Thursday evening in El Calafate

Post-glacier, Conrad and I found ourselves with a little spare time before joining the others for dinner.  I hoped for good postcards and souvenirs, but found only a handful of the former and nothing of the latter I wanted.  Ah, but what did we find?

Cocktails.

Oveja Negra was the gin,

presumably distilled in or near the bar we stopped at on the main street of El Calafate.  I had what amounted to a lavender gin and tonic, while Conrad opted for a cocktail infused with the town's namesake berries. 

His was rather sweet, mine was refreshing.  I wish we had brought back a bottle of the gin.

And then it was on to dinner at La Tablita.  Inside the restaurant, there was a kitchen with carcasses on the spit over a fire.  Lamb! 

That was my dinner.  Roasted, unadorned, unsauced, unaccompanied - a generous portion.  But first there hearts of palm as an appetizer. 

Both were good, but I especially enjoyed (and shared!) the lamb.

We had great dinners at the last hotel in Chile, we had less enjoyable food elsewhere in Chile.  Two nights of lamb, and Argentina was off to a good start.

a glacier!

The point of going to El Calafate is to see glaciers.  Don't get me wrong - the town is one that has many tourist facilities:  restaurants, shops, and more.  Without the glaciers in the nearby national park, though, the town would be a modest outpost for ranchers, perhaps.

But ah, the park.  Los Glaciares National Park is larger than just the Perito Moreno Glacier that is most accessible, but it is that glacier, flowing into the largest lake in Argentina, that is the star of the show for so many.

We had a guide and shuttle

to take us out to the park.  Not too far out of the city, it was a fine, scenic drive.  I need to see if I can find the video of all the rheas running along the open landscape.  That was a delightful scene.

The Perito Moreno Glacier is readily viewable from across a narrow channel of the lake.  There is an extensive network of boardwalks that we tramped along happily,

taking photos wherever we could. 

What a glorious time of it.  Decent weather - mildly cool, not too sunny.  It was a good couple of hours of listening to our guide and taking more photos.

And then we went out on a boat for an hour.  Many of us on it, getting as close as a quarter of a mile from the glacier face.  The glacier was calving icebergs even as we watched it, creating such noise, realizing deep blue chunks of ice in the lake.  It was quite a sight, and we were glad of it.

If I need to compare, the scenery we saw in Chilean Patagonian was more stunning.  Still, the glacier was incredible.  Oh, I've seen glaciers before in BC and Alberta - they aren't new to me.  But this was a good, close view of one that is - hooray! - not retreating, not yet.  How terrific to get to see it.

arrival in El Calafate

When last we left off, there had been the border exchange, eight of us being handed over from Chile to Argentina.  And then it was a looooong drive.  The landscape was flat and unchanging in many parts.  We didn't see many signs of life.  I dozed, I read, I watched stuff on my iPad.  Around 7:45 or so, we rolled on up to our hotel in El Calafate.

I'll have more to share about the town and the national park nearby.  That first evening, though, we were all in a panic over what to do about money.  I wish we'd been better informed about the Argentine "blue market" in currency exchange, and especially about how using credit cards was tied to the favourable exchange, not the official one.  If we'd known that last bit, we wouldn't have had half of us dash off from the hotel to try to get some cash right away.  We also might have opted for better (and less pricey) dining than the hotel restaurant.  Oh, it was fine enough, but we chose it because we could do a room charge and pay for that with cash two days later, not because it was the best dining in town.  My chicken arrived as (admittedly tasty and tender) lamb,

and the wine was delicious,

but at the official exchange rate, it would have been a 160 USD meal, and it assuredly wasn't up to that price!

The room was fine enough,

the view from the room and from the hotel front was alright. 

The hotel lobby had ample seating for all of us to enjoy a bottle of wine after dinner (though the hotel bar did want to charge us a corkage fee when we asked to use a corkscrew and some glasses - we pushed back and paid no extra fee). 

Our first night in a new country came to a close.  The next day was going to be packed!