Around the World in 180 Days: To El Calafete, Torres del Paine, Purito Moreno, Ushaia

On the day we left El Chalten we went for a few hours on a morning hike at a trailhead on the opposite end of town. The trail to the viewpoints was surrounded by mountains on all sides and, as it was clear, was amazing. At the first viewpoint we could see the boat we had taken to Viedma departing and, at the second, a view of the town. There was a small lake to the side of the trail and there we saw some colorful birds that we would call Torrent ducks except they weren't in a torrent.
We went for breakfast at the Wafleria, and I unthinkingly got a ice-cream-fruit-chocolate waffle which was huge and stressful, so I prevailed on my parents to eat most of it.
The bus left at 12.30 and we arrived in El Calafete around 4. From the information window we got directions to our hotel and since it was only 4 blocks away set out blithely to walk. After walking 4 blocks and seeing no sign of the hotel, we asked several people if they knew where it was and all replied that they had never heard of it. For about an hour we wandered, lugging our uncooperative bags, on the dirt roads in the area that we had been sent to asking various hotels and passersby if they knew where it was but they all denied the existence. Finally my mother wrote out the name of it on a piece of paper and that cleared up the confusion. A very nice woman gave us a ride to the opposite side of town and we checked into our hotel.
The hotel was very nice, and the room had a beautiful view of the city, but they owners were rather unhospitable.
My parents walked to the grocery store to get some provisions for our hike the next day and I practiced. Then, upon finding out that 'This is not a backpacker's hostel' and we weren't allowed to get take-out we walked downtown to a restaurant called Viva la Pepa. An apparently common practice in Argentina is to have a service charge included on the bill but this was the first time we encountered it. The food was good but, for a country priding itself on its Italian influence the Italian food is inedible. Actually, for any country the Italian food is pretty inedible.
At 5 the next morning we had to get ready to go for a tour called the Torres del Paine. The bus picked us up at our hotel a little before 6 in the morning, and we took the small bus to the station then transferred to a larger one with more people on it.
It took almost three hours to get the Chilean border but we crossed through fairly quickly, only having to give up the avocado and tomato. My passport is filling up with stamps.
From there our first stop was at the Lago Amargo, so named because it has a pH of 9 and supports no life but cyanobacteria. Surrounded on all sides by mountains as it was, we got some spectacular pictures of this deep and bright-blue lake.
After the lake we stopped frequently at beautiful lakes, towering mountains, or nearby guanaco heards. The most wonderful stop was at a place where we hiked for about an hour, towards a lake and waterfall. The lake was 'glacier-milk' blue (I learned that term today and am proud of it. It's the color a lake gets when a glacier travels over and pulverizes thousands of stones into a dust so fine that, when dumped into the lake, won't settle but will be suspended in the lake, giving it an opaque color) and had three huge mountains along one side. The waterfall was mesmerizing.
Here the wind was again strong enough to make us stumble even when we were braced. Grit and spray blew into our eyes, but didn't detract from this scene at all.
Our last stop but one was around 1 or 2, at a hotel on an island. We had sandwiches and dozed in the sun, and could have stayed all day. And, finally, we stopped on a little hill above the island where we could see the turquoise lake, craggy peaks, and picturesque hotel.
It was a long busride back to El Calafete. I was going a little stir-crazy by the end of it but, luckily, our hotel was the second stop. Since we sat closer to the front of the bus customs was even quicker returning to Argentina.
The next morning I was finally able to sleep in a little bit. I don't think I've ever woken up at 11 in my life, but the almost-1-in-the-morning nights and the crack-of-dawn mornings had taken their toll and I slept soundly. The best part of the hotel was the breakfast, and luckily my parents saved me some (spice bread, fruit salad, and rice pudding).
A little after noon we walked to the grocery store and got some pickles and things. All of us are sick of cheese sandwiches so we agreed to just eat a large dinner when we got home. The bus station was almost across the street from the store so we had some time to spare before our bus left. It was about an hour and a half to the national park where happily, since I am a minor, I got free entrance and, unhappily, my parents had to pay more than twice the amount as nationals.
Drove a little into the park and dropped of the people who were going out in boats. Still a little further and we arrived at the Perito Moreno glacier. This glacier is moving at a rate of 2 meters a day but isn't gaining or losing in size. This speed means that it is constantly 'calving'; dropping huge chunks of ice into the water. There were quite a few good-sized icebergs on the lake because of this.
In the few hours after we got there we were lucky to see a couple of ginormous hunks of ice noisily detach themselves and even more noisily create a huge geyser of water as they fell. The glacier where a calf had just broken off was blue, but within a few hours the now-exposed air bubbles made it turn white.
Staring at the glacier and walking on the boardwalk across from it was how we spent most of our time there, breaking only to go eat ice-cream sandwiches at the restaurant. Because of my poor reaction time and my painfully (dare I say glacially?) slow shutter-speed I captured none of the calving, but the video camera did. This is probably the best way of capturing the event but we won't be able to look at it until Olympia.
Perito Moreno is spectacular to look at. Unlike Viedma it is mostly white, and a field of 'pinnacles' (I just learned the word for them today and it's not pinnacles! Why, brain, why?) stretches to the mountains in the distance. We have no regrets about not getting on a boat as they couldn't possibly have gone closer than we did.
Connecting the glacier to the land is a phenomena that I don't know the name of but can exlain. The glacier moves forward and touches the land in a point. Gradually, the lake on one side if this divide fills up higher than the other. After a time it will wear out a channel beneath the promontory, and create a river as the lakes become balanced once more. This also explains how the icebergs all sort of collect together because of the current.
Our bus came around 7. My mother chatted the entire way home with a woman from the Netherlands but seems to have enjoyed herself.
Though planning to eat at a well-reviewed place that seemed very inviting there was an hour wait. Thankfully it was decided not worth it because, of the limited veggie options, almost everything had eggplant, roquefort, sweet peppers, or something else that I can't recall but most certainly despise. I was able to refrain from using this as an argument not to stay but we didn't anyways.
Instead we went to a restarant that seemed to be 90% outdoors and 90% packed, but the inside part was pleasant and empty. I enjoyed everything about the restaurant, but must mention that the caprese salad, though tasty, was not made with feta.
This morning I managed to wake up in time for breakfast. Quite as good as yesterday, but I made the trade of rhubarb jam for fruit salad.
We took a taxi to the glaciology museum and walked around it for a little over an hour and a half. Parts were very interesting but much of it, in particular the videos, were goofy. There were 5 short videos in all and 2 of them just consisted of stirring music and a slideshow of glacier pictures.
It took us about 45 minutes to go back to our hotel then to the airport. Because we didn't have boarding passes and the flight was overbooked we arrived almost 2 hours early and were sitting around for a while. The flight was uneventful (maybe because I slept through it) and we landed in Ushuaia around 4.30. Though we were supposed to have a car waiting for us to take us to our accomodations it didn't show up for at least 20 minutes and turned out to be more expensive than taking a taxi would have been. Too bad we didn't realize it until we arrived.
If we have definite plans I don't know them yet, but they will involve landing on an island to see penguins and a trip to the Beagle channel (a misnomer if I ever hear one). It's neat to be in the southernmost city in the world.
Completely unrelated: currently we have 0 bytes of storage and a ton more pictures to unload... I'm getting worried about how we'll make it to San Francisco in time to transfer them from a disc. I downloaded a program called Dropbox, but it doesn't seem to be doing anything other than notify me that it should be downloading photos, can find photos to download, but isn't. Does anybody know how I can make it work?

Glacier View 1

A rainwater lake and a glacier-milk lake (the closest is the rainwater) and the Cerro Cuervo, Cerro Nientes, Cerro Paine Grande

Complaisant guanaco

Glacier View 2

Glacier View 3

Glacier View 4

The nameless but breathtaking waterfall

Our guide told us that a picture taken from this spot at this angle was the picture of the year in National Geographic, but that may be false advertising