El Calafate and El Chalten

Ooh, its been a while since Ive been able to update this... Ill try to update in sections so as not to overwhelm people with one super long post.

So where I left off, I was going to go to the Moreno Glacier. This is a really cool place, there should be a few pics up on the website by now (fingers crossed!) This is one of the few glaciers in the world thats in balance, so it produces as much new snow and ice each year as it loses by melting and bits breaking off. Its pretty awesome to see, its so big! Its about 30k long or something I think and about 60m high looming out of the water. You can hear the ice creaking all the way up the glacier and you can see bits falling off. We saw some good splodooshes from bits of ice falling in, its surprising the noise it makes for even a small chunk of ice!

We did a walk in the morning to see the glacier from a distance which was pretty impressive for a first glimpse, then we went closer. There are platforms that you can walk around to get really close to it. There are some hugs chunks that looked so ready to fall off, but they didnt when we were there, they would have been amazing to see!

In the afternoon, we went on a boat trip so we could get up really close to the glacier which was pretty impressive, you can really appreciate the height of the thing!!

we stayed in El Calafate to see the moreno Glacier, there wasnt all that much in the town to be honest, most people just use it as a base to visit the glacier which is about an hours drive away. El Chalten, which we visited next was much nicer.

El Chalten is a small town but its got much more character I think, and the scenery around it is much better than el Calafate. This is near the Fitzroy range of mountains which are pretty impressive. We camped here and the weather was so lovely, we spent the first free afternoon chilling out on teh grass and drinking some beer and reading, very nice adn relaxing.

The next day, we did a 35k walk up to the Fitzroy. This was a really nice walk and we could climb up to get really close to the peaks. The lookout we went to was at a frozen lake, directly beneath the peaks, it was a bloody steap climb up but worth it. we were the only ones there when we first arrived, but it soon filled up with tourists, but we managed to have a nice sit in peace. There was a little mound to the left that we decided to explore as well and Im so glad we did! Below it was this really blue lake. This was just below the frozen lake, it was so wierd to see the two so close together and be so different.

At the end of the walk me and Maria treated outselves to some well deserved ice cream in the town.

The next day we went walking on a local glacier (Ive forgotten what it was called though). It was a really excellent day. we went on a boat to the glacier and did vertical ice climbing in teh morning which was brilliant! You climb it with a pick axe and crampons. It felt like a real achievement as I kept falling off the ice at first and dangling from the support rope, but I got there in the end which was great.

In the afternoon we had the option of going for more ice climbing or for a walk on the glacier, I opted for the glacier trek and Im so glad I did. It was really interesting to walk on it, I thought the ice was going to be really hard and compact but it wasnt, it was like lots of little broken bits of ice cube. i guess the more compact stuff is underneath and it seperates a bit as it gets closer to the top as the pressure is less. You could chisel bits off easily with a pick axe which is what happened when I was trying the vertical climbing, I couldnt always get my ice pick far enough into the ice to hold it and kept slipping off. The views were amazing though, and we got to go into a cave underneath the glacier which was awesome. The colours in it were amazing. The blue ice at the bottom was filtering in light from above so it all had this bluish tinge to it. You could see that the ice at the bottom is compacted ice and you can see that it is similar to the ice on the top, only more squashed together (Im not really describing it that well, but it was amazing to see)

Then we had some baileys on ice with ice chipped off the glacier!

Right, have to leave it there for the moment, got to go out for some food now... will try to update again soon

lorna xxx