Una dïa en el hielo

Killing time in El Calafate, since our bus to Puerto Natales doesn´t leave until 5pm.

I had to book accomodation for us in Puerto Natales over the phone, completely in Spanish. It was quite hard but I think I got it right. If we arrive there tonight and discover I was successful I will have an enormous sense of accomplishment. If we arrive there tonight (at 10pm) and discover I was unsuccessful it will be a bit shit because accomodation can apparently be hard to come by around here and we will be homeless and tentless in a windy cold dark and sometimes rainy mountain town. However it is an adventure and I am sure somebody will take us in if necessary!!

So since I am killing time, you can have some wonderful pictures of Glaciar Moreno! It was pretty cool but like Lion says, it´s hard to describe. ¨Cold¨, ¨blue¨, ïcy¨and ¨very big¨is the closest I can get! Also ¨loud¨. You can hear the grinding and cracking echoing through the valley as it advances at 2 metres per day and large chunks fall into the water below (this is called calving). We spent a few hours looking at it and saying ¨wow¨ a lot.





We also spent a while wandering around El Calafate. There are lots of horses and dogs. There are also flamingos! I didn´t get any decent photos because my camera doesn´t have a good zoom so Lion will have to put some up when she gets the chance.




This is my favourite picture of El Calafate, taken on the first day we were here when the light was amazing. The green building is a nightclub!!

I´m glad to be leaving El Calafate, because its´ alpine-scrubbiness (a great novelty at first) is starting to grate on my nerves. Three days was slightly too long. But Puerto Natales sounds cool and we will do the ¨W¨trek there, which takes around five days (so expect us to be out of contact for a little while)!

We´ll also be in Chile. It is very bizarre to say, OK let´s book a bus to Chile tomorrow. I have never crossed a border over land before!

Lion cracked me up this morning. We were sitting at breakfast, discussing the two late-thirties men we shared a dorm with last night. They were very nice and everything, fit trekker-types, but seeing a couple of grown men (old enough to be our fathers) sprawled over their beds in cotton jocks, smelling like sweaty men, snoring loudly and desperately like they were trying to eat their own faces (Lion´s phrase) was a bit disconcerting.

Then the television in the background showed a news story with two big brown hairy sea lions sprawled on a beach on the west coast of Argentina. Lion was like, ¨Look at that, that´s what was lying on a bed in our dorm in its underpants last night.¨I laughed so loudly that everyone else in the common room turned to look at us.

That was considerably more than I intended to write! Better go before I reach 30mins on the internet-cafe counter... otherwise I´ll have to pay another 2.50 pesos!! Rip-off.

I will be in Puerto Natales, Chile, during my grandfather´s funeral. I guess I´ll be asleep, because of the time difference. I feel I should say a prayer for him, but I´m not really religious and I don´t think I know any prayers. I could make something up, I guess! I would like to say something for him when I´m on top of a mountain, or something, when we´re hiking. I think he would have preferred me to be with my family than on top of a mountain in Chile, but obviously that´s not possible. Anyway I hope that he is at rest now.