El Calafate and Perito Merino

After a 5 hour bus ride from Puerto Natales, Chile, Fran and I crossed the border back into Argentina and arrived in El Calafate - one of two towns here used as a base to explore Parque Nacional Los Glaciares, which includes world famous Perito Merino. Of course, with our luck weather-wise, we were sure not to see Perito Merino looking anything like we´ve seen in pics. So I´ll get them out the way quickly:

A chunk of ice falls of the glacier into Lago Argentino

The only sunlight all day!

As you can see, it´s impressive, but the weather didn´t play nice at all. I´ve only uploaded four pics to my gallery, so that says how impressed I was with the weather. I might steal a few from Fran and post them as well, spice things up a bit.

The glacier is amazing though, so don´t get the idea that I didn´t enjoy seeing it. It´s huge, and is constantly moving forward and breaking off. Some estimates put it at a hares pace of 2m per day. That´s a lot of ground to cover, and if you wait 15 minutes, you´re guaranteed to see something fall into the water, or hear the ice crack and groan.

The glacier is reached via bus from El Calafate in a journey that takes around 90mins through impressive scenery (but what part of Patagonia isn´t impressive).

El Calafate itself is nice, but hugely touristy. It´s building itself to be a European lodge-town. A-frame houses and lodgings are sprouting up everywhere and the main street is tourist city! I´ve not taken a single picture of this town. It´s not that it´s bad, it´s just that it´s obviously gearing itself for a kind of clientelle I am not.
Anyway, the hostel we are staying in is more like a hotel. Free breakfast (standard hostel stuff) and free dinners! Massive plasma screen in the lounge area, telescope to star gaze, free pool tables, TVs in the rooms etc. Very hotel.
Except for the bed bugs. Fran and I are now covered in bite marks - I don´t react to them so much so my marks will be gone in a day or two, but Fran.. poor thing, she´s been bitten a lot! And she´ll kill me if I post pics, so I´m not going there!

Anyway, I´m keeping this one short. We´re off to Bariloche tonight on a 28 hour bus journey, thankfully, full Cama. We´ve decided to give El Chalten (and the impressive Fitzroys) a miss. Maybe we´ll end up regretting that, but the decision´s been made. I think my next post will be a bit more geared to photography issues, so feel free to shut off and skip that if you´re not interested!

As always, Smugmug galleries are there to peruse. I normally add a few extra pics (sometimes a lot) that aren´t included in the posts.

Much love to everyone. Starting to miss a lot of you guys, some far more than others ;-)