Parque Nacional los Glaciares

Our last two stops in Patagonia were El Calafate and El Chaltèn, both to visit the Parque Nacional los Glaciares. It was quite a schlep to get there--nearly to the end of the world--but well worth it.

El Calafate is a small-ish tourist town just outside the national park and near Glacier Perito Moreno. Out of 300 glaciers in the national park, Perito Moreno is one of two that are still advancing. There are tons of tour options, including a couple of ice treks, but we did the most low-key tour and saved our ice trek for El Chaltèn.

Perito Moreno was absolutely beautiful and I had never seen anything like it. The white of the glacier was shot-through with some of the most gorgous blue hues and the jagged ice formations at the front were 20 stories high. It is 5 km. wide and that put it into perspective for me--a 5-k race wide.

We had three hours on the balconies that overlook the front of the glacier and it only takes 45 minutes to walk the circuit, so Clint and I eventually took a coffee break at the snack bar. Afterwards, we went back for one last look and the balconies. All of a sudden, a chunk of ice the size of a 6-story building broke and crashed into the lake. An older Argentine couple was standing next to us and we all saw every second of it, even feeling the ground shake beneath us. After savoring the moment, the Argentine man turned to us and said, ¨¡Spectacular!¨ My thought exactly.

El Chaltèn is an even smaller town (with a year-round population of 500) that is actually in the national park. It is in a glacial valley at the base of Cerros Torre and Fitz Roy--two dramatic rock mountains that draw climbers from around the world.

We spent four days hiking all through the park, seeing stunning views as the clouds cleared from Fitz Roy in the afternoons.

One mirador about four hours into the park really took our breath away. It overlooked a small glacier, its glacial lake, and Fitz Roy. As exhausted as we were when we got back to our hostel that night, we knew that we had just been on one of the best hikes of our lives.

The next day we went on an ice trek that included 21 miles of hiking, a zip-line river crossing, walking on Glacier Torre with crampons, and doing a small ice climb. We did not get great views because the weather did not cooperate, but it didn`t matter because we were on such an adventure. Thank goodness for Clint, who took especially good care of me and reminded me to go as slowly as I wanted on the more dangerous parts of the trail.

A couple of days later, we left El Chaltèn for Buenos Aires, a city of 13 million. It has been interesting to go from a town without a single bank to a city with 48 barrios (neighborhoods). Oh, and how`s this for a small world? We met a nice couple our age in the tiny El Calafate airport--who live in Greenville, South Carolina. Then they had the seats directly behind us on the plane.

Hasta luego de Buenos Aires... we will write about our big-city experiences soon.