El Calafate
Trip Start
Aug 31, 2005
1
18
60
Trip End
Feb 16, 2006
EL Calafate,
Argentina
Friday, November 4, 2005
We took a tour to Torres del Paine national park which is a park with gorgeous lakes and mountains. Torres del Paine means `blue towers` (see photo). This tour consisted of a bus journey that took about 5 hours just to get to the park (we left at 5.50am!). There were no toilets on route and as most of you know I need the toilet lots so in true classic Caroline style I had to get the bus to stop and went to the toilet behind it (there were no trees around). Simona thought this was highly amusing especially as there was a cow in the road watching me pee with my white bum in the air! I didnīt find it so amusing and threw a strop along the lines of I have had enough of travelling! Eventually we got into the park which is actually in Chile and went to get some lunch as we had been told not to take any with us as they are strict at the Chilean borders on what you can take through.
01 Torres del Paine.
A sandwich cost 5 pounds, so we refused to buy one, luckily a nice Irish man who had brought lunch with him shared his lunch with us! The lakes were lovely, the water so blue and in one lake there were icebergs (see photos, I needed some powder on my face as I was shining a lot!). To get to the iceberg lake we walked over a rope bridge, Sim and I were struggling to walk in a straight line and then realised the guide behind us was swinging it, very amusing! (only 6 people at a time were allowed on the bridge, we wondered how they came up with this number, did they put 7 people on and the bridge break?!) All in all it was a very long day with the majority of the time on a bus, we got back at 11pm. At one point we crossed a bridge on the bus and the guide said that they were building a new bridge as this one was no longer safe! Can you tell that I didnīt particularly enjoy this tour!The next day we took another tour (they are very expensive) to the glacier Perito Moreno. It was amazing, absolutely huge. We arrived, left the bus and were about to walk nearer to the glacier when the tour guide said there were no toilets so once again I had to pee with nature, this time it was behind a tree but we crossed a no entry sign to get to the tree and I still think people could see me! The walk was really good, saw some amazing views of the glacier (see photos, sorry for so many). Sim took a photo of me and said what is on your head, when she looked she realised that I had managed to be bitten on the head, nice and attractive! Near to the end of the walk, us and some others managed to loose the guide and get lost. Ended up walking through a forest and climbing over a fence, got tutted at! Eventually found the correct path! Ate lunch by the glacier, was surprisingly warm. After lunch we went on a boat trip to get quite close to the glacier, was excellent. It was quite strange because you would suddenly hear a huge bang and think loads of the glacier had fallen off but when you looked the piece looked absolutely tiny.
Once back in El Calafate we went out with a couple of guys we met on the tour, we sat outside a cafe, me drinking coffee and ice cream for Simona, managed to spend 2 hours there, I was wearing a strappy top and managed to get slightly sun burnt. We then went for dinner with them before returning for an early night. Very strange to be so hot and get sunburnt when looking at snowy mountains.
