February 16th, 2010

Icewalkers

I woke up a 4 AM Thursday to catch my flight from Buenos Aires to El Calafate in the south of Argentina. The hostel in Buenos Aires (V&S Hostel) was wonderful, they arranged for a cab to pick me up outside the main door at such an ungodly hour. Airport security at the Aeroparque Jorge Newberry (Buenos Aires domestic airport) was a joke. The security personnel were more interested in chatting over coffee than looking at the xray machine monitor. It was all worth it though as I watched the sun rise over Buenos Aires from above the clouds.

El Calafate was not at all what I expected. The landscape around the town is unlike anything I've ever seen, bordering on desert. Driving into town from the airport in a shuttle bus, I felt like I was in the middle of a John Wayne movie, and any second I wad going to see tumbleweed roll across the road. Then off in the distance, the Andes rise out of nothing.

The shuttle bus on the way in stopped at basically every hostel in town (which is like one out of every five buildings) and every time there was this anticipation - is it mine? is it mine? When the really ugly, beaten down ones weren't mine, I felt great relief. The hostel I stayed in, I Keu Ken Hostel (pronounced eee-kay-ooo-ken), is quite nice, very homely and cozy. I immediately felt lonely though as the hostel was essentially empty. Most everyone had checked out or were out on tours. Every time I arrive in a new place feels like the first day of school. You have to meet new people, make new friends, ask the basic questions (what's your name, where are you from, what is your purpose in life, etc.).

As for the town of El Calafate itself, I don't have very high regards for it. There is one main street that looks like mini-Banff and then everything off the main street looks more like it belongs in a third world country. It's very clear that the majority of those who live in El Calafate permanently are not seeing the thousands of tourist dollars that get thrown around every day. The grocery stores (about the same size as a standard Canadian grocery store) are composed almost entirely of prepackaged, processed foods with very small sections for produce and dairy. Bakery and meats are basically a counter where you can make special requests. Though I didn't find the produce prices to be extravagant (almost all of it is right from Argentina), it's clear that fresh food is out of the realm of affordability for the local population.

Having not made any friends yet (though I did unsuccessfully try to befriend a German girl), I decided it was time to finally tackle the stigma of eating in a restaurant alone. Armed with a paperback to keep myself occupied, I found a nice little pizza place and enjoyed a quiet solo dinner. Done and done. That wasn't so bad after all.

The next morning, I splurged and took a full day tour to the Perito Moreno Glaciar, the sole reason anyone ever comes to El Calafate. The glacier is massive - 30km long, 5km wide and 60m high, not to mention easily accessible from the mainland or by boat. It's one of only three glaciers in all of Patagonia that isn't receding - it advances as much as 2m per day, causing huge building sized blocks of ice to calve off the front face of the glaciar throughout the day accompanied by an enormous thunderous sound. The whole experience is a monument to the power of nature.

There are a number of ways you can experience the glaciar, from looking at it from observation platforms to taking a boat to within a few hundred meters of it's face to suiting up in crampons and walking on it. Of course, when in Patagonia...suit me up and let's go for a glaciar walk!

Two girls in my hostel were also doing the same tour - Sinead and Julie. Sinead, a fellow photographer and I spent the morning walking the observation platforms taking pictures and perking our heads up every time we heard some thunder. We saw some small calving but nothing major, and nothing we could get a picture of.

Then we got into the boat that would take us by the glaciar to the shoreline just off to it's side where we met our English-speaking guide Zaffarini who was really knowledgeable about the glaciar, the science behind it and most importantly, how to walk on it without falling into a crevice. As we walked to the glaciar itself, we had some great views and were caught stunned when a massive block of ice the size of a 5-storey apartment building fell off the glaciar into the cool waters below. No time to take a picture, by the time anyone even thought of it, the block had sunk and all that was left was a ripple in the water.

After being suited up with giant steel crampons, if was off to the glaciar itself. Having only seen it from a distance, I expected the ice to be really smooth like an icicle or a skating rink. I could not have been more wrong. The surface was very rough and granular, kind of like a curling rlink surface but much less fine. Walking around on the ice with crampons was an odd feeling. Your intuition expects you to slip and prepare for a fall, but the crampons are surprisingly sticky. Before you know it, you're climbing steep ascents of ice that you wouldn't have thought possible and hopping over crevices that extend as far as the eye can see and beyond. Or you're drinking glacial water out of a pool that has formed, the freshest water you'll ever drink in your life. All in all, we spent an hour and a half on the ice, and the day was finished off with a scotch on the rocks - glacial rocks, that is.

Back at the hostel, they announced they were having an asado - a traditional Argentinean barbeque. Basically, they take a giant stack of meat about the size of my chest, stick it in a firey oven, and let it cook for 2-3 hours. The result is amazingly delicious - crisp on the outside (but not burnt) and oh so tender on the inside.

Off to El Chalten next, Argentina's self-proclaimed National Capital of Trekking.

More photos on Flickr - I hope they look ok, I´m posting all of this while looking at a monitor that is probably as old as I am and only displays like 256 colors :)

• Another great picture but you know if you wanted to be in the cold you could have saved all that money and stayed in Toronto or come to visit us in Calgary:))

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  [Reply]
  MOM - February 16th, 2010
• It was actually surprisingly warm on the glaciar, probably around 5-10 degrees.

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  [Reply]
  Mat - February 17th, 2010
• Really interesting Matt. Thanks so much and looking forward to reading more of your adventures.

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  [Reply]
  Rod - February 17th, 2010