Patagonia - El Calafate

I was very pleased to finally have made it to the Patagonia - a part of Argentina that I was eager to explore. Parts of the trip didn't meet my expectations, whilst other parts exceeded it wholeheartedly. We flew into El Calafate, a 3hr flight from BA, and stayed at perhaps one of the best hostels I've encountered (Amecica del Sur).  Weather was windy, extremely windy, but can change at a moments notice, from bright sunshine to grey and drizzle. Our room was quiet and extremely comfortable. First day we took a day trip to Torres del Paine in Chile.  I'd been wanting to do the W trek, but lacking confidence and ability to book refugios (we weren't organised enough) we opted for the day trip only.  Just lovely weather - we saw the Torres and the entire mountain range really clearly and for that I'm very thankful. But our tour lacked pace and we spent far to much time doing, well nothing to be precise.  I was glad I went, but ultimately disappointed that we were not able to do even a few hours walking in the lovely national park.

The next day did not disappoint. We visited Perito Moreno glacier.  It is more magnificent than you can wrap your head around. One of the few stable glaciers in the world, the size of this thing takes your breathe away.  The weather was extremely good to us - cloudy and miserable in El Calalfate, but when we arrived at the glacier, the sun was shining and we were fortunate enough to see large slabs of the glacier fall into the lake due to the warmth of the summer sun. (Don't worry, the glacier grows a lot every winter).  We had a 1pm ferry from the viewpoint to the other side of the lake so we could walk on the glacier.  Bernard managed to capture the start and finish of a huge slab of ice falling away from the glacier on his camera.  The impact of the wave it caused on the boat afterwards was pretty amazing too.  We walked on the glacier for 1.5 hours and were served Famous Grouse Whiskey, on ice, naturally, from the glacier itself.  It was a wonderful day from start to finish and definitely a highlight of my trip thus far.