El Calafate: Land of Glaciers

"I can't stop thinking about this glacier!"

We arrived in El Calafate with peters parents around 8:30, starving. Luckily our Airbnb was walking distance to the bus station, so we got there easily. Getting in the House was a bit trickier. The host was no longer there because we were an hour late, and the door was locked. There was a very kind neighbor that tried to help us. We finally found the key under a rock and let ourselves in. The neighbor, Carlos?, called us a cab and told us to go to Canimiro?? Bigua for dinner. We started with a bottle of Malbec from Mendoza and it was amazing!!! We started to settle down a bit from all the chaos of getting here. Pete and Peter ordered grilled lamb, the regions specialty, and Janet and I ordered Patagonia lamb risotto. Everything about dinner was perfect. The wine, atmosphere, service, my Spanish was even doing well, and then the food came... it may have been because I was starving or that I was in such a good mood, but that first bite of risotto was to die for!!! Simply amazing! We got a second bottle of wine because wine not?? Haha

We spent the evening talking about life and laughing at some guy across the restaurant who’s laugh must have been funnier than their own conversation. It brought the whole restaurant to laugh.

The next day we decided to walk around town and explore. We were too late to make a reservation to tour the glaciers so we stayed in town, got a great breakfast with real coffee and empanadas. We shopped and I bought the cutest little ceramic llama ever (Juan) and plan on showing him off at our future home! We stopped for drinks in the afternoon and enjoyed the sunshine. Then went back to the house for a siesta. With another bottle of wine from the super market. We went back downtown and got yet more drinks before dinner, found a charming hotel with a restaurant on top of a hill over looking the lake.

The next morning we headed off to Los Glaciares to see Perito Moreno. Our bus seemed to forget us until we called to check in and they sent us a cab to take us to the park. We drove an hour and arrived at the park with a rainbow over the lake. Very warm welcome. We turned the corner and there it was. Perito Moreno. The most beautiful, huge, and blue glacier I have ever seen. It was incredible to see it. We walked around the boardwalks for a couple hours and then headed to the boat to get a closer view of the magnificent glacier. We saw “small” chunks of ice falling off into the water and could hear it seconds later. The boat tour was very cool and I loved being able to see the glacier from a different view, however 85% of the people of the boat were solely focused on getting as many photos as they could. Everyone was scrambling to get the best photo and facing the cameras instead of Turing around and looking at the shifting ice. I made it a point to put down my cameras and enjoy the moment. Yes, I got my photos and they are awesome, but I spent most of my time looking at the deep blue colors of the crevasses and the sheer wall of the glacier right in front of us.

Our driver took us back to El Calafate and dropped us off at a bar where we had some afternoon drinks and appetizers. We decided to eat at home that night and got ingredients from the grocery store to make chicken and rice.

Janet and Peter left the next day and it was sad to leave them. We walked them to the bus station for them to get a taxi to the airport. We spent some time planning our Columbian adventure and then headed to our hotel in the center of town. We stopped on our way and got fries and drinks to avoid the random hail storm that hit us while we were walking. We drank and ate and got our packs back on and continued to walk to our next place. We were going along fine until I hear peter scream and turn around to see him on the ground. He had stepped on a broken piece of sidewalk and sprained his ankle. I was helping him get his backpack off and see what happened when two guys came by and asked if we were okay. It just so happens that one of them was in school to be a doctor. He helped peter and tested his strength. Luckily it was a mild sprain with no broken bones! We limped to our hotel, got some ice and I went to a nearby pharmacy to get an ace bandage from a very creepy pharmacist.

We spent the next couple days easing back into walking and strolled around town. I went for a couple of runs and toured the town a little more. We went out for pizza and on our last night went to another amazing restaurant where I had lamb ravioli with a mushroom cream sauce and Peter got mountain and seafood risotto. Mine definitely took the prize for best meal that night, but once again our time together was great, and so was our wine 📷️.

We got ice cream and a tasty and very messy sandwich our last day and took a bus to Puerto Natales where we’d spend another couple of days before heading to Puerto Varas.

We really enjoyed El Calafate. It was full of green tall trees and purple lavender bushes that smelled out of this world! It felt very safe and had a little resemblance of a ski village.

PETER ATE GUANACO!!! I'm devastated!