El Calafate

El Calafate was a lot of fun. We ended up staying for three nights because the tour we wanted to take - a four hour hike out onto Glacier Moreno - was booked for the second day, but the wait was worth it. We occupied ourselves for a day by wandering around a nature reserve with tons of birds.

Really nice.

The next day, Lara and I met up with Megan - a fun Kiwi - and we joined a bigger group out on the ice. We headed off at 7 in the morning and got back at around the same time in the afternoon. Glacier Moreno is the only glacier in the world that is not receding and outside of Antarctica and Greenland, it and some other glaciers around it are the third biggest glacier deposits in the world. Here's what the glacier looks like:

After getting off a boat, we hiked a pretty easy 50 minutes to the edge of the glacier and put on crampons - claw-like appendages to our shoes that let us walk around on the ice.

It is a weird sensation - it is impossible to slip with them on as long as you walk properly and point your feet in a way that your ankle is always perpendicular to the slope so you don't roll your ankle. After about an hour they are easy to use.

We walked around for almost four hours on the ice and it felt like another world. A couple of occasions we came across crevices that dropped down 30 - 70 meters. If they were wide enough to be dangerous, a guide would stand near it and shepherd us along. Other times, we'd walk right over them. Here are a lot more pics:

Great trek - loads of fun.

I'm now in Puerto Natales and will hike around Torres del Paine the day after tomorrow. If my blisters seem up for it, I'll do the full circuit which could take 5-10 days depending on the weather.