After our treks and trails in El Chalten, we boarded the evening bus to El Calafate. The bus ride is around 3 hours with great scenery throughout the ride. Various rock formations jutting out of the Pampas from time to time and the presence of more than a few waterways along the way created for an impressive scenery. The fact that the sun stays up until 11pm also helped.
In El Calafate, we went to a hostel recommended by Taté. It was a great recommendation. After settling in, we went to a local Italian restaurant for dinner.
Next day, we went to the bus-station, booked our Puerto Natales (Chile) bus tickets and just made it in time to take a local bus to the "Pasarellas" in front of the Perito Moreno glacier. The bus went through various parts of the Los Glaciares national park and made a first stop for a boat ride. We decided not to go on the boat ride, which takes people right up to the glacier. We also skipped doing a guided hike on the glacier called Big Ice. These things are expensive (when you are on a budget travel, $80 per person is quite expensive). We will do these things sometime later.
The Perito Moreno glacier was big, huge, immense (fill in all adjectives for large ) and very impressive. This was our first time so close to a glacier and listening to it with all its creaks and cracks was really really great.
The lookouts from boardwalks in front are created so that people don't get too close to the glacier and get hurt. We finished all the lookouts in an hour!! And it was only noon. Our bus back was not until 4pm!!!! We went to the cafe on the top, grabbed some lunch and ate while looking out at the glacier. After lunch, we took one of the longer "senderos" and walked down to the glacial lake. At the end of the hike, we discovered that it led to a parking lot. We were told by Taté that she and her boyfriend had managed to hitch a ride back from someone who had come to the park by car. We felt that we had seen enough of the glacier and wanted to go back earlier. I dared Nicole and she went ahead and tried to ask two ladies who were walking towards the parking area. It turned out that they were Australian tourists going to a restaurant by the side of the parking (which we did not know about before)....oh well, we tried...
Not going back so early was a blessing in disguise. We took our time coming back. Stopped off at the various lookouts until our heads got cold. We even saw many icebergs break off and fall into the water. It was also the first time we ever saw blue ice in our life.
At 4pm our bus came back to pick us up. The ride back to El Calafate was quick as we both fell asleep once we left the national park. Once we reached El Calafate, we went out for lunch and made a very very bad pick for a restaurant. To make up for this, we had some great icecream :). Nicole bought a necklace from a local artist and he tied wrist bands on both of us for free!! She also bought a handpainted maté cup (so that now we have 2 cups) from an artisan.
The next morning, we took our bus to Puerto Natales...
[Nicole writes: Rakesh and I were originally looking into buses that would go from Bariloche to El Calafate, a town further south from El Chalten. Originally, we couldn't find a bus that would go directly down Ruta 40. Also, we thought we would spend more nights in El Calafate and take day trips from there. Thanks to meeting Taté, we found out about the bus company Marga and our plans changed. She had also told us not to spend as much time in El Calafate. As we later found out, her suggestions were spot on. The town of El Calafate was not as charming as that of El Chalten and other than a day trip to see Perito Moreno, there was little to see and do there. We would have missed out on the wonderful treks in El Chalten! We clearly hadn't done enough reading up, before hand. That is the nice thing about talking to others and travelling with them - you don't always need to go by the guide book]
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