El Calafate Hotels
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Perito Moreno Glacier
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It took 2 buses and 45 hours to get me from Buenos Aires to El Calafate. I am far down south now, for the first time in real Patagonia. The bus drive showed me what that means: complete emptiness, only pampa´s and only once or twice in an hour you see any sign of life, beeing it a lost gaucho or an estancia far on the horizon. Getting off the bus showed me another aspect of real Patagonia: wind!! Unbelievable!
The only reason why one would ever go to El Calafate is to visit the glaciars of Parque Nacional los Glaciares, the most famous being the Perito Moreno. The town itself is a complete tourist trap, expensive, full of tourists and nothing special at all.
The Perito Moreno glaciar is one of the only three Patagonian glaciers that is still advancing, and not just a little bit, 2 meters per day. It periodicaly advances completely to the other side of "Lago Argentino" forming a natural dam which blocs one part of the lake, Brazo Rico. With no escape route, the water-level on the Brazo Rico side of the lake rises then up to 30 meters above the level of the main lake. The enormous pressure produced by this mass of water finally breaks the ice dam, which is a spectacular event. This happened in march of this year for the last time, so there was no hope for us to see it happen now. It is impossible to predict when it will happen again by the way, as the time before was in march 2004 but before that it hadn´t happened for 16 years. One more fact: it was named after Fransisco Moreno a Patagonia pioneer, that explored the area in the 19th century and who played a major role in defending Argentine territory in border disputes with Chile. Disputes that still go on by the way. Perito means "specialist" and refers to his work on this aspect.
I did the classic tour of the glaciar, where you get to see it from several sides and get a guide to give you some background explanation. But actually you can as well just take the bus down there and observe the glaciar on your own from the many view points available. It costs you less, you get more freedom and the information... well, wikipedia knows a lot too!
The glaciar is impressive, realy hughe and the main tourist activity is trying to get the perfect shot of a piece falling off the glaciar. Hughe pieces fell off while I was there. It makes an enourmous sound (what makes you wonder how it must be to see the ice bridge fall down, when this happens constantly, with bigger pieces and for hours), but always afterwards of course, so I wasn´t able to get a picture of that.
Back from the tour I had to switch hostals, as my first one (hostelling international los glaciares) told me in the morning that they didn´t have place for me anymore. Not realy nice of them of course, but so was the hostal and the one I moved to, Keu Ken was actualy a lot better, with great hosts, the best I met so far. They great you like old friends from the second you get in there, arrange just everything you would want, as they were planning the trip for themselfs, and were great fun too. I had a realy nice night at the hostal, chatting the night away with the other guests and the hosts and in the morning I almost felt sorry to leave this tourist trap town.
A small last bit on the people I have been meeting. There are so many great people around here, all doing unique things, that it is becoming one of the main aspects of this travel to learn about there lifes. One example from El Calafate, a Canadian couple, about 60 years old, he sold his house in Canada, bought a boot, started to sail in the Caraibian, met his wife on Cuba where they sailed for a couple of months to the smaller villages, getting to know the real Cuban life. Every now and then they get back to Canada to do some ice fishing or whatever followed by some more months around Central America, where they have a second boat now. And now in Patagonia, fitting pertectaly into the young hostal life: chatting, joking, making fun.
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