March 23 Day 36
The sun was just rising as we walked to our bus and the morning light on the mountains over the town was something to see. We had an uneventful trip to El Calafate and picked up our ticket to Puerto Natales before leaving the bus station, which was a long way from the rest of the town.
We were staying at Las Cabinitas which had a cool collection of little a-frame cabins but unfortunately we were in a normal cabin. We had a nice lunch of empanadas made on the spot, not the normal reheated ones and ate outside.
A short walk downtown took us to an ATM (our hostel was cash-only), a travel shop to get our tickets to the glacier the next day and talk to a very entrepreneurial agent and to a supermarket to get ingredients for our first home cooked meal in more than a month - our beloved pasta puttanesca. The town was easy to walk around and had a nice feel to it although the main strip was still more aimed at tourists than locals.
That afternoon we headed out to Glaciarium, a multimedia museum about glaciers, focusing on those in Patagonia. There were displays on how they were formed, several instruction films in cluding one in 3D, time lapse films of glacial movement, names and histories of glacier exploration and cautionary research on global warming. Everything was well presented in Spanish and English and visitors of all ages seemed occupied.
After finishing the museum we bought tickets for the glacier bar. This is a bar made of ice in a freezer area. You can put on a silver poncho and gloves and stay for up to 25 minutes and have as many drinks as you want in your ice cup as you listen to generic dance music and play around with ice chairs, ice people, ice tables and a mini-igloo. Quite fun but 25 minutes was more than enough ad it made us wonder if staying in an ice hotel would really be all that exciting, as even with an animal skin cover, those chairs were cold.
We got back into town and headed back to our hostel. We used their kitchen, had a fine meal (after I had to run around and find some cooking oil, the dark container we bought with olives on the label turned out to be vinegar) and tried our best to keep the owner's dog away from our food. We hung out in our room and Meg had to have a trickle shower as the hot water only came in drops, which didn't get fixed until the next day.
The sun was just rising as we walked to our bus and the morning light on the mountains over the town was something to see. We had an uneventful trip to El Calafate and picked up our ticket to Puerto Natales before leaving the bus station, which was a long way from the rest of the town.
We were staying at Las Cabinitas which had a cool collection of little a-frame cabins but unfortunately we were in a normal cabin. We had a nice lunch of empanadas made on the spot, not the normal reheated ones and ate outside.
A short walk downtown took us to an ATM (our hostel was cash-only), a travel shop to get our tickets to the glacier the next day and talk to a very entrepreneurial agent and to a supermarket to get ingredients for our first home cooked meal in more than a month - our beloved pasta puttanesca. The town was easy to walk around and had a nice feel to it although the main strip was still more aimed at tourists than locals.
That afternoon we headed out to Glaciarium, a multimedia museum about glaciers, focusing on those in Patagonia. There were displays on how they were formed, several instruction films in cluding one in 3D, time lapse films of glacial movement, names and histories of glacier exploration and cautionary research on global warming. Everything was well presented in Spanish and English and visitors of all ages seemed occupied.
After finishing the museum we bought tickets for the glacier bar. This is a bar made of ice in a freezer area. You can put on a silver poncho and gloves and stay for up to 25 minutes and have as many drinks as you want in your ice cup as you listen to generic dance music and play around with ice chairs, ice people, ice tables and a mini-igloo. Quite fun but 25 minutes was more than enough ad it made us wonder if staying in an ice hotel would really be all that exciting, as even with an animal skin cover, those chairs were cold.
We got back into town and headed back to our hostel. We used their kitchen, had a fine meal (after I had to run around and find some cooking oil, the dark container we bought with olives on the label turned out to be vinegar) and tried our best to keep the owner's dog away from our food. We hung out in our room and Meg had to have a trickle shower as the hot water only came in drops, which didn't get fixed until the next day.
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| The view from the Glacierium. |
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| El Calafate from a distance. |
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| Meg and I in the ice bar. Note the sober expressions. |
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