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Day 40 – 02/17/2007 – Travel to El Calafate, Argentina

In preparing for our 4th flight in 4 days, we came up with a list of lessons learned thus far.

- The best thing Julee’s mom told us to pack were small packages of tissues and wet naps.
- Having antibiotics with us has been a godsend. We have both had sore throats, and we each taken a course of Azrithromyacin.
- The most tiring part is the packing and repacking. Some days it’s the entire suitcase (easy) and other days we are packing up the daypacks for extreme heat, extreme cold, or the unknown.
- If the hotel room is small, one person should vacate for at least an hour in the morning giving the other person room to sort out their shit.

Our morning flight to El Calafate, which is in the heart of Patagonia region in the south of Argentina, was a cinch. From the one room airport, it was about a 20-minute drive into the city. It was the first time we’d encountered a cab driver that spoke NO English. Not a single word. He kept trying to talk to us and all we could say was a phrase our friend Chris taught us “Lo siento, pero mi espanol es muy malo”. Translation: I’m sorry, but my Spanish is very bad”. It’s a useful phrase but it’s just enough to trigger a Spanish response. So we had to change it to “Lo siento, pero mi espagnol es NADA”.

The hotel Kosten Aike was very comfortable and looks a lot like a mountain chalet. In fact the town of El Calafate looks a lot like a ski village with cafes, Internet cafes, souvenir stores and restaurants. According to Frommer’s, 300 people originally inhabited the town. Once the airport was built, tourism to the glacier exploded and now 20,000 people live and work in El Calafate – nearly all related to tourism.

Our only agenda for the day was signing up for our excursion tomorrow. Luckily, we met a nice mom/daughter combo at the Art Hotel who had just returned from El Calafate and they gave us the scoop on the glacier hikes. Based on their advice, we knew exactly what we wanted do, “BIG ICE”. Thankfully, they told us not to sweat all the warnings regarding the difficulty (18 – 45 yrs old only, physically fit, good knees and backs, etc).

After checking in, we headed downtown (which was two blocks away) and signed on the dotted line. They gave us a few more warnings in person, but we were convinced we could rise to the challenge.

Back in town, we discovered one of the local customs is drinking Yerba Mate. Ever in search “native” experiences, we immediately went to a café and ordered a Ceremonial Yerba Mate. It’s a very bitter tea, tempered with sugar, served in a hollowed out gourd and sipped through a metal straw. When we ordered, the waiter said “Is this your first time?”

He carefully took us through the ceremony and was a little surprised we liked it. Apparently, it’s so bitter that most foreigners do care for the taste of the tea. We liked it and drank an entire ceremonies’ worth. In fact, Lou drank to the point of a buzz.

For dinner, we followed our Bible, Frommer’s 2005, and went to Las Tabilitas. We of course ordered beef and red wine. It was fantastic. It was a very straightforward dinner. Huge filets, served naked – so salt, no pepper, no sauce. And they were delicious. We know we keep harping on the prices but they are unbelievable. We had 2 enormous glasses of malbac, a large green salad, 25 ounces of filet, mashed potatoes and pumpkin, and tip for $26 US. That’s only two martinis in Chicago.

As far south as we are, the days are long and the nights are short. It only started to get dark around 9:30pm. We had a 6am wake up call so we called it a night.

Day 41 – 02/18/2007 – “Mini Trek is for Pussies”
(Lou made me write that)
There are several ways of visiting the glaciers in El Calafate. You can drive to see them from a distance, take a boat ride to the front of the glacier, a 4-hour mini-trek that includes about a ½ hour walk on the glacier or you can do the 10-hour “Big Ice” adventure.

Big Ice started at 7:30am with an hour’s bus ride to “The Balconies”, a series of wooden walkways and terraces from which you can view the front of the Perito Moreno Glacier. The glacier has a 5 km (3.1 mile) front and rises 60 meters (200 feet) above the water. It was an awesome site and Lou’s first glacier! (Julee’s been to Alaska.) We could hear rumblings all around, but the ice was not calving (falling into the water) in front of us. We could only hear the powerful echoes.

From the Balconies, we got back into the bus for the transfer to the dock. At a small landing, we boarded a transfer boat and crossed Lake Argentino right in front of the glacier. Cramped into the belly of the boat, we couldn’t really see the glacier, but it was an easy 10-minute crossing.

On the other side, we disembarked at a small compound of 3 cottages and bathroom facilities. There, we were saw our first big piece of ice crash into the water. There was thunderous boom and then splash. It’s such a powerful feat of nature, you feel like clapping when it happens.

At this point, the guides gave everyone a last chance to back out of the 7 hour hike. Thankfully, four very large Russian guests in street clothes opted to join the less strenuous tour as someone had really sold them the wrong trip!

With the Inca Trail less than a month away, Lou and I felt we HAD to do it as conditioning and wondered if a tourist’ activity could really be that hard.

Big Ice continued with a 20-minute brisk hike through the woods to the equipment center. There, we were each outfitted with a harness and crampons to put in our backpacks. Once the group of 20 was geared up, we took off on a lightening speed hike up and around a dirt mountain trail. At one point, we had to hold onto a rope for leverage against a steep slope of falling earth. The hike was along side the edge of the glacier, and that alone was breathtaking.

After 40 minutes, we reached the entry point of the glacier. The guides helped everyone into their harnesses and strapped us into our crampons and gave us a quick rundown on glacier crossing technique:

1. Keep your feet wide apart so that the metal edges of the crampons do not catch each other
2. Walk uphill like a penguin taking very small steps
3. Lean back when walking downhill and take very strong steps that truly pierce the ice

Being that Julee takes “directions” very seriously, you add 1,2,3 and Julee looked like a spastic cartoon character waddling across the ice all day.

Note from Julee: As many of you know, I am very sensitive to certain words. I simply do not like the way they sound and prefer not to use them. In fact, in college, a group of friends and I developed a list of “Words We Do Not Like”. As you might imagine, “crampon” is the latest addition to the list. So from now on, the devices shall be referred to a “glacial sandals”.

Walking on the glacier felt like walking on a snow cone, with shaved, crunchy ice on the top supported by a solid center. We literally walked to the middle of the Perito Moreno glacier. It was a rigorous hike to lagoons, over crevasses, next to water chutes 100 times more powerful than the waterslides at 6 Flags, and around ice walls. The ice of the glacier is so compact; it turns the deepest, truest blue you’ve even seen. And the water is delicious – most of the hikers filled their water bottles from one of the lagoons. This was another situation where we knew words wouldn’t really do the experience justice and we hoped our pictures would be to capture the icescape and the colors.

Even after 5 hours of hiking on the glacier, I (Julee) felt like a baby horse not yet sure of my footing next to the guides who were running all over the glacier and scaling ice walls.

Although the guides cross the glacier hundreds of times each year, the glacier changes slightly every day. So they were picking out our path as we went along. There were a few times we’d take a huge leap over a running stream, only to double back to find a safer path.

Although the guides could all give commands in English, the bilingual guide was a little new and a little shy. When we stopped, the head guide was spend minutes explaining the movement, size and geological history of the glacier. He’d wave his arms explaining the forces of nature and rattle off very big numbers in Spanish. Then he’d cue the English-speaking guide to translate, and we’d get “The glacier is bery bery old”. And to follow up, “The ice is bery bery deep”.

At the end of the day, we hiked back to the side of the glacier, took off the equipment, hiked back through the mountain, dropped the equipment at the station, and hiked back to the cabins, got back onto the boat and then onto the bus. We left at 7am and we got back at 8:30pm. It was exhausting but fascinating and exhilarating.

That night we walked the two blocks to town, had pizza and beer at a pub and then walked 5 blocks to the edge of town to hear the music festival. At 10:30pm, it was just getting started, but it looked exactly like any live music concert in Chicago. The band was on a big stage; there were sponsor signs everywhere and festival food lining the edges of the field. Granted it was on a small scale, but we called it “Lalacafate”.

Day 42 – 02/19/2007 – El Calafate

Today was the day we promised ourselves we’d “take it easy”. Lou’s throat was still a mess. He’d taken a picture of the back of his mouth into the mirror (very clever) and emailed it to his doctor, and we were waiting to hear his e-diagnosis.

So, laying low consisted of moving from café to café trying to find the fastest Internet connection. We literally had water and sandwiches in one café, the moved across the street for coffee and broadband, and then finally down to the locutorio (internet café) for two computers and Skype.

At 5pm, we hopped on our flight and headed back to Buenos Aires so exited at the thought of staying put for 5 nights. Back at the Art hotel, the staffed greeted us with smiles and had already put our laundry in our room. But, they hesitated to bring up the suitcases. We thought that was a bit odd until we got into the room.

This was the week the Art Hotel was nearly fully booked and we were in the “Small and Cozy Twin”. They didn’t want to bring up the bags because there was no room for the bags!

Up in the room, we spent an hour or so searching the Internet and the guidebooks trying to find an available room under a specific dollar amount. Stressed about finding nothing, we went to sleep around Midnight bummed that we’d have to somehow change hotels in the morning.

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