El Calafate is a smallish town perched on the shoreline of Lago Argentino and within striking distance of Los Glaciares national park. It positively screams for you to spend the days doing wholesome rosy-cheeked outdoor activities before settling in with a good book in front of a fire. We took some bicycles and cycled for miles round the lake on one of those afternoons where the sun dances on the water and makes your heart sing. Later we ate a barbecue. As previously noted south Americans do this quite differently. On the menu for this one, marinated beef intestines (“it’s alright! they clean all the shit out of them!”) and kidneys (bleurgh). The more conventional meat was very tasty although it transpires there is an awful lot of meat on a cow and it is really best not to try to eat it all in one go.
The real reason to come to El Calafate is of course to visit the glaciars. On the way we pooled our combined knowledge: to wit, glaciers (not sure whether you pronounce with long ‘a’ or not) make U-shaped valleys. And are cold. And quite powerful. Erm… that’s it. We had decided against a guided tour which would have answered these questions, on grounds of cost. Fortunately it doesn’t matter whether you know how the things are made or why or what they do because the Perito Moreno glaciar is just awesome. We had been given varying reviews ranging from ‘the best thing ever’ to ‘it’s just a big block of ice’. It IS a big block of ice- bigger than the city of Buenos Aires. It does some wicked shades of blue. And it makes the most incredible noises because it is still advancing and bits crack off it with a gunshot noise). It is enormous and immense and you can stare at it for hours. Then you can look it up on Wikipedia if you wish to become enlightened. If you are not a big girly weed frightened of falling into a crevasse and having to gnaw off your arm you can walk on the thing, and drink it (they mix it with whisky. Fortunately that's about the one drink I won't walk on ice for). Or you can wander around its perimeter on ten kilometers of metal walkway constructed for the purpose examining it from different angles and in different lights and listening to it creak and groan. There is even a bit shaped like a dragon’s face on one side. Cracking day out.
There was nothing left now except to start the long, long run into Tierra del Fuego. Feeling like we had earned another break from gorgeous scenery and reasonable prices we broke the thrity hour journey in an irritatingly expensive hotel in Rio Gallegos, mainly because the other choices were a bit too reminiscent of Chernobyl. The next part of the bus journey- they don't seem to mention this in the guidebooks- involves crossing into Chile and back out again. This means four tiresome bag checks searching for apples and/or kidnapped children. Fortunately the second fifteen hours of journey through Tierra del Fuego itself involves some of the flattest, most non-descript scenery on the continent, enlivened by one miserable ham and cheese sandwich with the crusts cut off and an endless loop of Vin Diesel films. Against the odds, we made it to Ushuaia. We looked and smelt like corpses, but we had finally reached the southernmost city in the world.
We made a lot of friends in Ushuaia, although I tried my best to ruin their goodwill by spending half the week in advanced states of obnoxious drunkenness. Five of us hired a car and got up very early on a tip-off that if we got to the national park before the park rangers, we could avoid paying the park entrance fee. of course this is morally reprehensible and very bad indeed because everyone should pay park fees but we reasoned that the Argentine government had had enough of our money by this point. The cunning plan worked beautifully and we had the place to ourselves for hours until the fee-paying daytrippers turned up and we smugly left them to it. We then spent all our savings for the day on beer and sweets and I learned to make sushi and craft wasabi leaves from an Argentine chef in the hostel while also preparing the ingredients for a Top Five hangover the next morning. Bleurgh.
There's another glaciar in the mountains that overlook Ushuaia and over the course of the next few days we visited it a couple of times, trying to decide whether the weather was good enough to pay the 55 peso fee to go on the flying chairs up into the mountain. Eventually, it was, so we did. Fourteen minutes of rather scary chairlift later Chris and I were standing on the top of the world at the end of the world in the most amazing snowscape I have ever seen, looking down at the Beagle Channel miles below. The silence was incredible. If you listened hard enough you could hear the snow melting and trickling away.
Of course, what we had really come all this way to do was to slide down the glaciar sitting on plastic bags. I believe I may have actual approached the landspeed record on my first go, shredding the plastic bag and most of my arse before wiping out and fetching up in a heap a mere foot from a patch of exposed rock. Figuring that this was about the funnest way to die I had another go and it was even more brilliant. We ran out of plastic bags long before we ran out of enthusiasm. If I lived here, I would do it three times every day before breakfast. Reluctantly we set off back down to civilisation through the forest with the icicles glinting in the sun. It was like Narnia up there, I tell you.
So, unforeseen trips to Antarctic research stations notwithstanding, we will never be more south than here. We're officially on the return leg of the trip. Cry me an icicle.
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