Day 54: 23/8/12
Lots of noise in the hostel since 6am- there must have been a group leaving or something. There was a Korean guy sharing the room last night as well as the English couple. The Korean was up early too going on some trip.
The English couple were saying that in Brazil they both used the same ATM and their cards were copied and all their money taken. I would have freaked out if that happened me at the start of my trip like it did to them. Touch wood I'm on the home stretch now and hopefully there will be no drama!
I had a tour to the perito moreno glacier today. We stopped on the way at a viewing point over lago argentina. You could see lots of icebergs floating in the lake that had come off Uppsala glacier- it is bigger than perito moreno but harder to get to. When we were pulling off then we saw guanacos on the field across the road and an eagle sitting on the fence!
The guide was telling us how hard it is to live in Patagonia as they don't have any fresh fruit and veg- apart from lamb, all their food comes from 3000km away! By the way yesterday I found out that Patagonia means barbarian as the Europeans thought the natives were barbarians. Also, the area only became populated by Europeans when they needed wool on the industrial revolution. They brought in sheep from chile and the malvinas and settled here.
The grass all around is yellow as it only rains from November to January. The guide was saying in the estancias is hard to have enoug grass for the sheep.
I found out that Argentina had a war against England for the falkland islands. Chile supported Margaret Thatcher and Argentina lost the war. That must have been the war I saw the pictures of.
The guide was also talking about a bridge of ice falling off the glacier. It happened last march at night so they missed it. The water rose by 30m an as we were driving we could see where he water in the lake had risen.
The yellow plant on the trees that I saw in Tierra del fuego aswell is called a china candle.
There were lovely views of snow covered mountains around lago Argentina all throughout the journey. Saw an iceberg floating close to the edge too.
So the perito mereno glacier is 60m high, 2km wide on the south side and 3km on the north side and the whole area of it is 254 km squared. It's pretty big. When you take a photo it looks small. I needed something in the water to show how big it really was. We got a boat trip first that sailed up fairly close so you could see how big it was. We were lucky enough there to see some ice falling off. It makes a huge bang when it hits the water- it sounds like a gun shot. It made really big waves too! The boat sailed across the front of the glacier so you could see it from different angles. You could see people walking on the glacier in the distance- they were doing a trekking tour. The company I ha booked with didn't run the trekking this time of year. I don't know if I would have done it anyway.
On the tour there was a guy from Belgium who was planning to spend a year cycling around South America. He's two weeks into the trip. It's retry impressive to attempt cycling for a year!! Only afterwards I was wondering where he would put all his clothes- he wouldnt go cycling with my rucksack!! That guy didn't go on the boat so didn't see him until the end of the day.
Met another guy called Dave who was American- finally English speaking people!! He had had the same problems as me being in hostels where everyone speaks Spanish. He was an accountant who was working in Buenos Aires for two months and was doing some travelling before heading home to Minesotta. When we got to the balconies to look at the glacier I had lunch with him and then we walked around the treks to view the glacier at different angles. I was delighted to have someone to speak English with for the day!! We both wanted to see more LCD fall. We saw a few tiny drops but no big chunk. You could hear noises all the time like it was falling somewhere but we couldn't see it. It was still really impressive though. There were lots of icebergs in front of it that ha obviously fallen off and a lake all around with lovely mountains. For once the mountains paled in comparison to the glacier!!
There wee lots of little balconies to view the glacier from. I knew we were going down steps a bit of the time, but I didn't realise how much until we were climbing up- there was a lotta steps!!! The guide mentioned 600 at one stage but don't know of we went down that many, we didn't go all the way to the lake shore. But definitely three was a lot! Thank God there were balconies now and again to stop at! When we got near the top we could hear singing and sure enoug there was a gospel choir singing on the top balcony! When we got up they had stopped singing and someone was taking a photo of them. I don't know what it was about! It was very strange!!
I was afraid after all the cool photos I saw in the museum yesterday by professional photographers with perfect weather and everything that the real thing wouldn't live up to my expectations but it really did. It's huge and bright white and blue- you could just stare at it for hours. Unfortunately the photos don't do it justice at all!
It took a while to get back to the hostel. I didn't do much for the evening. Caught up with stuff on the Internet, got the bag ready for flying again tomorrow. The usual! The Korean guy was in the room most of the evening aswell. He was telling me about a website called couchsurfing where you register where you're from and then tourists can contact you through the website and stay on your couch for free! He said he's been travelling for five months and about a month of it was with couchsurfing. Definitely sonething to look into to if I run out of money!!