23rd January Perito Moreno Glacier

Leisurely breakfast this morning, as we did not have to be ready till 9:20 for our pick up for our days activity 

Did a little bit more of the blog over breakfast picked up our picnic bags that we had ordered the night before and waited in the foyer to be picked up.

Our bus pulled up, and a lady called Marcella came in to collect us.

We then drove around the town, picking up other people from various hotels

Lo and behold, at the Quijote hotel, four of the people from our Antarctica trip joined us on the bus - Scott, Jane, Deb and Liz.

We were on the bus for a couple of hours. Marcella gave us a little bit of a commentary about the area.

 

One of the things that she pointed out to us was the califate bush that had edible fruits. We noticed some people foraging and picking the fruit. We also realised that the fruit on the crème brûlée the night before was in fact, the Califate fruit.

Enjoyable bus ride beside the Lago Argentina, then, through some interesting countryside, before reaching the lake, where the Perito Moreno glacier is.

At one point Marcella asked us to close our eyes and count to 3 before opening our eyes again.

And there was an amazing view of the glacier

The bus pulled up at a viewpoint where we could all get off the bus and take photos

When we reached the Drop Off point for the glacier, Marcella explained to us using a map where we could go

We decided we would have our picnic lunch first

We went inside and sat at the table and started to eat, but were told we could not have our own food inside so we had to go outside to finish. Upon opening their lunch Tejal and Heidi found that they had Parma and cheese - not their vegetarian choice :(

We then set off on the well-built walkways that took us to various different viewpoints to see the glacier

Small water spout.

The sound of this was imense even if it doesn't look like much...

Heidi managed to capture this larger ice breaking off...

Not a double up - if you look closely you can see the ice carving

Every now, and again we heard the sound of the Ice breaking off the glacier, so we attempted to video at different times to capture the vision and the sound. we did eventually capture it a couple of times.

Towards the end of the walkway up from the glacier, Linda came across a lift with a ramp leading up from it at the top. The lift driver refused entry to some people as he obviously felt that they didn’t fulfill the criteria for using the lift. He did however deem that Linda did.

We had to meet Marcella at 2 o’clock to purchase tickets to go out on the lake in a boat to view the glacier from the water.

We were quite close to the glacier and were given plenty of opportunity to take photos.

After this it was time to head back to El Calafate.

On the way back at our request we were dropped off in the main town so that we could spend time in some of the shops and then find somewhere for dinner.

The first souvenir shop we stopped at was a toy shop with some souvenirs down one side. Turned out to be quite the find with some interesting mementos. We wanted to support the friendly family owners and it ended up being fortuitous as the rest of the shops were quite expensive and not as interesting.

Something that really struck us as we were walking through the town was that drivers were very courteous and made way for us

We ended up in cafe Pietros with very friendly staff and had a fun evening

After dinner, we walked to the El Califate sign so that we could take our traditional photo.

We then walked back to our hotel to do more blogging