We are now in El Calafate, 80 kilometres from the most spectacular thing we have seen on this trip, and quite possibly in my entire life, the Perito Moreno Glacier. We went there on a tour yesterday and unlike the Martial Glacier in Ushuaia, this is exactly what I thought a glacier would be like.....miles and miles of the palest blue ice towering 60 metres above a milky turquoise lake.....absolutely exquisite. I won't try to describe it too much else I'll go on for ever, but suffice to say that it was beautiful. Our tour from the hostel included a hike around the land opposite the glacier, time at the viewing balconies and a boat tour along the North face of the glacier, the most active apparently although unfortunately we didn't see much! The ridiculously changeable weather of Ushuaia continues here and we managed to see the glacier through heavy cloud and rain as well as beautiful sunshine! It was a fantastic trip, I'm so glad we made the effort to come down to this part of the world! Aside from the obvious advantage, El Calafate started badly for me! We'd just got in a taxi at the airport when I noticed that my decrepit old watch strap (which I knew was on its way out) had given up the ghost and I had lost my watch. Less than a minute later, I took my sunglasses (which were cracked already) off my head to put them on properly and the frames snapped! Now I know this just sort of serves me right for not replacing them when I knew they were dodgy but the double whammy seemed cruel at the time! To make matters worse, when we went into the town that evening to try and replace them, I got embroiled in a row with a very stroppy woman who wanted to charge us 145 pesos for two pairs of sunglasses instead of 95.....I don't like conflict at the best of times, and she was particularly mean! Still, we managed to sort it out, and I got a watch too - time has meaning again! To top it all off, my little fall in the Tierra del Fuego has turned out to be a little bit more sinister than I first thought. The day after, my ankle was a bit sore - I assumed it was my new hiking shoes at first! But it didn't go away, and after hobbling my way around the glacier yesterday it was decided I needed to see a doctor! It was all remarkably simple at the hospital in El Calafate (despite them making me have x-rays that I knew weren't necessary as I was fairly sure nothing was broken!) and they've pronounced my ankle as sprained, and told me to rest up and take some anti-inflammatories. Nothing too serious, and thankfully we'll be spending tomorrow on a bus to our next destination, but the next destination happens to be Chile's hiking mecca, so I might have to rethink that when I get there! I never really thought sprains were particularly bad, but I promise to be more sympathetic from now on as I'm surprised by just how painful it is! Then again, if its raining at Torres del Paine I might be glad of an excuse to stay indoors.......