El Calafate - Perito Moreno Glacier

Alter a long flight from Lima we arrived in Calafate airport! The first thing we noticed was the gale force winds and the lovely fresh air! On the way to the town you drive along a massive blue lagoon which the town is next too. The town itself is lovely, quite compact and based along one street with loads of cool little shops and restaurants, oh and chocolate shops selling flakes the size of my hand!

We booked ourselves into a hostel, and headed straight for a steak house as we had missed the Argentinian meat. We were not disappointed, but as well as steak we had some amazing lamb…………I LOVE ARGENTINA AND MEAT! Once again Em felt too full and we had to order something sweet! Oh my mistake she made me order something sweet!

The next day we went for a walk and picnic along the lagoon, which was made slightly difficult by the gale force winds, but hey it was sunny!!! We then headed into town to find out prices of a hire car…mmm I wonder if you can rent Corrado´s here! We had heard it was cheaper to hire a car for the day rather than jump on a tour to see Calafate´s main attraction – the ´Perito Moreno Glacier´. So we booked our car for the following day, a VW Gol, which is a cross between a Golf and a Corrado, but with no build quality!!!! But hey I was going to drive again…just on the wrong side!!!

Peurto Morino Glacier

This was a good hours drive from Calafate, and were really looking forward to seeing it.
We were not disappointed, as we rounded a bend it came into view, it was massive!

We had decided that instead of driving to the typical view point in front of the glacier, we would park the car on the other side and walk around to the glacier, and therefore get a different view and have a nice walk!

As we neared the Glacier the sheer scale of it was impressive and not easily conveyed through pictures. What we didn´t expect was the noise from the glacier, the constant cracking and creeking coming from it was amazing (it moves forward 2metres a day!). We hoped we would see a piece fall off into the lake, and we were lucky as a huge slice sheered of into the lake, producing a large wave which crashed into the shore!

We had never seen a glacier before, but we were both totally in awe of it, and could have spent hours just watching and listening.

After a bit of late lunch we headed back to Calafate as the weather closed in, but with the feeling that we had seen one of our favourite sites so far on this trip!

I think we are both going to love Patagonia!

The following day we headed north for El Chalten.