EL CALAFATE & PERITO MORENO GLACIER, ARGENTINA

From Puerto Madryn I made my way further south in Patagonia to El Calafate. El Calafte is the town closest to Perito Moreno Glacier. It is a tourist town that you stay at if you are going to the Glacier.


The hostal I stayed at here was lovely. It was a hotel last year and had only just become a hostal, so it was very new and had great showers and heating. A very pleasant relief after having no hot showers in Puerto Madryn.

The hostal was able to book me on a glacier tour for the following day so I spent the first day having a look at the town of El Calafate and the lake and nature reserve next to the town.








There were even Flamenco´s here, which I was very surprised by. These Flamenco´s (Flamingo) were a bit too far away to get good photo´s of but I tried to take some anyway.


The next morning I had to be up at 5am to be picked up by the bus. It was still very dark outside when I jumped on the bus. There were 7 people on my tour which was good as it is better to have smaller groups, two of the guys were from Montreal, Canada. Their names were Pierre and Elio.


We headed to the national park where the glacier is located.


We were the first tour group to arrive and had the walkway and viewing platform to ourselves. It was still quite dark but we could see the glacier.




The glacier was huge. It is almost 5km across and stands almost 80 metres high. Because it was overcast and raining lightly it looked like the glacier was very blue.






After walking around the boardwalk to view the glacier we went back on the bus to go to the boat harbour. At the harbour we boarded a boat and headed up the side of the glacier. We couldn´t get too close incase a bit of the glacier fell off and plunged into the water.




We took the boat to the other side of the lake where we gotreadyto go for a trek. The trek took us up the side of the glacier through some national park before we then turned and went onto the top of the glacier.


We walked about one third of the way across the glacier, which took us about an hour and a half.


It had been raining most of the morning so I had to borrow a bright yellow rain coat so I didn´t get completely wet. Unfortunately the bottom half of my jeans were still exposed so they were getting wet and the water was making its way up my legs. It was very cold.


We had to wear funny thing on our shoes called crampons. These help you to grip onto the ice which is very slippery.






We got to see some really amazing formations on the glacier, one of which was the ice wave. It was a big piece of the glacier in the shape of an ocean wave. I was able to stand under it and I look like I am holding it up.


The other cool thing was the ravine. It was about 5 floors deep and at the bottom there was a river of fast flowing water gushing through it. Our tour guides held their arms out straight so we could walk up to the edge of the ice shelf and look over into the ravine. It was very blue at the bottom and the noise of the river was very loud.


It was a very difficult walk, which took a total of 5 hours. 3 hours were spent walking on the glacier. I will never forget it as it was so strange and very interesting.


When we caught the boat back across to the bus they gave us a glass of whiskey to warm us from the inside and the whiskey had big chunks of glacier ice in it....!!!!


I was very glad to get back to the hostal that night and be inside and warm again. I was so tired I ordered a pizza to be delivered and then went straight to bed after dinner.

PUERTO MADRYN & PENINSULA VALDEZ, PATAGONIA, ARGENTINA

Puerto Madryn and Peninsula Valdez are on the eastern coast of Argentina as you head south into Patagonia. I travelled for 23 hours by bus across the Patagonian landscape to reach Puerto Madryn. BUS FOOD IS NOT ALL THAT BAD...!!!! I was the only Foreigner on the bus, which was the first time on my whole trip that this had happened. The buses are reasonably comfortable, kind of like how business class used to be on the planes back when I was a kid. They even play movies, give you meals (sometimes) and on this particular bus ride we played bingo! Now, remembering that I don´t speak Spanish and that the game was being read out in Spanish, it was hard to keep up. However, my knowledge of spanish numbers must have been improving as I won the game! yay. It was quite amusing for everyone else on the bus too as the bus conducter told them I was from Australia and couldn´t speak spanish. Everyone laughed and I got a free bottle of wine. I arrived in Puerto Madryn and decided to book a trip to Peninsula Valdez, a wildlife reserve just to the north. I booked this through my hostal which was a nice new place. The only problem with the Hostal is that they had a gas leak and had to turn off all the showers and heaters! Not the best thing to hear when you are in Patagonia and it is almost winter. A few other people at the Hostal were also booked on the tour for the following day and we spent the afternoon walking along the beach to the south where there was a great look out point. One of the girls names was Anna from Sweden. She was also on a long trip. The next morning we headed out to Peninsula Valdez. When we entered the park there was an information centre describing all the fauna (animals) that we might be likely to see. There was also a tower to climb to get the best view of the surrounding area. Puerto Madryn has a beautiful natural harbour where Southern Right Wales come during winter to have their calves. Unfortunately it was too early for us to see these whales, they were not due for atleast another month. We headed further along the peninsula to an area where Sea Lions come to have their babies. We walked out along a cliff top and looked over the edge to see hundreds of sea lion mums with their cubs. The fathers had already left to head to waters further south. The mothers were training the cubs to get into and out of the water. They were all making alot of noise, this is how the mothers can find there cubs in amongst the hundreds of others.
The coast line here was very rocky and was the perfect place for the sea lions to lay in the sun and stay warm. Next we headed to a beach along the ocean.

On the way there we saw Guanaco, a type of Llama that is native to Patagonia. They are a short haired version of the Llama.

They are wild in Peninsula Valdez. They are very good runners and jumpers, and quite easily jump the fences that were built by farmers to keep their sheep in their paddocks.



We also saw another native animal called a Ñunca, a flightless bird that looks like a small Emu.

Sorry, couldn't get a good picture of these in the wild
Then at the next stop we saw two wild Fox and a couple of Armadillo's.
At the beach we got to see some Elephant seals. Again it was only the mothers and calves as the male Elephant seals had also left to go far out to sea. The mothers and their babies were still very big, but the males can weigh upto 3000kgs. They are approximately 3 to 4 times the size of the females.
We couldn´t get very good pictures of the Elephant seals as they were a long way from the viewing area.

The other animal we saw at the beach was Penguins. We were very lucky as the Penguins are normally gone by this time of the year.

We got to see two groups of about 30 Penguins.


Some of them were down on the beach, but a few were still near the burrows where they normal sleep. One was still plucking his soft baby feathers out. They were very close to us and didn´t seem afraid at all.
The last animal we went to see was the Orca whales. They are giant black and white whales that are also known as Killer whales. I didn´t get photo´s of them as they were about 200mtrs from where we were watching them from. We had to use binoculars to see them properly. The reason we could see them is that the Orca´s in Peninsula Valdez have trained themselves to come onto the beach to catch sea lions for dinner. They swim in very fast and beach themselves, catch a sea lion and then wiggle back into the water. This only happens inside two hours before and after high tide. We were there around this time but at almost 2 hours before high tide. The Orca´s were circling near the beach, about 5 metres from it. There were sea lions lying on the beach, but just a little too far from the edge of the water. At one stage the baby Orca came with in 1 metre of the beach. We all got very excited, but unfortunately we didn´t see him catch a sea lion. We saw two other animals that day. The first was the Armadillo. They really are very funny looking animals. The other animal was the fox. It was a very successful animal watching day, and I was glad I had made the effort to come all the way here to see the Orca´s in the wild. The tour group

MENDOZA, ARGENTINA

After Cordoba I headed south to Mendoza. Mendoza is a town that is famous for producing wine.

Pretty fountain in main plaza


It is also the closest town in Argentina to the highest mountain in South America. The mountain is also the highest mountain outside of the Himalaya Mountains.


I was still not feeling very well so I decided to do a tour to the mountain on the first day. It was a very early start again at about 8am. We were picked up by a mini van and then went out into the country side.


The first stop was to visit a very old bridge that dated back to about 1600AD. It was used by the spanish to cross a river to try and conquer new territories. We hopped off the bus and took some pictures.


The only problem was that the bridge was not the original, it was a replica. The original had been washed away by some floods many years ago and so another bridge was built in the same location to preserve the history of the area.




The second stop on the tour was a natural bridge made of Sulphur. It spans across a valley where there used to be a glacier hundreds of years ago.


You used to be able to walk across this bridge to the otherside but 1000 people a day were going across it and it was destroying it. So now you can only look from one side.


On the far side of the valley was a building that houses some warm thermal baths. This is now closed as well due to the fact you can´t get to the otherside anymore.

After taking more photo´s here we headed to Aconcagua, the highest mountain in South America at 6962mtrs tall.


Of course I didn´t climb the mountain, I am not a mountain goat after all. But we went to the national park at the foot of the mountain to have a look at it from a distance.


Unfortunately, because it was cold the mountain was hidden behind a cloud. We couldn´t see any of it! We had travelled so far and didn´t get to even see a glimpse. So I have added a picture below of what it actually looks like.


The mountain is situated on the border of Argentina and Chile and there is a mountain pass to cross from one country to the other just near the mountain.

This picture I took the day I caught the bus to Puerto Madryn, from my bus!!!!
The other fun thing to do in Mendoza is a bike ride to the wineries in the region. Due to the fact I was still quite sick, I decided not to participate in this event. So after two days I headed for the coast of Argentina again, this time to Puerto Madryn.