The flight to El Calafate was short and easy, and we both got a nap. Upon arriving, we booked a $10 bus ride into town, for a 15 minute drive; a pretty huge ripoff, but we did at least get dropped off right in front of the hostel, MyHotel. The place was actually nice, and blasted the heat! We settled into our dorm room, and ran out in search of a way to visit the Glacier National Park the next day. After stopping into several companies, and realizing they all provided the same trip for the same price, we stumbled into Hielo y Aventura, a company, I figured, would charge a lot more, since their advertisements were all over, and the office was nicer and better staffed than the rest. Luckily, not only were they the same price, they accepted credit cards, which no one else did, and had an extra trekking trip, called Big Ice, allowing us to delve deeper into the glacier, and spend more time exploring its surface. We settled on that, and paid a whopping $200 for it. Our next mission was to buy a bus ticket out of town the day after the glacier trek; we found the bus terminal and got information easy enough, but had to wait to buy the tickets, as we didn't have our passports on hand. So we put it off until later.
This town was adorable. The shops and restaurants all looked like little cabins. Neither of us have ever been to Vale or Aspen or the sort, but we are sure El Calafate, Argentina could be straight out of either.
There were a bunch of trekking equipment stores, so we browsed a bit; I got some wool socks, and Jared has been toying with the idea of getting a down jacket, but didn't in the end. We grabbed dinner at a great empanada place, quick ran to buy our bus tickets finally, and went back to the hostel and heat!
The next morning, we ate breakfast at the hostel, and at about 7:30 a bus from Hielo y Aventura picked us up for our glacier trek. The Glacier National Park is pretty big with tons of glaciers throughout, but the main attraction is Perito Moreno, a wall of ice that can be easily seen from a built up lookout point. We spent about an hour walking the catwalk in front of the two faces of Perito Moreno, even getting to hear the crack, as if from a close bolt of lightening, of ice breaking, and see parts of the ice wall fall into the water below. The lake, Lago Argentina, was a beautiful aquamarine color, they called "milky water", given its color by the runoff, containing sediments, from the glacier ice. After walking the rampard, we got back on the bus to take a boat across the lake, and trek the glacier.
The guide was informative; talking about how the glacier was formed, and different properties of the lake and park. When we arrived at the glacier, after a short hike, we strapped on crampons, and were able to walk on top of the glacier. Our group had 9 people and 2 guides. We walked in a single file line, through the endless crevices and chasms, revealing the clearest, most translucent, and pure blues. It really seemed like the surface of the glacier was white, even dirty in some places, from debris from the surrounding mountains, but the hidden inside depths were blue. It was pretty stunning. Right before lunch, we found a small cave that had been formed, and Mission Impossible style, scaled the solid ice walls, over a stream of water, through to the other side. The inside of the cave was blue, like I can't even really describe. There is already a picture up, and it really is true to the shade of blue. Lunch was prepared for us by the hostel and consisted of a drink, apple, ham and cheese sandwich, and an alfajor.
In total, we spent about 3 hours on the surface of the glacier, and it was a pretty neat experience. It seemed like a dessert of ice surrounded by mountains. Some areas were smooth and undulating, with sudden blue splits in the ice that seemed to go endlessly deep, while other parts were treacherous and sharp, like a jagged forest of menacing ice. Not sure why different parts of the glacier form differently. By the end, our legs were a bit tired from the crampons. We hiked back to the area where the boats were waiting, and after a bit of coffee to warm up, finished our glacier trip.
Back in El Calafate we showered and headed to bed.
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