El Calafate

Had met quite a few people hitch hiking and Couchsurfing and as it sounded pretty straight forward I determined to hitch my way up to my next stop: El Calafate.

And it was quite easy. My first two rides to Río Grande were virtually instant but had to wait around a bit longer for the much longer stretch up back through Chile and then to Río Gallegos. A kindly lorry driver eventually picked me up though and I got into Río Gallegos around 8pm.

nice spot for "dedo"

Río Gallegos' distinguishing feature was burning tyres. Couldn't work out what all the smoke was from at a distance but my walk out of town in the morning took me past a few stacks of burning rubber to warm the hands of groups of workmen.

Was back on the road in the morning and another lorry took me all the way to El Calafate.

Hitching is definitely a good way to practice Spanish. The driver of my second lorry was particularly chatty and although I understood less than half of what he said we managed to converse one way or another for a lot of the 5 hour trip! This made the journey a lot more interesting as the south east of Patagonia is flat, featureless, massive and boring. The only interesting things around are the numerous wild guanacos (big lamas).

After 4 hours of nothing however you come over a hill and the mountains of southern Patagonia are there in front of you, their snowy peaks rising straight up out of the flatlands.

Finally...something to look at

El Calafate is a town that has grown up purely to service the numerous tourists coming to visit the Perito Merino glacier. It is however, a worthy and majestic touristic attraction, with board walks allowing you to get within a few hundred metres of its towering 60 odd meter ice wall spilling into Lago Argentino.

I missed the morning (and expensive bus) by a few minutes so took to hitching again. Traffic was light but me and a German girl Katerina (with the same idea), eventually got lucky and made it the 80km there and back again in the evening.

It's a mighty and very active glacier, with ice falls rumbling away like thunder all day and saw a few impressive collapses into the lake at the ice face.

There's little else going on in El Calafate however (although did go out for a few tasty cocktails at a "día del barman" party in the evening) so went straight on to El Chalten: the self proclaimed trekking capital of Argentina.