El Calafate, Argentina

I have never landed in an airport, looked out the window, and seen a place so beautiful as El Calafate. Most cities place their airports a little outside the city where there isn’t much to see, but right outside El Calafate are mountains, aqua lakes, and fields of flowers. It’s no surprise that El Calafate is also the most touristy place we been thus far. The city was a little more expensive than everywhere else we’ve visited, but the food was delicious, our accommodations were nice, and, perhaps most importantly, they had delicious ice cream :). The city was so geared towards tourists (and we saw so many tourists) that I think you’d be hard pressed to find jobs there that didn’t involve tourism. Kirk and I had to start being careful what we said around people because suddenly people could understand us again 😂😜.

This was our hotel. It was quite a walk from town, but right next to the lake! It was also the second cheapest place we could find! We think the rate might be lower because they aren’t in the town center, but we sure didn’t mind!

This was the view out our window 😍.

We had so much delicious food in El Calafate.

This is a traditional dish we ate at a restaurant called Isabel. Pretty much the entire menu there is made up of “cocina al disco” or “plow disc” meals. They are all made and served in the disc shown above and taste like some good down home cooking meal with great sauces and fresh bread to dip in it. Also, the butter that came with the bread was just butter mixed with green onion, which I’ve never considered doing, but it was quite tasty!

This is a lamb stew that we had at La Zorra – a taproom with the cheapest food we had in Calafate, and it was SO YUMMY!

This one was also posted on Instagram, but this is the campfire lamb that Patagonia is known for. It too was tasty!

On to some nature. I wish a picture captured all the beauty we saw!

The clouds this day looked so strange and beautiful!

This picture didn’t turn out well because I took it at dusk (10 pm here!) out one of our hotel windows, but it was my first time to see an owl not at the zoo! He was huge!

In town there were huge lavender plants (as tall as me!) that were always filled with bumblebees.

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This also isn’t the best picture, but it shows some of the fields of flowers we passed heading out of town.

The sunsets there lasted for hours. Coming to El Calafate after being on the equator two weeks ago made the difference between the two stand out immensely. When we watched the sunset in the amazon on the lake, I could turn my head away, say a sentence to Kirk, and look back and actually be able to tell the sun had “moved”. In Calafate, (at least during this season) that time before the sun sets when the sky is bright with color – it lasted well over an hour. We went from the sun setting around 5:30pm to the sun setting around 10 pm. It’s crazy how your position on the globe can affect your way of living so much – temperature, amount of daylight, foods that grow, animals that survive well.

Of course, the best part of El Calafate was visiting Perito Moreno, a glacier that is 70 km long and, at the part we saw, 70 meters high.

This was our first view of the glacier out the bus window.

And our fist view off the bus…Look at how far it goes!— The closer you got to the glacier, the less you noticed how far back it went, and rather, you focused on the height!

This was our view for lunch! We read on someone else’s blog that they brought wine, cheese, and crackers…we followed suit 🙂

Kirk on our lunch bench

We forgot the cork screw. Necessity is the mother of invention! We poked one of the prongs through to let some pressure out and the forced the rest down – just in case you are ever in the same bind ;). This is also a wine from the final winery we mentioned in the last blog! It wasn’t apart of our tasting, but this one was delicious too!

Our spreadable cheese ended up lacking in flavor a bit, but thankfully Kirk, of course, had some hot sauce packed :).

Several large pieces of ice fell off the glacier while we were there – and it was so loud when it did! Two times we saw chunks of ice, almost the entire height of the glacier fall! Those were the craziest – you would hear a loud crack, and then a big boom, followed by a giant splash! All the sounds echoed off the mountains! Between the branches above you can see some of the splash from a large piece of ice that fell. Kirk called it – he noticed the piece beginning to spilt when we arrived and guessed it would fall before we left. It took a couple of hours, but it did fall!

That boat was over four stories tall, but it looks tiny next to the glacier!

We walked around a bit to see different views of the glaciers, but for several hours we simply watched it. It was fascinating to hear and see the ice fall!

It was so beautiful and there was so much ice that had fallen!

I posted one of the worse pictures that was taken by a stranger on instagram – that was the one good shot we got :). Going to the glacier was truly amazing. Definitely go if you have the chance!

Our final night in El Calafate we walked down to the lake shore and tried to skip rocks. Kirk is an expert at it, but this was my first time to be successful! One of mine skipped three times even with the wind and waves!

—— It was beautiful!

In the morning we head out on the trail! You’ll hear from us afterwards!