6:45AM breakfast and departure for Argentina at 7:30. Short sleep as it took me awhile to stop feeling the motion of the boats or the van. But the shower may have been the best one of my entire life… hot water, strong pressure and clean hair. It was difficult to stop and get dressed and out. Our time in the van today is 4-5 hours to El Calafate, Argentina, so no hiking today. And I’m okay with that. I have a blister on my bunion from the strange “cowboy” walk on the glacier, or maybe from the way the crampon was attached. And all this time in the van has allowed me to type up these past 5 days of pages that I’ve been scribbling as we went along.
We finally arrived in El Calafate at 1:30, and checked into a very cute hotel — clearly old, stuffed with antiques, worn floor boards, old-fashioned keys. Very charming. We had just a little time to drop our things before walking into town for lunch. Jay hadn’t chosen or booked ahead, and the place he had planned on was busy and full on a Sunday afternoon, so we found a spot a block away with tables outside. The food all along the way hasn’t been great — definitely not a culinary tour — and it could be that we are applying American standards when we shouldn’t, but it was calories and that’s what was required at the moment. Liz and I walked back with Adam, looking for a place to buy Alfajora, a desert/treat from the region of two cookies and a huge slab of dulce de leche in between. Sometimes with chocolate covering, sometimes not. We didn’t choose well, but we tried some items from a bakery as we walked back to the hotel.
El Calafate is a fairly young town, only about 90 years old, and is named after the berry which is in the blueberry family, but more bitter because of the many seeds. Settled originally by Europeans who were looking for more land, the government gave ranchers the land in exchange for becoming Argentinian citizens and planting the national flag in their estancia. Early on, the ranches were mostly for sheep, where 2 gauchos and several dogs could manage as many as 20,000 sheep, but when the merino wool from NZ became more popular and successful, the sheep breed were changed to an eating type (corriedale), and some ranches moved on to cattle.
LIz and I both did some laundry in the sink, as we were uncertain/unclear on whether we’d have a chance to drop stuff at a laundromat tomorrow, and then we walked into town to poke into stores to see what there was to see. Met the group at 7:25 or so and walked to a restaurant called Chopen for dinner. I tried to eat more local food, at Liz’s suggestion, and had an enormous plate of breaded veal with cheese and an egg on top with fries and a couple tomatoes, onions and lettuce. I could barely eat much of it, (we eat so late), and Liz and I had shared a bottle of wine, so the combination wasn’t great.
(Only photos are those that were taken enroute to El Calafate).
Back to the hotel to pack and sleep.
