El Calafate, Argentina

Sunday, March 6, 2005:

I made it to Ezeiza International Airport by 7 AM and boarded my flight at 8:30. By 9 AM I was soaring south over the sprawling urban expanse of greater Buenos Aires and through a clear virtually-cloudless sky which stretched away across vast fields and grassy plains.

The woman sitting next to me, in her 50s, was an Argentinian who had lived in Van Couver for nearly 30 years. She introduced herself and we spoke for a while in Spanish: she told me about how she visits her family here each year and takes a short trip to a different part of the country --- this time around it was El Calafate, though she had been there once before, a long time ago. As so many Argentinians I have met so willingly do, she offered me a great deal of useful advice on things to see and place to go in Buenos Aires and (when I get there) Ushuaia. Was I going to Bariloche in the mountainous lake region? No? Too bad...

I slept for a time, then read more of my Stalin biography. Toward the second hour of the flight, the pampas below us gave way to dustier, rockier patches of land populated with low yellow brush and relatively few trees. Then I spotted a small lake and several small surrounding pools of water. They were a striking, turquoise blue, brilliantly reflecting the light of the sun. Several minutes later, I noticed a small pure green lake, the color of dry grass or moss, without a trace of blueness to it. It was nestled between a series of mountains and craters. It was at roughly this point that the landscape became noticeably dry, cracked and pock-marked --- the lines in the earth at times seeming to trace out the immense skeletal shapes of dinosaurs. The strange desolation was punctuated by the sporatic, dramatically blue and green pools of water. Otherwise, the craters, cracked plains and crevices ran on for miles, endlessly to the horizon.

As we descended toward El Calafate, an enormous turquoise lake sprang into view. We landed near the edge of it, taxied around for a few moments, and finally disembarked to find ourselves in a surprisingly modern, clean and spacious airport, quite unlike the bare-bones backwater variety I have grown accustomed to. In fact, with its dark wood paneling and overhead sky-lights, it looked like it could double as a very modern ski-lodge/resort.

I met Chris at the baggage pick-up, which was by the exit and a series of taxi and mini-bus dispatchers. Chris is an Irish ex-financial publisher, 31, who most recently lived in London for a long period of time. He left his job in order to apply to a number of U.S. graduate programs in and is traveling and doing volunteer work until his classes begin sometime in August. We first met in the IIEE Spanish School and have been out with the same group of people a number of times. As we both wanted to go there, we decided we would head down south to Calafate and Ushuaia together.

A mini-bus took us down winding roads through low hills covered in light, faded grass. We could see across the lake to the far side, where mountains rose dramatically into the clouds. After 25 minutes, we reached El Calafate, a small city of approximately 5,000 people, set on the shore of the lake. We stopped at Chris´ hotel, where he checked in. With its large log-cabin design, it resembled a proper ski-lodge. I hadn`t booked accomodation in advance but found that the hotel was the sister facility to a hostel --- Calafate Hostel (www.calafatehostels.com) --- which had clean and reasonably affordable single rooms. My problems solved instantly, I checked in. (By way of clarification, the hostal I checked into is actually the "ski-lodge" structure, whereas Chris´ more luxurious accomodations are in a separate building directly behind it.)

The rest of the day was spent exploring, relaxing and booking an excursion for the next day. The reason we and so many other people decided to come to El Calafate was to see the famous Perito Moreno Glacier, one of the most active and rapidly moving glaciers in the world, a 200-foot tall river of steadily advancing pale-blue ice that purportedly shatters and calves off chunks of itself the size of eight-story office buildings with deafing, thunderous booms. I have´t been there yet, so I can´t say if this is actually interesting to witness or not. In any event, we managed to find a package leaving at 7:45 AM the next morning.

We had lunch, then wandered around El Calafate a little. Tourist boutiques and sporting goods stores abound. The city scarcely lacks for infrastructure or availability of goods, though it retains the feel of a ski town, with its homey wood and brick buildings and narrow streets. I took a needed siesta in the afternoon, read in the cozy shared lodge in the hostal, then went to a (what else?) steak dinner with Chris. The temperature --- perhaps in the low fifties or high forties when we arrived that afternoon --- had dropped into the low forties and seemed determined to hit the freezing mark overnight. Nonetheless, the wind was relatively light and the crisp, fresh air was welcome after the congestion and pollution of Buenos Aires. I found myself wishing I had more time to spend in this remote area of the world. But this seems to be the story constantly on this trip and I will only spend a few days here before moving on further south and then returning to BA for a final week in Argentina before heading to Rio and Africa.