At last, a picture which is location-suitable. Excellent.

Am writing this from El Calafate, but should start by summing up my last few days in Buenos Aires. The day after my last post, I headed out relatively early (by Buenos Aires standards - 1pm) to Palermo, a rich area in the centre of the city. Palermo is beautiful, and very like London - sprawling streets filled with shops (including a Barbie shop, eat your heart out Kat) and restaurants, dotted with vast green parks. My first stop of the day was the Botanical Gardens, randomly placed in the middle of an intersection. The gardens were absolutely beautiful, comprised of a very Argentinian combination of various plant life and art, this time in the form of beautiful white stone statues. Once again, the botanical gardens were also home to literally hundreds of cats, escaping the stray dogs which roam the city. Very odd all in all.

From there I headed on to el Museo Evita, a museum devoted to the life and work of Evita. It was really quite good, despite my reservations, and had a huge collection of her clothes which was a nice change from all the very historical museums i´ve been to elsewhere! Turns out Evita was pretty much a saint from what the museum seemed to suggest, lots of helping of children and the underprivileged, and lots of denouncing of formal recognition of her position. Unfortunately, some parts of the museum seemed to have lost their English translations, including the ultimate section. From what I could tell from my pigeon spanish and the bits of English that were dotted around, the museum was suggesting that Evita was actually murdered by the military government, rather than dying of cancer as we were all led to believe, because when her body (confiscated by the military government very shortly after her death) was eventually returned to her family, it was covered in unexplained injuries (broken nose, cuts to the face, fingers missing) and she had tar on the bottom of her feet. Who knows, the mystery remains.

After a quick stop at El Monumento al Espanoles, a statue representing the 4 regions of Argentina, again at an intersection, I headed on to the Japanese Gardens. Despite the fact that you have to pay entry to these gardens, it´s completely worth it - the gardens themselves are beautiful, and there is a ´river´ filled with Koi winding throughout it. After sitting in the sun for a few hours and trying to crack through another book (NB Mum and Dad - that David Baldacci book was terrible. Particularly the second story, which was the literary equivalent of a made-for-TV movie.), I headed to the Japanese restaurant within the grounds of the gardens for a snacky and very late lunch, feasting on Miso soup and gyoza. A rare luxury to eat something which didn´t involve steak or pastry, I can tell you. After a quick jaunt through el bosque de Palermo (Palermo woods, another park), I headed back to the hostel.

Next day I flew to El Calafate in the South of Argentina, the closest town to the Parque Nacional de los Glaciares. All I have to say about this day is that I REALLY don´t like flying in small planes, especially when the in-flight meal consists of a sandwich, while all the cabin crew get a hot 3 course meal. Grrr...

So, for my first full day in El Calafate I headed straight to the Perito Moreño glacier. The glacier is one of the few remaining stable glaciers in the world, meaning that the amount of ice which is produced in the ablation area each day is the same as the amount which calves off each day. The glacier itself is completely amazing, because it is only 200m above sea level, and exists in an environment which reaches 20C in summer. Random. It is also the most beautiful colours I´ve ever seen - the sky is deep blue, the mountains behind are black, the ice itself is a mixture of pale blue hues, and the lake it stands in is turquoise. Its a completely stunning spectacle, created by a combination of the density of the ice (few air bubbles so lots of light colours absorbed), and sediment from the glacial melt in the water.

First part of the day was to head to the nearby balconies and viewing areas to stare at the glacier for a while and grab some lunch. Obviously took about a thousand photos at this point, and spent a good long time on the lower level balcony staring at the near face of the glacier - 2m of ice calves off the face of the glacier each day, and when it crashes into the lake below its not only visually stunning but also incredibly loud, it sounds like a combination of thunder and gunshot. It´s truly an absolutely awesome spectacle. Over lunch I met some American girls who were staying in the same hostel as me, and wouldn´t you know it, a graduate from Cambridge. Typical, bloody Tabs get everywhere. From there we headed down to the lake shore to get on board the boats that cruise around the glacier, and had a short jolly round the face, to try and get a bit closer to the ice-breaking action. We then headed up onto the opposite shore, and after a short trek through the forest we tied on our crampons and ventured out onto the glacier itself. Being on the glacier was completely breathtaking, the colours just get more intense the further in you go. Obviously we all stopped and drank the water, and took rather entertaining photos at every available opportunity. What is probably most remarkable about the trek is that I did not fall over once, no injuries sustained, no hospital visits required. See Mum and Dad, I´m finally growing out of that phase (hopefully). At the end of our trek our guides pulled out a bottle of whisky and we all had some Famous Grouse served over glacial ice, with a traditional Argentinian cake called an Alfajore (which is almost certainly not how you spell it). All in all it was a perfect day, capped off with a massive homemade tea, yum.

Next day was another early start (7am this time, getting to the point where it actually is early now) to catch a bus to Lago Roca, a section of the park about 60km from the hostel. Lago Roca is fairly inocuous within the park, meaning that you don´t have to pay the entry fee to get in (hence the attraction for me). There´s a peak there called Cerro de los Cristales which is hikeable, so off I set with plans to hike it on my own, massive medical kit and food supplies in my rucksack (I even took a torch, just in case I got lost until after dark - lame). The summit of Cerro Cristal is at about 2,800m, and the ascent is supposed to take around 3.5-4 hours on a good day. Luckily for me and my accident-prone nature, at the bottom of the trail I met an Argentinian girl called Veronique who was also planning to hike it, and who seemed keen for a companion, so we set off together. Now this is where this becomes one of the stranger days of my life. As it happened, Veronique didn´t speak any English. And I speak pretty much no Spanish, and very little conversational Spanish. So we started the ascent pretty much unable to communicate, able only to ask each others names and where we were from. Surely enough though, we were soon bantering through words like ´steep´ and ´calves´, vastly increasing both of our vocabularies of useless words. The climb itself was exceptional, very tough in places but with absolutely stunning views across the whole park; the day was so clear that we could see all the way to Perito Moreño glacier and the Fitz Roy range (stunning snow-capped mountains on the other side of the park), and we could see the various different branches of Lago Argentino, each one a different shade of blue or turquoise. We climbed for about 2.5hours, stopping only to catch our breath, speak in broken sentences ending with ´Vamos?´ and got to within about 100m of the summit before we had to turn back: the wind was incredibly strong and when we had both literally been blown off our feet we decided that maybe it wasn´t so safe to continue. Hilariously, as soon as we´d decided to turn back we both looked at the biggest summit we´d passed so far and said ´shall we take pictures there and pretend we got to the top?´. Clearly some things transcend both culture and language. Having taken our fraudulent photos, which were nonetheless a very satisfying way to mark the achievement, we headed about 500m down before stopping for a lunch with a view from the top of the world. I´m starting to get a bit of a taste for dining with spectacular views, think I may have to do more hiking once I get back! After another 2.5 hour descent, and breaking out some mate (a traditional Argentinian drink quite like tea but very strong and full of caffeine, it´s not actually particularly nice but is considered impolite not to accept it if offered) we headed back to the bus to return to El Cal.

Today I´ve mostly been running errands all morning (postcards etc), and am planning to go and grab some empanadas and ice cream now, before heading down to Lago Argentino (the biggest lake in Argentina don´t you know) for a bit of a wander and to see the flamingos (random) before my flight later this evening. Can´t wait for the joys of another small aircraft, but am quite excited to get back to Buenos Aires - i´ve loved El Calafate so much but it´s quite quiet and there aren´t a lot of people here, so looking forward to meeting back up with the people from the hostel in BA again.

Have just realised that I´ve completely forgotten to keep you all up-to-date with my activity and food goals (I know, you´ve all been waiting with baited breath). For those who don´t know, I´m aiming to try a new activity/sport in each country, and to eat a new food in each country. So far so good, the table currently stands as follows:

Cuba - Salsa - Guava (the first and last time)
Costa Rica - Canyoneering - Callo Pinto
Peru - High altitude trekking - Egg white and trout, double whammy.
Argentina - Tango & Ice trekking - Mate, Dulce de Batata (sweet potato and chocolate pate).

Who knows what new delights New Zealand will bring?!