El Calafate
ARGENTINA
The Real Perito Moreno
By LYNDI
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Naming things in Latin America is never a problem. Streets are named after war heroes or important dates (there is a 28 de Julio in literally every city in Peru – their date of independence. Same goes for every other country down here). Soccer teams are named after the school they originated from. Shops and stores are labeled some inspiring Biblical reference (I used to get my laundry done at “Jesus is My Savior Lavanderia”). Children are named Isabela or Jose, depending on gender. The only problem arises when naming landmarks – as evidenced by Perito Moreno. If you are going to Perito Moreno – you could be going to a major highway, a dumpy town (see Aaron’s previous entry), a major national park or a world famous glacier. All named after a nice scientist who first brought the world’s attention to Patagonia.
And so after visiting the dumpy town, driving on the highway in Buenos Aires, and skipping over the national park – we finally arrived at the base for the world famous glacier. We had been warned that this base town, El Calafate, was a huge tourist trap – equivalent to Disneyland’s Main Street – luring tourists to spend unnecessary pesos at every turn. A city erected too quickly to compensate for the rapidly expanding tourism trade and sacrificing aesthetic qualities in the process.
So we were pleasantly surprised to arrive in El Calafate. Much nicer than originally anticipated, we walked down about 50 stairs from the bus station onto the main street (named after the Indepence War Hero San Martin – see above) only to walk back uphill and around the corner to our Hostel Los Glaciares Los Pioneros.
It was a good ten minute walk from the city center – considerable in a town that takes you five minutes to walk through – but the hostel was really nice nonetheless. And the best part? Wi-fi. I think Aaron, Cal and I spent the first entire night at the hostel updating blogs, facebook statuses and catching up on a long list of emails. Our hostel offered an all-inclusive package to the glaciar the following day, but after being reassured by the reception that tomorrow’s weather would be beautiful, we decided to forge it on our own.
The next morning we were off for our trip to the Perito Moreno glacier. We bought round trip tickets from a local bus company (appropriately using “Cal-tur”) for the outrageous price of 100 pesos (approximately US$20 – way more expensive than our 4 hour bus journey from El Chalten) and then bought our entrance tickets for 75 pesos into the park. Even though 75 pesos seemed pretty steep, I guess we got lucky considering in a few days’ time the price would be raising to 100 pesos.
At this point, the predicted “beautiful weather” was sideways-driving sleet, so we were quite happy that it was a further one hour drive from the park entrance to the glacier.
By the time we arrived at the glacier, it was only snowing furiously – which I’ll take over sleet any day. After a bone-warming (and wallet-emptying) hot coffee we set out. The park has a series of boardwalks to get you up close and personal with the glacier.
The reason that so many people pay so much money to see this glacier is simple: it’s close. The Perito Moreno glacier is part of the Southern Patagonian Icefield which is the third largest supply of fresh water in the entire world. Perito Moreno itself is about 3 miles wide and about 800 feet high – 250 of which are above water. The coolest part is that it defies all logic and attempts by George W’s environmental programs and is actually growing. As the glacier advances it forms a natural bridge (that nearly touches the boardwalks) and begins to close off the arm of Lake Argentina that flows out.
Around every 4 or 5 years the pressure becomes too much and the entire glacier ruptures spectacularly. And even though those occurrences are relatively rare, small ruptures occur all the time. So all we had to do was stand out in the freezing cold and wait. And patience (and numbness) paid off. Several times we saw huge chunks of ice collapse into the glacial lake. Usually we were just staring rather blankly at the enormous ice cube and would be startled by an ear rattling BOOM . If you’re quick – you could turn just in time to see enormous pieces of the glacier fall into the lake below. It was pretty amazing.
It didn’t take us long to walk through the series of boardwalks and see lots of ice falling, and since the only warm place in the entire park was an overpriced restaurant that kicked us out when they found out we were eating a picnic lunch, we sat outside at a freezing cold table and drank our magnum of cheap Argentinean wine we had brought from town.
As the snow fell and the wine warmed our insides, we waited for the return bus at 5pm. We could have comfortably seen the entire park in about 3 or 4 hours, but since the buses don’t return to El Calafate until 6 hours later – we enjoyed each others (and Santa Rita vineyards’) company.
The rest of our time in El Calafate was spent delaying. Our next stop would be Puerto Natales and the Torres del Paine National Park – but a 6 day trek meant I needed blister free feet. So we played the waiting game. The guys had generously offered to put it off a few days to give my feet a little extra time to heal – and every day helped.
We walked through town a bit, hit up little restaurants and pubs in the evenings, cooked nice meals in the kitchen at the hostel and just relaxed before beginning our epic hike in Torres.
The night we returned from the glacier trip we met a Canadian girl staying in our hostel room named Tonni who was headed to Torres also in a few days’ time. So now we would have healthy feet and an extra trekking partner.
Even though El Calafate exceeded our expectations, you can only waste time there for so long. So before we all got hostel fever, we headed back into Chile and what would be one of my life’s highlights.
