Hosteria Alta Vista El Calafate

... the town was nice, if a little touristy. The guidebook was right about it being pricey though - several "cheap" guidebook hostels were sought and rejected based on their room rates matching a suite at London's Dorchester. We were happy then in managing to find a hostel with a huge fully equipped shared kitchen. We used it well over all three nights for dinner - opting to buy and cook our own store-bought steaks and uncork our own Argentinian Malbec than partake in the overpriced ...

... recently seen in Ecuador and who were in BA that week on holiday, for dinner. Diego said: "We have some news: We just got engaged!" It was thus that the intrepid pair whiled away their penultimate night in BsAs with some celebratory drinks amidst lots of excited shrieking on Nadine's part and lots of manly hugs and slaps on the back on Duncan's part.

... person might not be able to afford thewm - I dont know now but thats just a guess. Anyway Ror was waking me at one stage and we were fed - we were so used to budget airlines at home where you have to buy the food that it was a nice surprise. We came through the clouds and in to land and the scenery was surreal. The land is so barren here - because of the climate not much can grow here and we were ...

... the tour you get off the boat and have to find you bus to go back to the hostel. The only problem is , is that theree are SOO many buses. I forgot which one was my bus . My flight left at 7:25pm that day and I needed to get back to my hostel to take a taxi at 6pm. I just got on anybus, and of course being South America they didnt seem to care. The bus driver was SOOO slow so i was running out of serious time to make it back to my hostel to caught ...

... and rode on) had a cracked windshield. Many of the roads were lightly traveled dirt roads and the driver seemed to take a series of unmarked and arbitrary turns between two decent sized Patagonian towns. The border crossing appeared out of nowhere. Unlike Australia, where quarantines make sense because of different flora/fauna, there is nothing at all - no natural boundary - to designate Chile from Argentina. There are ...

... anyway. The stopover point was in a town called Rio Gallegos and like the straits it too was was very uninteresting. It was a very strange dessolate place. The weather was quite harsh as it is right on the coastline and there were very few shops or restaurants or anything, bar houses, to be found. Most that I did find were closed or boarded up. About midnight I arrived in El Calafate, exhausted but ...

... impressing. On the other side though the glaciers were partly hardly visible ... - Because icebergs blocked our way we weren't able to get to the Upsala glacier (the biggest one) what happens quite often we were told ... Before suspicion arises - nothing photoshoped - no colour added - all natural :) The night I had a great all you can eat BBQ at the hostel where I had some ...

... jij staat te kijken (hoeveel er afbreekt die dag heeft schijnbaar niet zo veel te maken met of het die dag warm is ofzo, maar hoe het weer 200 jaar geleden was toen de ijs werd gevormd). Nadat we onze crampons (ijzeren pinnen om mee op het ijs te kunnen lopen) onder gebonden hadden gekregen gingen we dan echt de gletsjer op. Wat een ervaring!! Zo mooi, zo blauw ook! Niet te beschrijven! De tocht van anderhalf uur werd ...

... Tag aufbrechen. D** Bus holt uns morgens direkt am Hostel ab und sobald alle Gaeste eingesammelt sind duesen wir in Richtung Gletsch**. Vor uns sitzen ein paar japanische Maedchen, die offenbar g**ade neue Kam**as bekommen haben. Wir haben schon viele fotowuetige Leute gesehen, und machen ja selbst auch viele Bild**, ab** das haben wir noch nicht **lebt. Ein Maedchen v**bringt fast die gesamte Busfahrt im Stehen und fotografi**t ALLES, jeden Baum, jeden Strauch, und muss nach ...

... br>When we reached our second stop, we parked up out of sight of the glacier and were taken onto a boat. It took about 10 minutes to get close to the face of the glacier.

We'd both seen nature documentaries where people get close to the face of this glacier, usually accompanied by extraordinary footage of chunks of the glacier breaking off and sliding into the water.

Predictably we had no such luck, but it was almost a religious experience to ...