The two days sailing through the Drake Strait were calm and sea-sick free. Not a lot happened on board as everyone was starting to prepare for our disembarkation back at Ushuaia. We had one moment of excitement though as we rounded Cape Horn. Cameras flashed pointlessly as we tried to get a half decent photo of a small lump of rock, shrouded in mist about 3km in the distance. The captain's dinner on the last night was pretty much like all the other dinners, except the Russian in charge of the boat turned up, made a few naff jokes in broken English, and we had cloth napkins instead of paper ones. Pushing the boat out indeed (no pun intended).
Having been without the Internet for almost three weeks, the first thing i did on returning to dry land was to check my emails (that's why you got three in one go), check how much more of my pension had disappeared up the crunch (lots!) and tried to stop wobbling (my body seemed to refuse to believe it was now on terra firma).
We had two nights booked in Ushuaia before we had to move on. On the second day we walked up to the much hyped Glacier Martial. Global warming had clearly taken it's toll - either that or after seeing the glaciers in Antarctica my expectations had been raised just a little bit too high. Either way, it was in a sorry state. It looked no better than Orpington Park, three days after the February snow this year when the snow had been trodden to a mucky black by hundred's of people's feet and had sufficiently melted in parts to show the ground beneath. Part of the way up we could have been taken by chair lift, but it was AR$65 (£13) and it only took you about 500 meters - you had to walk the rest. Major rip-off.
Monday we flew to El Calafate. It's a town named after a berry. It's sort of like calling somewhere in Britain "The Strawberry". Still, it works for them. After a quiet day on Tuesday, we took a day trip into Chile on Wednesday to see the Torres del Paine National Park. It's very like the lake district, only the mountains are in a different league (this is the Andes, after all). The "Towers of Pain" themselves are a set of spires that rise vertically upwards over the landscape. They're surrounded by some very strange mountains with black rock on top and light grey rock beneath. Have a look at the pics (www.energiser.net) to see what i mean, but they reminded me of those little two-toned Toblerone chunks you get in tins at Christmas. It was a very long day, most of which was spent in the various coaches we were shuffled between at different points of the trip and at the inevitable border crossing points. Still, worth it for the scenery.
Today we went to see the Perito Moreno glacier, about 80km west of El Calafate. It's famous mostly because you can drive to it rather than having to take a long boat trip (as you do with the numerous other glaciers around here) and because it moves at a whopping 200 metres a year. Apparently that's really fast for a glacier, but the most it would do for us today is drop a few lumps of ice off it's edge into the lake. It's still pretty spectacular, even after seeing hundreds of the things in Antarctica. It comes off the mountain and bisects a lake causing it to dam up every couple of years. When the weight of water becomes too much, it breaks open again in a "calamitous explosion". It didn't do this today.
The hostel we're staying at has a kitchen, so we bought a couple of slices of cow today and had them for tea. The beef comes in huge chunks and is dirt cheap. Tastes good as well.
Next, El Chalten...
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