'Ice Ice Baby' - Patagonia

Hola Chicos,

We left behind the mild autumn weather of Buenos Aires and headed south into the bracing cold of El Calafate. The principal point of interest here is the gargantuan ice lolly that is the Perito Moreno Glacier. Our flight landed in El Calafate and was greeted with rapturous applause and whoops of delight from the passengers. Bizzzzare - were they really that surprised that we had arrived safely and that our coffin-with-wings had remained airborne for 3 hours rather than turning into a fiery ball of death? El Calafate reminded us more of a ski resort than anything else. The houses were all built like ski chalets, made of wooden logs and with a lovely cosy feel - unfortunately it was lacking any snow.

Although we were feeling extremely wearied by our measly 3 hours sleep in the last 48 hours, we headed out for a hearty meal of red-meat. Ed, in the interest of being adventurous, bravely ordered the Patagonian lamb. His verdict, having gnawed through tendons and what looked liked wings, is that if you like lamb and not llama, then don't splash out on this particular platter. We try not to waste any time when arriving in a new place so, as soon as we'd finished our lunch, we headed off to to Lago Argentino in order to try and see some Flamingos. We were thoroughly unsuccessful in our first, and last attempt at birdwatching this trip.

At the unreasonably early hour of 8am we headed off to Parque Nacional Los Glaciares, 80km from the town. The Perito Moreno Glacier is one of the few in the world that is still considered to be 'stable', most other glaciers are receding faster than a 40 year old man's hairline. The enormity of the glacier was the thing that first struck us during our boat ride to the ice. Although we were 300m away, the sheer height of the ice (equivalent to a 37 storey building) made us feel like we were a lot closer. The different hues of blues and whites, accentuated by the pristine air, were enchanting and made for an awesome spectacle.

The view from our boat

As we are boys we love some facts and figures and we thought we would share some of these with you. The glacier is 30km long, 5 km wide and over 60m high. It advances at around 2 metres a day which causes building sized icebergs to shear off the face of the ice and fall to the water below. This was definitely the highlight for us, witnessing the destruction of the glacier calving. Although we were over 500 metres away from the glacier on the walkways of the National Park, each time an iceberg fell it sounded like we were in the midst of a thunderstorm.

The Glacier calving

Our energy levels were sinking faster than the Titanic (bazinga!) so that evening we conjured up a cracking culinary concoction which we describe as Dinner™. In El Calafate we discovered the secret ingredient which creates a masterpiece out of an otherwise ordinary pasta and tomato sauce; frankfurter sausages. We like to think of ourselves as the back-packing world's answer to Jamie Oliver - the Naked Chef - with the emphasis certainly not on the word 'Chef'.

With the one tourist attraction in El Calafate 'calved off' we headed off to Bariloche, an idyllic town in Patagonia which supposedly possesses some quality hiking. We cannot confirm this as we actually ended up doing little-to-no hiking.

Our trip to Bariloche is the longest bus journey we will have to endure this trip, a hefty 28 hours. Bariloche is 1,400km North of El Calafate. No prizes for guessing which direction we ventured in for four hours.... South East. The Argentinians, for all their noble traits, have the infuriating habit of getting from Point A to Point B via Points Q, R and F. In that order. We will never fully understand the Argentinian people so it is probably best to just leave them to it. They have, however, been warm and wonderful hosts to us over the past 2 weeks.

We left our hostel on our first morning in Bariloche with the intention of doing some hiking. This plan evaporated very rapidly after we found a picturesque beach where we spent the whole afternoon skimming stones and dancing and singing to music with our newfound moves from South America. 

Another languidly lazy day the next day where our only activity of note was eating some tasty fried chicken with one of Ben's friends from back in Cordoba.

On our last day in Bariloche we cycled the ironically named Circuito Chico (Eng. trans. Small Circuit), a total of 33km. It was an enthralling ride with some gorgeous view points along the way. Some of the hills along the ride were pretty testing but we are pretty confident in our fitness for the Inca Trail in less than a month's time! 

We are currently in Chile with the intention of climbing a volcano tomorrow. Next blog instalment will be up in a few days - eruptions, lava and magma permitting.