Ice Ice Baby (via Chocolate County and Ruta 40)
Trip Start
Nov 02, 2007
1
10
22
Trip End
??? ??, 2008
El Calafate,
Argentina
Tuesday, January 8, 2008
Arriving in Perito Moreno we heard about a cherry festival happening in a town an hour away and decided that this would be a good place to attempt our 1st proper hitch hike (its very common in Argentina and no one thinks you're a raving psychopath cos you're hitching)
Mmmm Chocolate!!
. Going there we got a luxury mini van, coming back was not so easy... Having waited 2 hours in the beating sun and being left with a mouth drier than Gandhi's flip flop, a driver with a pick-up truck pulled over - and as his car was full he told us to jump in the back. Being in the open air was quite exciting, we had no idea of the thrashing that would ensue, until he put his foot down and decided to throttle it back at 90km/h. We held on for dear life, eyes streaming - we were going so fast we though we might go back in time, and whilst we had our eyes closed and our knuckles had gone white from holding on so tight, we imagined how worth it this journey was, and how smooth our skin would be the next day from the wind whipping. All of a sudden something slapped Harmeet on the back of the neck - it wasn't an iron clad flip flop as she had imagined, but a receipt with a 70km/h wind behind it. Obviously it was a sign - a painful reminder for her not to forget to do her tax returns...
30 minutes later and wind battered we got off, cold, but grinning from ear to ear at our successful hitch!
The next day we commenced our journey to El Calafate with another 15 hour journey
MEAT and MORE MEAT!!!
. All was fine til Stan got an attack of the paranoias half way through. All of a sudden he jumped out of his seat and insisted that I followed him down to the front of the coach. I got up very slowly and mooched on down assuming that he had spotted a UFO or 2 headed push-me pull-me... It was only when he was trying to get the drivers attention that I thought he was being a little bit too enthusiastic about the Argentinian landscape. It turned out that one of the Israeli lads sitting opposite us had caused Stan to break out in a sweat. Why? Well it seemed his frantic praying, a small box strapped to his head and the leather cord he was furiously binding around his left arm had resulted in Stanley making some rather misguided assumptions ... 'He's praying!' his friend said 'That's how we do it...' he added. By this time the Israeli girls in front were laughing their heads off and Stan felt mortified and proceeded to apologise for the next half an hour. Even when he saw the lad the following day (minus the box strapped to his curly head), Stan tried to buy him some fish fingers as an apology but the lad was too gracious to accept. Crisis averted Harmeet rolled over and went back to sleep...
So we got to El Calafate in one peice and found a place to stay in that was so cold that the penguins were trying to get in - No bother - thermals on, we were armed for a day at the glaciers - sarnies packed and signs made we headed for the highway for a hitchhike
Stan pre wind whipping...
. We met the lovely Fernando (hello fer!) and his friends who were also trying to hitch the same way and then we struck gold! An empty bus heading to the park picked us all up and all it cost us was half a tuna sarnie!!! Anyway this bus driver was so well connected, he dropped us past the paying in point and told us to walk 1km up a dirt track to the glaciers so we got in for nowt! Ching ching!!
Then we saw it...
The glacier was phenomonal. Tinged blue and dazzlingly bright, we stood stood there watching it and wondering how a glacier 'grows'! (It grows up to 4m per day). This icy behemoth 60 metres high and going 60 metres deep under the water, had us captivated and while we were staring at it huge chunks of the beast came crashing down into the luminescent lake beneath it causing an almighty roar. We stood there for hours watching it while wondering what the hell 'it' was thinking...
4 hours later we hitched back with a young argentinian couple, still in awe of the big ice cube we had visited. We packed up and decided to head east and tried to figure out whether we should head out to Ushuia - the southern most city in the world and a stones throw away from Antartica, or head north to the Tango capital of Buenos Aires.
So many decisions to make and not enough time - if only we had packed that bloody magic eight ball...
