El Calafate

Hola! So, I just got home from the best trip of my life: El Calafate, in southern Patagonia, to visit Argentina's Glacier National Park. Anything I write here will not even begin to describe how cool this place was. I took 500 pictures (haha) so hopefully I will be able to put more up than usual or you can check them out on Facebook.
Anyway, I flew out Thursday afternoon with my two friends Ed and Hanna from Madison. Our plane was delayed like 3 hours but at least we got lunch vouchers. Landing in El Calafate it looked like Mars or something...red rugged plateaus and no sign of people or buildings. Also, the airport was the smallest thing I had ever seen. It had an embarking/disembarking place for one plane only. The terrain throughout the trip was so varied and unlike anything I had ever seen before. Mostly it was very dry brush steppe, I would almost call it tundra, mountains, and one lake. We alternatively felt like we were in Lord of the Rings, Antarctica, Land Before Time, and Pirates of the Caribbean. Thursday night we got in late and just crashed at our hostel, Glaciar del Libertador, which was super nice. We had paid for a 4 person hostel type dorm room but actually got a private, 3 bed room with a bathroom. Friday morning we got up to do this horseback riding tour but it was full, so we walked around town in the rain all morning, looking to book tours and rent winter clothing for our trekking the next days. Friday at 5 PM we did this "cabalgata" tour at a small ranch in the middle of this empty valley between huge mountains. It was just us and 3 girls from NYU. I havent had much experience with horses and was a bit nervous, since most of the other people were riders, but my horse Surgas was mostly fine, except for bucking as I was getting off. We followed our guide along these trails winding around and up these mountains for about 2 hours in total. The scenery was absolutely breathtaking, and we saw cattle and rabbits roaming around everywhere. After that we went back to the ranch for a huge asado of delicious beef, chicken, vegetables, and potatoes. All the workers were so friendly and the atmosphere was great.

Saturday was our big day: our glacier trekking tour was from 7:30 AM to 6:30 PM. The tour company, Hielo y Aventura, picked us up in a bus in the morning, and we drove into the national park. We drove along this lonely highway in the huge dark valley passing no one. It was like a movie. We had to pay park entrance fees two days that would have been significantly cheaper if we had our residency (which happens tomorrow), so that was annoying. Anyway, we drove to the touristy balcony things along the front of the famous Glaciar Perito Moreno and stopped for about half an hour, taking pictures of the stunning ice wall across the water. It was raining, but we did get to see two small breaks, where a big slab of ice comes crashing down into the water. All of the glaciers in the park are receding because of global warming, some at rates of like a meter a day, which is a ton. After this we took a boat across an arm of Lago Argentino (a HUGE lake, 700 meters deep at the most, the biggest in Argentina, on which the glaciers are situated). We arrived at the base of these huge, prehistoric looking mountains, with weird outcroppings, low clouds, and misty waterfalls everywhere. There we started our long trek up and around the side of the glacier. I guess I had always thought of glaciers as being on water, but it was actually over a huge valley of rock between two tall mountains, and you could see at higher levels the lines where it passed through, carving out the rock. We got to try some wild Calafate berries, for which the town is famous and makes ice cream and jam with. Then we get crampons and harnesses and actually went out onto the glacier with about 5 guides. We spent 3 hours walking around on the ice, seeing all the crevasses, deep holes, blue ice formations, rocks, and peaks. I felt like I was on the moon. In front of us were the snow-capped Andes and white for as far as you could see. We even ate lunch up there. The weather was absolutely beautiful, and I could have been in just a sweatshirt, but we were glad we had rented hiking boots and also gloves because the ice is super sharp if you fall or sit down.

Sunday we did another tour, leaving at 7:15 AM on a boat excursion. We took a huge catamaran with about 100 other people up different arms of the lake to see 3 bigger glaciers. Upsala, the biggest, is 4 TIMES the size of Buenos Aires, but we had to stay about 7 km. away because of the dangerous field of icebergs in front of it. Still really impressive. We got super close to Spegazzini, and then ate lunch outside in a foresty/rocky (and freezing!)outcropping overlooking some other smaller ones. The lake is this crazy turquoise color because of the "glacial milk" or the pulverized, silvery rock suspended in the freezing water. The icebergs we saw were almost cooler than the glaciers. We were constantly navigating through and right up next to huge, weirdly shaped ice sculptures, some of which were deep blue. Volcanic looking mountains surrounded us, and you could again actually see the path of the glaciers due to tree levels and such. You could see the paths of long, thin waterfalls coming down from what seemed like a mile up. It was very windy, misty, and cloudy, which was cool.

Monday morning we checked out of the hostel then just walked around town until going to the airport around 3. The town is entirely based on tourism and in the absolute middle of nowhere, just right on the lake in this big valley. It has one main drag, and just about every other building is a tour office. It still had a lot of character though, with a lot of old, beat up cars, stray dogs, and locals hanging around the brightly colored stores. We got all of our meals at this crazy crowded corner grocery store and ate basically off our laps on our beds in the hostel with rented silverware and stolen plates. One night we even drank wine out of yogurt lids. So, the room was a bit messy and we got a bit sick of dry bread, but it was cheap. It had to be, since all the tours were so expensive. However, it was totally worth every penny. Best time of my life.
Well, I have class now, but I'm going to try to put up some videos later. I'm kind of in panic mode here because we had to go through this whole ordeal switching our second trip for this weekend from Salta to Mendoza because of this huge dengue fever epidemic. So it's been a big hassle, but at least I won't get dengue, so that's good. I leave on a 13 hour bus ride again tomorrow night, so it's a quick turnaround! Hasta luego.