Los Alamos El Calafate

... the year without fail. This snow packs down and becomes ice which due to the weight, pushes down and forms these massive glaciers that extend through valleys until they eventually meet water or another mountain. The Perito Moreno glacier moves up to 2 meters a day, every day!

Its really alive and moving just the way it has for the last 10,000 years or so. Mind blowing. In fact, all the glaciers in the park are in balance - some are growing and some ...

... I relaxed at the coffee shop, where I indulged in an amazing cup of hot cocoa (in front of Mary's abstaining from sweets for Lent eyes) and where we purchased our first poster for our eventual apartment. I still can't believe it. We returned to Calafate, seeing a beautiful and perfectly-arced rainbow over Lago Argentina on the way back, and wandering the streets we stumbled upon a wonderful and romantic Italian restaurant ...

... 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 ...

... settlement full of tourists and tin houses. The landscape was wild, more wild than the wildest of Scotland. Once we had ditched our excess baggage and picked up a few other supplies we started walking. We headed up over the hill away from town and into a valley full of wind swept stunted beach trees. As we walked further on we crossed the old terminal moraines of the Cerro Torre glacier. We pitched our tent at the small windswept free camp site. We then headed ...

... was sunny and warm we felt the Christmas Cheer. Dinner that night was, of course, Argentinean steak, wine, and salad (tomatoes, onions and avocado). We've become quite accustomed to pan frying steak, as the quality of meat is so high that even in a pan the steak is amazingly tender and flavourful. We shared our Christmas Eve dinner with a couple from Berlin and three ladies from the US. At midnight we were treated to a fireworks display across the town that ...

... it loses mass at approximately the same rate, meaning that aside from small variations, its terminus has not advanced or receded in the past 90 years. At its deepest part, the glacier has a depth of approximately 700 metres (2,297 ft). We took a boat across the lake to closer to the glacier and after being given the technical and scientific details about the glacier, we put on crampons and went for a walk on the ice. It was fabulous. The day ...

... the southernmost city in the world. Our first two nights were spent in Ushuaia. This city (the farthest south you can go before reaching Antarctica, by the by) was absolutely amazing. Had I not known that I was in South America, I would have been surprised to find out that Ushuaia is not located in Switzerland. Ushuaia is a little city snuggled up against the Beagle Canal and situated right in the middle of all these rocky snow-capped mountains ...

It seems that we were never destined to get a good night's sleep in Puerto Natales, this time it was a load of dogs barking for hours non-stop from about 6am which prevented it.

However this wasn't a bad thing because we had another early bus to catch.

So we finished off our packing, grabbed some quick brekkie (where we learnt that our fellow guest the poor German lady had Dengue Fever, which ...

... together on the bus back to town having a great time. We came back to the hotel and had showers and I rinsed out some stuff here in the sink. The air here is so dry that clothes will dry in only a few hours, so I have been rinsing out our clothes while we are here. Our dinner tonight at a restaurant recommended by the hotel was exceptional -- exceptionally bad that is. (For anyone who cares, the name of the restaurant was "Los ...