Koi Aiken Calafate El Calafate

... hours later. Names, ages, nationalities and religions are not important. People are people and they are great. Everyone has a story worth listening to. One of the greatest blessings of this trip will be having the opportunity and time to listen.

So we're all iced-over and glaciered-out now and its time for the mercifully short 4 hour bus to our next stop, Puerto Natales in Chile, where we get on board our 4-day Navimag cruise through the Chilean fjords...

... beautiful places on the planet and a place that I have long wanted to go trekking. As soon as we got back from the Inca Trail in 2007, Shawn and I were charting our next journey, and Patagonian trekking in Torres del Paine repeatedly came up in conversation. The first several iterations of my around-the-world journey did not call for me to visit Patagonia. Alas, luck was on my side, and here I was with Mary departing on her ...

... it stopped more times than a bus!! Luckily after the first stop I could move into the seat next to the broken one (there was no such thing as seat numbers) and entertained myself watching someone else struggle with it for the rest of the flight! Anyway El Calafate seemed like a nice enough place but I was there for one thing, the Perito Moreno glacier. I have seen lots of glaciers so far and the one I saw on the Navimag ...

... with alfajors (yummy dulce de leche treats) and Žon the glaciers' of course. I met a friendly girl named Sara from Holland, who was taking 6 weeks to tour southern Chile and Argentina. My hostel quite cozy and rustic with views of Lago Argentina and a costant stream of groovy oldies playing in the common areas.

... came and decide to put themselves right outside our tent. Unfortunately this was not done quietly as they shouted across the campsite to their friends. Next morning we woke before dawn to see sun rise as it was supposed to be spectacular. We were running a little late so as we raced up the hill to the view point we missed the first part. Slightly unfortunately the cloud was down and the sun rise was not as spectacular as we had hoped. The view was still impressive ...

... superb. After writing nearly 50 blog entries and spending Christmas so far away from home, we are asking all our friends, family, acquaintances, and strangers out there to send some love our way. The blog takes some time, we hope you enjoy it, and want to hear Merry Christmas or Happy New Year from anyone out there reading this (not to name any names but we know)! You don't have to create an account, just use our guest account. Log-in: kelowna Password: kelowna

... the Perito Moreno glacier again but this time seeing it from the water level so it did offer a different perspective. I think that after those two trips, I have seen enough glaciers for this part of the world and will save any further glacier viewing for New Zealand. I did enjoy my time in Calafate, but would recommend only spending a couple of days at the most there as there really isn't that much to do. Unfortunately, I hadn't realised this ...

... set free. Anyway, our tour guide spoke excellent English, with a very Argentine-British accent (?) which was a lot of fun to hear. We saw lots of really cool things and heard really interesting stories about the prisoners that used to be detained there. Then we went to dinner at an all-you-can-eat buffet (49 pesos worth... yikes) and it was a huge parilla (grill) with lots of strange foods. It was okay. But I'm not much of a meat-eater, and so all ...

... If I ruled the wooorld..."

We tried 4 ATMs in town, none of which were able to dispense any cash (cheers), so ended up practically sprinting back to the hostel to make our 08:30 collection, without getting any money out an with the princely sum of about 100 pesos to our name!

The tour company were fine about it, providing that we pay them tonight, but neither of us were completely comfortable sitting on the bus sweating and penniless ...

... we went in for lunch. It was a delicious meal of barbecued lamb, beef and chorizo (a pork sausage) along with salad, bread and dulce de leche crepes for dessert. We sat with the Spanish couple and Boo absolutely charmed them. She loved the food and made very pleasant conversation during lunch. They were ready to be our tour guides when we get to Barcelona next summer but they'll be in Northern Spain in August. After lunch we ...