La Cantera Boutique Hotel El Calafate

... And my backpackers' bible, the Lonely Planet, says that this place makes the best Patagonian lamb stew in the world." The pair were in luck that day even though they were very early for dinner at 7pm by Argentinian standards and found the said restaurant not only to be open for dinner at such an early hour but was also still serving the infamous ...

1globalth September 2009:<br><br>Took a 20hr bus trip to get here via Rio Gallegos, the bloke in the coffee shop at the bus station now recognizes us we have stopped there that many times. Chile customs was a lot less brutal this time, which was nice. Both buses fairly comfortable though the second one showed the same movie twice, was quite good though!<br>Arrived Calafate at 2230 and we headed to a couple of hostels to investigate prices, the HI was mega expensive and the bloke ...

... br><br>After 3 days of looking at whales we headed further south to El Calafate via Rio Gallegos near the southern tip of the continent. This is a beautiful Alpine-style town at the border of the Andes with some of the world´s most famous glaciers nearby. It was very strange being so far from Europe (very near to Antarctica in fact!) and literally feeling like we were in an Austrian ski town! The day after arrival and settling in to ...

... coming back home, living with Mary, seeing all of my family and friends, pursuing my career objectives and desiring to travel and work abroad. That night I had some ominous (and hopefully non prescient) dreams of utterly failing to teach a 5th grade class and feeling completely out of place and not relating to friends at my welcome home party. I also had some crazy Jack Bauer-style action dreams featuring Brad and Esther ...

... by the compression of the ice particules. All very scientific but more to the point it makes for a great spectacle. Just as good is the fact that every now and then a huge chunk of the glacier big enough to sink a battleship simply falls off. Making a tremendous noise like several bombs going off and crashing in a blast of ice. As if we hadn't had enough we decided to attack another glacier or two on the ...

... Aires and Patagonia in more detail in future blogs, as there are numerous moments in time that deserve to be captured in text...so watch this space. Thanks for the taking the time to read this blog entry, and I hope you will return to read future entries. Please feel free to comment on any of my blog entries, but keep it decent as numerous people including family will be reading this. For those that are interested, our journey thus far has been ...

... like us from across the world and cyclists finishing off their marathon trip down south America. We headed into town as we still did not have a stove or sleeping mats, these were eventually found at reasonable prices that wouldn´t break the bank. We got our bus booked up to El Chalten and stocked up in the local supermarket. We were now ready for our first Patagonian trek. Next day we head out on the early bus we arrived in the small town of El Chalten which is a wee ...

... gemeten en hij is al vele vele jaren stabiel...sterker hij groeit hier en daar zelfs. We zijn met een boot voor de wanden langsgevaren en vervolgens 1,5 uur over een deel van de gletscher gelopen wat veilig was. Ook dit was geweldig. Ijzers onder schoenen en lopen maar, als je echt intens blauw wilt zien zoals de almachtige het bedoeld heeft dan moet je daar zijn. Nice. Dit zullen we niet snel vergeten. groeten Marth en Les

... leg of our travels. We hired a tent, but ended up opting not to hire a camping stove. Partly because they were really expensive to hire but mainly because we didn't think they were even capable of cooking a large enough meal for 3. Our solution was to cook bag after bag of pasta before leaving and to eat that cold in the wilderness. I remember thinking what a bad idea it was going to be...