Koi-Mahik Hotel El Calafate

... arrive on time. Shops that say they open at certain times don´t. You usually have to wait 15 to 20 minutes for them to open after the posted time. The latest example of this presented itself today. The hotel we are staying in has a shuttle that takes you down to the town (we are probably 8km outside of town). It came about 15 minutes late this morning to take us down. That´s fine. We tried to catch it coming back to the hotel at the posted time of 12:15 ...

... is the poster child of the area - Perito Moreno. As the main attraction of the park it is 30kms long, 5km wide and 60m high, not counting the 130-180m of it that is below the water and unseen! To describe these beasts of nature is really hard. Maybe the photos do it justice...

We walked along the 2km of viewing platforms trying to get our little pips accustomed to the size of the ice-wall we were looking at and the endless field of ice behind it, when ...

... each, warming but hard to drink raw! after this we went along the face of the glacier by boat, then at the oppposite shore viewed it from a series of walkways. by this point i was so cold i had practically lost interest in the glacier, joe was holding out though to get a photo of the glacier face `calving´. didnt manage it though, every time a piece broke off it seemed to be just after we´d put the camera away. we were wrecked after the day, both fell asleep on the bus ...

... the only temperate ice field (ice cap) in the world (others are polar ice fields in Antarctica and Greenland) at a latitude that is equivalent to Seattle! This unique phenomen causes Patagonia to be filled with mammoth glaciers that spill into amazingly blue and ice cold lakes. We arrived in PN Los Glaciares and were immediately slapped with a US NP-esque USD60 equivalent park fee. While steep, it is for park preservation, it ...

... 37km north of town, to discover a bit more this great area of Patagonia. Eventough the weather was quite changing the views were really nice over the lake towards the Fitz Roy chain. At the north end of the lake, there is a Argentine border post to check hikers coming from Chile. It is indeed possible to hike from the north end of Lago del Desierto to the chilean lake of Ò´Higgins from were there are 2 times per week boats to the Carreta ...

... way is up! We only had a mere 4 hour bus journey to get to El Calafate and after 3 hours we were wondering 'why are were here' when something miraculous happened - after thousands of kilometres of flat we saw a hill...then the ground started undulating... then we went over the top of a hill and the most spectacular valley lay in front of us with a turquoise lake and snow capped mountains! What a view - we finally made it to the real Patagonia! After a night ...

... 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 ...

... the Celebration of Light. We assume the tradition is to stay up and light off fireworks as Christmas Day starts in celebration of Jesus' birth. We decided that night we will bring the tradition to Canada, so next time you hear fireworks on Christmas Eve... We awoke in the morning to find that Santa also stops in Argentina; in addition we had been a good boy and girl this Christmas. Ole Saint Nic brought us new t-shirts, some fancy wine, chocolate and ...

... a spectacular rupture event. This dam/rupture cycle is not regular and it naturally recurs at any frequency between once a year to less than once a decade. The terminus of the Perito Moreno Glacier is 5 kilometres (3 mi) wide, with an average height of 60 m (197 ft) above the surface of the water, with a total ice depth of 170 metres (558 ft). It advances at a speed of up to 2 metres (6.56 ft) per day (around 700 metres (2,297 ft) per year ...

... in a couple of days!

Alas, when Katie went to collect our laundry from reception at 12pm, they told her that they "didn't know" where our clothes were. Grrrrreat.

Just as we were caught between crying and burning their hostel down they found our clothes, still under the desk and unwashed.

So the bloody morons hadn't even given them to the laundrette and they were still just as dirty and smelly as when we'd given them to them ...