South America #3 - El Calafate & Ushuaia

7 December: Buenos Aires - El Calafate
Seeing as we were heading 2,000 km south (and then a further 1,000 afterwards) Ed and I opted for a flight. That took around 3 hours, which gives an idea of how big this country is - BA isn´t anywhere near as far north as you can get and El Calafate is 1,000 km from the furthest south. So sitting on a bus, lovely as they are, for a day or 2 didn´t seem like a great idea.



El Calafate´s claim to fame is that it´s where you spring from to go and see the Perito Moreno glacier. Apart from that it doesn´t have a great deal going on. In the winter the town clears out and all the seasonal workers head elsewhere, leaving the clutch of local residents behind.


The glacier itself is quite a sight. An incredible blue colour - depending on the angle of the sun you see every shade of blue imaginable - and enormous. While most of the world´s glaciers are receding, this one is stable, advancing some 2m every day. Huge chunks of ice fall off the face of the glacier (called "calving") which is an amazing spectacle. You can hear the creaking and groaning as the ice at the face weakens and begins to tear away from the body of the glacier, and when the chunks calve into the water they hit the surface with an almighty sound.

There are 2 faces of the glacier, forming an "L" shape as it reaches Lago Argentgina.

This is the "South" face...



... but most of the calving action happens at the North face:



The "terminus" of the glacier, to give it the apparently correct name, is 5km wide, with an average height of 60m. At its deepest, the glacier has a depth of 700m. We took a boat out towards the North face to get a better look. It was a kind of optical illusion. The boat takes you 300m from the North face. Ed and I didn´t think we were anything like 300m away, or that the face looked anything like 60m high, but when we went to the lookout you could see that must be right. From the lookout the boats look tiny against the glacier, and tend to position themselves with their ass toward the glacier, presumably so they can get out of there sharpish if a huge chunk calves off unexpectedly.



We were looking at the North face from the lookout after lunch and I saw a massive tower of ice that looked a bit precarious. We thought no more of it and turned to head off down the walkway, when that same tower calved off and crashed into the lake. Cheers and whistles went up, and we turned to see the huge splash created by it. It was like an impossibly fat man had bombed off the top of the face. We didn´t have our cameras out in time to catch it, which was a shame, but Ed got this picture of the afters from another calving (thanks Ed!)


Bosh!

I also got a wee video of another small bit that fell off. Not very exciting but what the hell.


In other exciting news, I discovered the "take pictures of small stuff" feature on my camera so no doubt I´ll be taking pictures of all sorts of random shit now...



10 December: El Calafate - Rio Gallegos
Lago Argentina is apparently the biggst lake in Argentina and the 3rd biggest in South America. It´s a brilliant turquoise colour in parts and a magnificent sight when compllemented by the mountainous backdrop. This was the view from the back of the bus as we left El Calafate:


Rio Gallegos was just a place for us to break up the trip to Ushuaia for a night and get some admin done.
12 December: Rio Gallegos - Ushuaia

The bus from Rio Gallegos to Ushuaia was the least pleasant travel experience we´d had in Argentina, but still wasn´t all that bad. There were several stops for police to board the bus and inspect everyone´s passports. Which seemed totally unnecessary, given the geography (see the map above) meant we had to pass through the border into Chile for a while, and then back into Argentina further south, and go through all the attendant border control procedures. The first border post out of Argentina was probably the most disorganised setup I´ve ever seen. If you´re dead set on smuggling contraband into Chile from Argentina, this is surely the place to do it.

While in the Chilean part of the sandwich we crossed the Magellan Strait on this bad boy.


Which was nice. Actually it was, there were some of these kicking around:

And so late doors we got about as far south in the world as it´s possible to get by road. Ushuaia´s a pretty cool and odd little place. In the arly 1970s the population was around 7,000 but now it´s nearly 10 times that. It´s debatable whether in fact it is the southernmost city in the world, but it´s done a good job of marketing itself as such. Chile´s Puerto Williams is further south still, and amusingly calls itself "Más alla del fin del mundo" (farther even than the end of the world).

Our first day we went for a wander from the top of a chairlift up to what is supposed to be a glacier, but there was no sign of one. Whatever, it was a nice hike and the views back down over Ushuaia weren´t too shabby.


The next day our mum arrived so we hired a car and went for a drive to a lake we´d passed on our way into Ushuaia and another road round the bay.

I saw a sign that cracked me up. This guy looks like he´s doing a dance my mate Fraser pulls out every now and again, the Anti-rhythm. I thought he also looked like a lego man. And camp. (Not Fraser, the dude in the sign.)

The following day we went to the nearby Tierra del Fuego National Park. There are allegedly beavers there, and we did see a few dams, but sadly no beavers. Or beaver. I thought the park was a letdown, there wasn't much wildlife on show, beavers or otherwise. We had a nice feed at a fancy restaurant that night as it was mum´s birthday. What a random place to have it.

My final day down south took us to see some wildlife that made up for the lack of it in the park. Plenty of sea lions on a rock, in the middle of shagging season. Nearly saw a couple of fights between males, it was like being at Brannigans in Reading on a Friday night.

And the highlight for me were these cute little fellas, Megellanic penguins. Funny to see them waddling around on the each but boy can they swim fast. Like little torpedoes they were.

"excuse me sir, would you like to try the house white?"


So that´s a wrap for the south for me. Back up to BA and the end of my trip with Ed. It´s been a fantastic few weeks with him and it´ll be strange to be back on my own again. He and Mum are off to Antactica tomorrow for xmas, so I hope they have a sweet time and see some amazing things. Next post from me will be in BA.