El Calafate, Argentina

Hey there, guys. I am back in Argentina. I took a late bus from Puerto Natales, crossed the Chilean-Argentinian boarder and had a wonderful sunset in the Argentinian pampa.

If you zoom into the upper picture, you can even see the Torres del Paine at the horizon. The bus then dropped me in El Calafate at midnight. El Calafate is a town that completely devoted itself to tourism. It can best be described as follows: take a small alpine town like Zermatt, or its Canadian equivalent Banff, with a lot of pricy moutaineering stores and trekkig agencies in wooden houses on the main avenue. Now you have the picture, voilá:

The only difference to the mentioned towns is that El Calafate is not directly located in the mountains but in the steppe right at beautiful Lago Argentino.

The main reason for me to take a stop at El Calafate was one of Argentinia's natural wonders, Glaciar Perito Moreno:

Perito Moreno is a huge glacier coming from the Campo Hielo Sur and flows into the Lago Argentino. "Flow" is probably the wrong word. Perito Moreno has a 5km wide and 50m-60m high vertical front from which seracs fall thunderously into the lake. And the best of it, you can stand right in front of it and withness the spectacle.

Just that you get the idea how huge the glacier actually is:

As a climber you normally associate seracs and hanging glaciers with great and uncalculable danger, but here the falling seracs were just a magnificient show for the speactators. I must confess that Perito Moreno is a pretty touristy place, but I just cannot leave it aside when I am passing by anyways. And since the wheather was quite lousy the time I was there, I was lucky enough to have it all for myself :)

Tomorrow I will leave for El Chalten and hopefully catch a look at famous Fitz Roy and Cerro Torre.

Luego compadres,

Flo