Ice Ice Baby

And England thought it had ice

Anything England does Argie does better, while reports of a foot of
snow in parts of England filter through facebook, we have travelled,
23 hours on a 3 buses, to deep south argentina to the centre of
Patagonia! More specifically EL Calafate!

El Calafate is set on the biggest lake of this fine nation, lago
Argentina, when arriving here there was a noticeable drop in
temperature combined with an increase in wind speed, described as a
constant breeze in late spring early summer. If we are experiencing
light breezes I would hate to feel a gale, the hostel appears to rock,
and jumping straight upwards resulted in being blown about a foot from
where you initially took off!

The reason for our stay in El Calafate is to visit the world famous,
Perito Moreno glacier, one of few in the world that is actually
growing! Moving about 2m a day! The apparent notoriety of the glacier
is because of it's growth and a special event that occurs about every
two years, where the glacier meets solid ground and forms a bridge,
this acts as a dam until the water wears a tunnel through the ice, and
eventually the whole thing "explodes"

The reason for its notoriety

So on the day of our trip to the glacier we wake up to a sunny, blue
sky! But within an hour the clouds have rolled in and the forecasted
rain, turns out to be snow! We board our minibus and take the 80km
trip into the glacial nation park, through some of the surrounding,
now snowcapped, mountains. Our first stop of the day is to take a boat
out to the southern face of the glacier! This stands 40m above the
lake, and shows the impressive structure of nature! It was absolutely
Baltic on the boat, fortunately we went prepared with multiple layers
on, an just about kept warm!

A cold Katie on the boat

From the boat it was back to the bus, and a little way up the road we
where dropped off at the viewing balconies, 5km of metal walkways,
giving views of the northern and southern faces, plus the
aforementioned world famous joining of ice and land! It was actually
colder on land than the boat, and the wind seemed to pick up along
with the periodic snow storms!

Wrapped up Alex

We were told that visiting the glacier on such a day gave us much more
picturesque views as the ice appears to glow blue against the dull
backdrop, as opposed to looking white in the bright sunlight! We did also get to see the creation of ice bergs, as a chunk of ice breaks of the glacier and falls in to the lake below.

The Northern face

One of the unofficial highlights of the day came from earwigging into
an old American couples argument, which consisted of him wanting to
stay where he was, and her wanting to go onto the lower balconies, and
the back and forth argument that ensued kept us entertained whilst
eating our lunch!

We briefly met one of a group of guys who have driven from Canada
through America, and south America with a target destination of the
antarctic, I didn't have the heart to point out that there was water
between Tierra del Fuego and The Antarctic!

Think that's all to report for the time being!