzie) the conversion is about 2 pesos to 1 ozzie dollar.
We arrived late in the evening so, we only had time to get some food at the grocery store for dinner and organise our hire car for seeing El Calafate's No. 1 draw card, the Perito Merino Glacier. Talking to fellow travellers that had already been to El Calafate, we were told that the best thing to do is rent a car and go to the glacier early in to morning to miss the thousands of retire's on tour busses wanting a piece of the action. By doing so you would also skip on paying the entrance fee which is not included on the tour packages that you go on.
So that was our plan. The rental car came to 230 pesos from Nunatuk Car Hire and which was pretty good seeing as though tours where 110 pesos each. So we made a saving on renting the car and going in early in the morning....
The travellers where right, we left the hostel about 5ish and got there about 6ish, the place was empty with only three other hire cars in the parking lot. We were so tired from not having gotten that much sleep that we napped in the car for about an hour. What Berna has come to call a 'mini nap' hehehehe...
Driven by the noises coming from my stomach, we got got up and started to head down to the viewing platforms...
When we arrived we saw two groups of travelling Israeli's having warm cups of coffee. When travelling though Brasil and Pategonia, Israli's are like Kangaroos in the outback, there everywhere :-) The travel in packs, groups of four or more.... It wasn't any different here....
We spent a good couple of hours walking around the glacier, it was good, in reality we where pretty BORED! There's nothing much to do at the glacier and there's only so many photo's you can take of the damn thing. Even Berna was over taking photo's of the bad boy!! There were also other complications at play that, I'll let Bernadette talk to you guys about :-)
We decided to leave and go back to the hostel early, the time was only 1030 am. Just about the same time the tour buses started to arrive, so it was a good time to get out!
Driving out of the park we decided to go exploring, we found some cool spots to take photo's of the glacier, so we did!!! hehehe Then out of nowhere, Berna snaps these awesome shots of a piece of a glacier falling into the the Lake!!!!! Awesome stuff... She didn't have the camera in continuous mode so she had to snap the photo's manually... Great shots though!!!...Go B!!
We continues exploring the park areas until we made it down to the northern side of the glacier where we saw a bout that took people out to the glacier.
This is when the day got really exciting, we had lunch first on the shores of the lake, the usual tuna, bread, fruit.
Then Berna went nuts with the camera when she found glacier ice washed up on the shores, the photos she took are AWESOME!!!!!
We took the boat cruise to the face of the glacier. It was great!! The north face of the glacier is about 2.8 km wide and 15 storeys high, with chucks constantly falling into the lake. This galcier is different from the other glaciers that we have seen on our trip as it is a stable glacier. At the centre of the glacier it advances 2 meters per day and the edges advances 40 cm per day... So it's AAAALLLLLLIIIIVVVVEEEEE!!!! hehehehe
A Beautiful glacier!!!
After taking awesome photo's we headed back into town. We returned the car, bought bus tickets for El Chalten, bough more food, packed our over night bags, ate last nights left over spaghetti, and got on the bus for El Chalten!!!
Perito was great, but a little boring, would definitely recommend against taking a tour, renting a car is the best way to go!!!!
Oh and sunrise is sht on the glacier so not really worth getting up for the sunrise!!!
Peace
No comments:
Post a Comment