I thought we should start with a photo - don't you just love the way I've managed to find a jacket to tone with my gorgeous hat? As you can see we were pretty close to the huge glacier at this point so it was a bit cold!
Right, back to the start...
After our relaxing day on Thursday, we were for a change quite happy to get up early on Friday morning despite having a reasonably late night on Wednesday. We went out for dinner and drinks with an English girl we had met on the whale tour, and her Aussie room mate - I may have mentioned before that red wine is very cheap here! Anyway, we got on the half full bus (it is the very start of the season here) and headed out of town along a slightly rough road which is generally not used as a new one has been built. It felt good to be the only bus on the road despite heading to a major tourist destination.
We had been promised that we would see some wildflife along the way and within a short time we stopped to look at an eagle sitting on a fence right by us. We managed to get this photo just as he took off. It also gives you the chance to see the beautiful area we were passing through. it really is one of those places that photos can't sum up, but of course we took lots anyway.
We then paused for coffee at a small lodge, and were treated to some more incredible views as well as meeting the locals...
We continued through consistently stunning area until we entered the Glacier Park itself. After a drive through the increasingly beautiful park, we finally got our first glimpse of the famous glacier. Although we were still about 6km away, it was an incredibly impressive sight, and we were lucky that our tour then took us right up close to it.
We walked for about an hour and half, down onto the shore of the turquoise lake, and every now and again could see - and definitely hear - large chunks of the glacier breaking off and falling into the lake. We were also looking at it from reasonably high up and therefore getting the full impression of its size. What is even more amazing is that it is not even close to being the biggest in the area; it is just very well known because it is easy to access.
After our lunch break (we brought our own, having to economise a fair bit here as Patagonia is far from cheap) we had some time on the viewing platforms and it was only then that we became part of the larger scale tourist crowd. It didn't feel too crowded fortunately, and we were able to spend some more time admiring the activity of the glacier.
Last and in some ways least, we had a boat trip up to the face - it was fun but not as breathtaking as some of the other views as we only got to see the wal of it. Andrew did however force down a whisky on the boat - but only because it was perfectly chilled by a tiny chunk of glacier!
All in all it was a very memorable trip, another great highlight in what was turning into a fantastic week. To bring things back vague normality, we headed back to the town, bought bus tickets for Sunday and then spent a frustrating few hours trying to get more cash - cashpoints were down and the exchanges closed! We were beginning to think that we would have to spend the following day doing not very much as everything seems to cost money and there is limited use of credit cards here. However, we got it all sorted on Saturday morning, which fortunately meant that we were able to head on to the next adventure - horse riding!
No comments:
Post a Comment