How to make the perfect ice cube
Friday, June 1st, 2007
OK, this is really a lot for you guys to catch up in one go isn’t it, but then think how much my fingers ache from typing? I have been here for six hours now! Not to mention how much my tongue hurt when I bit it open eating fondue last night, difficult thing to do you might say, but not when you mistake it for a bit or errant ham. I’m not sure I created the right restaurant ambience bleeding all over the linen. But back to the update…..
After we returned from our trek, beaten and not in the least bit victorious we slunk quietly off to El Calafate, back in Argentina, to a hostel wit under floor heating and the comforts of an air conditioned bus for a day trip to Perito Moreno glacier.
El Calafate itself is a town which has one attraction, the glacier, and yet they have managed to develop their entire infrastructure to supporting it, it is truly incredible it can support so many tour companies, hostels, restaurants and other glacier themed businesses. (I digress but I just want to comment on the butchers in Puerto Natales that seared samples of fillet steak and red wine when you go in through the door – take your own bread and you have a free meal, I love South America!) Anyway, the glacier. So, the whole town is geared to this thing and yet, it is in now way a disappointment – at all! Unlike sights like Iguacu Falls or the sights of Rio, I had heard relatively little about Perito Moreno glacier before arriving in Patagonia and so had no great expectations or pre conceived ideas and I can honest say I was awestruck by the glacier and it was by far the best thing we have visited yet. Once you arrive at the national park the glacier looms ahead of you and is immediately arresting, from then on it gets larger and larger until you are at the base of it on a boat trip going oooh and aaahg with a load of other people struck dumb by it. Except for the Brazilians relentlessly posing for their semi pornographic holiday snaps – I don´t understand why they do it?
The most fabulous thing is the noise of the glacier. I think it is something like one of the fastest moving glaciers, although I don´t claim to know very much about it, but the result is that huge chunks of ice regularly calve off the face and crash into the sea making a deafening bang that makes everyone squeal with delight or curse for having missed another one, “damn you Bernard for making me find the ham sandwiches, I told you it was about to go” and that sort of thing.
After an hours boat trip we had three hours in the area before the bus went back. We all thought this was a ridiculous amount of time, but it is amazing, you stand and watch transfixed by this glacier (ad occasionally by the Brazilian porn queen beside you) and all of a sudden your three hours is up. It really is amazing, top recommendation.
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