El Calafate

El Calafate is a heavily visited town due to the tourism of Parque Nacional Los Glaciares and it´s monument of glory, the enormous Perito Moreno glacier. The only glacier that is, to this day, still advancing.

My Icelandic companions couldn´t have given a shit less. They have glaciers in their backyards. I, on the other hand, could not leave without seeing it, and Marina wanted to go as well. We decided to split up. Scarlett, who had already seen the park, and the boys would head on to El Chaltén and Marina and I would catch up with them later.

My companion, in accordance of all Argentine women, was petite, with dark hair and olive skin, so we decided to use her femininity to our advantage to hitch to the park, a mere 70 kilometers away. Easier said than done. The traffic was light, and most that passed were tour busses. After three hours I took over the thumb and with my dashing good looks we were picked up shortly. Our drivers were an English couple who told me about the future role of America and how global warming is a corporate scam.

They were kind enough to leave us at the enterance of the park. The glacier itself was still too far off to walk and we were fortunate to get a ride fairly quickly with Gustavo and his beautiful girlfriend from Cordoba, Eugenia.

The Perito Moreno Glacier is an immense living creature. Not only is it massive in size; for it requires the whole of your peripheral; but the sounds that come from the ever growing beast fill the cold air coming off the ice. A large piece would break off occasionally and, falling into the water, the sound was as if a demolition crew were tearing down a city block.

Gustavo and Eugenia were leaving at the same time as us and invited us back into their car. We drank maté, stopped by Punta Bandera for fotos and chatted the afternoon away by the water. We couldn´t have been picked up by more wonderful people.

They left us in town, but it was getting late and we would have to spend another night in El Calafate. Our friends were not at the campsite from the night before, so we assumed they had made it to El Chaltén. We weren´t going to pay for accomodations just to get a couple of hours of shut eye, so after a beer we decided to sleep in the bus station. Unfortunately, there was a little boy in an army outfit with a walkie-talkie who liked his power a little too much to let us sleep at the station. It was past midnight and we were exausted.

In the main square there was a church with open doors. We went in, curled up in a corner, and slept. They can´t kick you out of the house of the Lord, right?