El Calafate and the Perito Moreno Glacier

On Sunday 1st October we took an afternoon flight from Buenos Aires to El Calafate in Argentinian Patagonia. 

We were staying 3 nights at the America del Sur Hostel which was fantastic. It consistently gets rated as one of the top hostels in South America, and I can see why.  Nicola and I had a twin room with private ensuite, and there were awesome communal facilities with views looking out over Lago Argentino, the largest freshwater lake in Argentina.

The main reason for going to El Calafate was to visit the Perito Moreno Glacier, a place that had been on my bucket list for several years. A friend of mine who I used to play rugby with in the UK used to work as a tour guide in South America, and I had wanted to visit the glacier ever since she showed me pictures of it. It is one of the few glaciers in the world that is not retreating. Our initial plan was to have a relaxed day exploring the town on Monday, and head out to the glacier on Tuesday as the weather forecast was a bit better for then. However, we woke up on Monday morning and the sun was shining, so we made a spontaneous decision to do our glacier trip that day. We just had time for a quick breakfast (included, and pretty decent for a hostel!) before walking the 15 minutes or so down to the bus station. We could have spent hundreds of USD on 'proper' glacier tours, some of which included trekking on the glacier itself. Instead, we just took the relatively cheap local bus.

The glacier was amazing! There is always the worry that things like this won't live up to expectation when you are actually there, but this well and truly did. Perito Moreno is one of 48 glaciers fed by the Southern Patagonian Ice Field which is the third largest reservoir of fresh water in the world. It is hard to get an idea of the scale of the place through these photos, but the ice wall was up to 70 metres high, so pretty immense!

There are huge chunks of ice constantly calving off the glacier and crashing into the water which was an impressive sight, although unfortunately I didn't get any good pics of this happening.

The glacier is around 30km long and 5km wide at its terminus. The Los Glaciares National park is really well maintained with several kilometres of boardwalks that you walk along to view the glacier from all angles. The bus drops you off at one point, then picks you up again about 5 hours later, several kilometres away, giving plenty of time for viewing and photographs (of which I literally took hundreds!). You don't really get an appreciation for the sheer volume of ice until you walk some of the higher boardwalks that give a view looking down on the glacier.

I like the pic below because you get to see just how close to the glacier the viewing platforms have been built, plus the size of the people help give some perspective.

Not long into our visit we saw our first condor which was very cool. As the largest flying bird in the world, they were an impressive sight in the skies!

Here's a few pics that we are actually in...

To say I was a bit obsessed with this place is an understatement... As mentioned earlier, I literally took hundreds of photos, so trying to whittle it down to a manageable number for  this post was difficult. It was just so beautiful, and I loved how in some pics the ice appeared to be the most gorgeous iridescent blue. 

I also loved the patterns that the ice made in the water. Visiting Antarctica is also on the bucket list, and this place just whetted my appetite for it...

The piece of ice below was absolutely stunning and shimmered like a jewel. It was the only piece that wasn't white.

As we neared the end of the boardwalks we got some interesting views of the glacier terminus front-on.

We managed to make it back to the bus rendezvous point in plenty of time, and enjoyed the 2-hour or so ride back to El Calafate, buzzing after an amazing day out.

By now I (finally!) had my appetite back after my illness, so that night we indulged in the hostel's legendary asado (aka. BBQ). I was looking forward to trying some of the famed Argentinian beef, and it didn't disappoint! As you can see above, the piece of steak was humongous, and the meal also came with chicken, lamb, chorizo, bread, wine, and a help-yourself salad bar! It was some of the best beef I have ever had, and there was so much meat that we got a take-away box and had it for dinner the following night as well... It was the perfect end to an epic day.

On the Tuesday we had a nice wander around El Calafate town. It was very cute, albeit totally geared towards tourists. Neither Nic nor I were really in the market for knick-knacks and souvenirs... We also went for a nice long walk along the shores of Lago Argentino.

That night, back at the hostel, we were rewarded with the most magnificent sunset over the lake. A lovely way to end our time in El Calafate as on Wednesday morning we had an 8am bus booked to take us to El Chalten.

Buenos Aires, Argentina

My holiday didn't get off to the best of starts when on the Wednesday afternoon of the last week of school I started to feel headachy, nauseous and dizzy. By Thursday I had a raging sore throat. My cheeky husband joked that he knew I was properly sick as I was off my food, not eating anything at all between Wednesday lunch and Thursday afternoon. Things hadn't improved by Friday, and I was getting a bit worried since I was due to fly to Buenos Aires that evening. I decided I had better visit a doctor (for the first time in 7 years, not counting visits for the occasional sporting injuries!). It's a good thing I did, because the doctor thought the most likely diagnosis was Strep Throat. Due to my imminent departure we didn't have time to wait for my test results to come back from the lab to confirm it, so she decided to give me a 10-day course of antibiotics anyway, as well as a 4-hourly ibuprofen/paracetamol combo to manage pain and fever, plus a nasal spray to try and keep my sinuses clear and reduce pain associated with the buildup of pressure during the flight.

Suitably dosed up, the 13 and a half hour flight wasn't actually too bad. I finally got a chance to watch the 'Hidden Figures' movie which I had been wanting to for a while (it was excellent!). I also slept more than I usually do on a flight.

I arrived at about 5pm local time on Friday, which messed with my brain somewhat, considering my flight from NZ had departed at around 7:30pm that same day! From the airport I took a bus to my hostel. I was staying at Hostel Estoril which had an excellent location on Av. de Mayo, one of the main thoroughfares in the city centre with Congress at one end and Casa Rosada, the presidential palace at the other. It had a nice little outdoor patio area, and from the rooftop bar and terrace there were great views of the impressive Palacio Barolo building.

I pretty much just hung out at the hostel that evening. I didn't even have the energy or inclination to pop out and get something for dinner. I had to stay up as my friend Nicola was arriving on the ferry from Punta del Este, Uruguay that evening. Nicola has taken a year of leave from her school in the UK to take part in the Clipper Round The World Yacht Race on the Team Great Britain boat. She is partaking in 4 of the 8 legs, and travelling in-between legs. The first leg was from Liverpool in the UK to Punta del Este, Uruguay which took 5 weeks. It was awesome seeing her walk into the hostel at around midnight. It was pretty amazing that the date that she arrived in South America coincided perfectly with my school holiday dates, making our 2-week adventure possible. Obviously it was just meant to be!       

The next day we set about exploring Buenos Aires by foot, starting with the impressive Congress building which was only a few minutes walk from the hostel.

We then walked the length of Av. de Mayo to Casa Rosada, the balconies from which Evita made her famous addresses to the nation.

The cathedral off Plaza de Mayo was the former seat of Pope Francis. It was a nice cool place to sit down for a bit and have a rest. I was feeling OK, but was just lacking in energy which was a bit annoying.

From here we walked to the San Telmo area where we enjoyed a wander around the San Telmo market. 

I loved all the little green-grocers dotted throughout the city, most of them displaying their wares in the original wooden crates.

After refueling with empanadas in a very cute little local restaurant, we continued walking to the La Boca area. We walked past the famous La Bombonera stadium, home to Boca Juniors who Diego Maradona used to play for. It would have been amazing to see a match there, but it wasn't to be this trip. Judging by this video footage, it would also be pretty scary! I can't believe they are allowed sparklers and flares in the stadium!! It must be pretty noisy on game day for the apartments below in the stadium's shadow.

Football is definitely king in Argentina, and walking around La Boca it was incredible how many people were kitted out in Boca Juniors colours.

Our destination was Caminito which consists of a few streets of colourfully painted houses and buildings typical of the early immigrant dwellings. It is possibly the biggest tourist trap in the whole of Buenos Aires, but we enjoyed exploring it and it was very photogenic.

We then walked all the way back to our hostel. Retrospectively, I read that apart from the Caminito area, La Boca isn't really safe for tourists to walk around! Nicola and I felt perfectly safe at all times, although we did wonder at the number of prostitutes working the streets in a couple of specific areas.

That night I had a treat in store for Nic and I... Watching the All-Blacks play the Pumas in Buenos Aires!!! This was something that I had always wanted to do since Argentina started playing in the Rugby Championship in 2012. Whenever I watched the matches on TV the atmosphere looked awesome. I couldn't believe my luck when I looked up the All-Black's fixtures and saw that the Buenos Aires match happened to be when I was in the city. I also couldn't believe that I could buy tickets online for $40 NZD each, less than half the price of what it would cost me to watch the All-Blacks at home.

After a short rest to recover from our BIG day of walking, we set out for the Jose Amalfitani Stadium by subway, followed by train.

We were way up with the gods in the second to top row, so we had a great birds-eye view of the match.

The atmosphere was electric, especially during the Argentinian national anthem, and when the Pumas scored their (highly dubious) try. As raucous as it was beforehand, during the haka you could hear a pin drop. I was highly impressed by the respect shown to the All-Blacks.

The first half was fantastic (unless you happened to be a Pumas fan!) but the second half wasn't much to write home about... Nevertheless, it was a brilliant night out. South American fans sure know how to support their teams!

The next morning we just had time to walk to La Recoleta Cemetery. This is an incredible place. It is like a walled 'city of the dead' set in 5 and a half hectares. There are over 4600 vaults, all above ground, with whole families using the same vault. It would have been nice to have a longer walk around, but we only had time to locate and view Evita's grave (which was the one with all the people around it!) before walking back, picking our bags up at the hostel, and catching a bus to the airport, ready for our flight to El Calafate in Patagonia.