Saturday 15th September
Today is the start of our 11 day Winter Patagonia tour, and we are flying from Buenos Aires to El Calafate. We head off from our hostel just before lunch and flagged down the worst taxi driver ever! Tom had been moaning at us all week cos we kept flagging down the old bangers, so he wasnt too impressed with us this time, but this time i didnt blame him! We eventually made it safely after breaking down numerous times and stopping to have something done to the engine. As per usual the flight was delayed, which is something you come to expect in Argentina. After a 3 1/2 hour flight we started to descend over the mountains, and was horrified that we could not see the runway until the wheels touched down!!!! Thankfully the pilot knew where he was going, funny that! The scenery was amazing, a stunning blue lake, snow capped mountains, and no town in sight!!! We were picked up by the tour company and driven into town, which was hiding behind a small mountain. As we drove into town we all looked at this cool hostel and hoped it would be ours, and to our excitement, it was :o) The rooms were great with a shower room, toilet room, heated floors and a hair dryer, perfect for us poncy travellers! We headed into town in the evening which was a cool little town with wooden shops selling bobble hats and lots of snow clothes, so we stocked up on wooly hats and neck warmers etc ready for our snowy adventures.

Sunday 16th September - We transfered to El Chalten (please see seperate entry).

Thursday 20th September

Today we was picked up from our hostel at 9am and taken to the national park where we were to experience our first look at Perito merino. This Glacier is famous for being the only glacier in the world that can be reached by road. The glacier it self stands 60 meters high, 4km wide and a massive 30 km long. Our first glimpse of Perito Merino was from about 2 miles out whilst on our coach journey into the national park and even from this distance you can see how amazing this glacier really is. Our coach continued on into the national park where we were then dropped off at a small dock to wait for a catamaran to take us on an hour long (clode up and personal) tour of Perito Merino. Whilst on the Coach Nikki was unfortunately placed next to the biggest possible women in the world who we fondly nicknamed "Walrus" :o) After Nikki very cleverly getting out of sitting next to "Wulrus" she now had a new companion who we effectionately called "Fag ash".... you do the math!!! Either option was still better then sitting in front of our next pal who Lisa named "The Murderer". To be fair he was just a geek who kept asking questions about the zoom on our camera. The stimulating conversation was far too much for us to handle so we politely ignored him. (even when he asked us to join him for lunch) lol Anyways back to the glacier trip, we got onto a catamaran and floated around the iceberg lake about 30 meters from Perito Moreno. The views were truely out of this world.... plus it was bloody freezing! After the catamaran trip we was taken by our guide to the three main viewing areas to see every angle of the glacier from the closest point possible whilst still being safe. These views were the best thing we have ever seen. Truely breathtaking. Because of the unusually warm weather they have been experiencing in Patagonia whilst we were there a lot of the glacier was breaking off to form tiny icebergs. As we approached we could here lots of breaking and creeking noises from the glacier so we got our cameras out for the ready. A tiny tiny rock falling off of the glacier would create the loudest of noises. Lisa said she had a feeling that something big was going to happen..... and to my amazement it did!!! We witnessed a very large piece of glacier break off and crash into the lake below. We were only about 100 feet away so the views were fantastic. We even managed to get a video clip of this happening. We thought we had seen the most amazing thing ever, when 5 minutes later a piece of glacier (5 times bigger then the last) fell from the glacier creating the most amazing sounds and views. Luckily Mr Smith was ready with the camera (and video) to capture all of this. We spent the next hour just staring at the HUGE glacier just waiting for something else to happen to mesmorize us more then the events we had just seen. Even though no more was to happen in the next hour and a half the time flew by and just staring at the glacier could never get tiresome. Even as we were leaving I couldn´t help keep looking over my shoulder at this amazing view. There are a lot of amazings and fantastics in the sentences above but if you were there to witness what we did you would understand why! We returned to El Calafate very very happy and went to a very good meat restaurant for some good food.

Friday 21st September

Today was a VERY early start as we were heading off on a boat trip around some more glaciers. This was an extra tour we had booked on what was a rest day on our organised tour that we were on. At silly o clock in the morning we were not happy that the coach was 30 mins late and were moaning we didnt want to go on the silly trip anyway. I mean how could anything beat what we had seen yesterday. Oh how wrong could we have been, well for me and Nikki this turned out to be the highlight of our tour so far!! We head off on a pretty powerful and fast catamaran, and we seemed to have the crazy captain :o) as we headed down the huge argentina lake we started to see what we thought were huge icebergs, but these were only babies compared with what we were to see later. Our trip was to see 3 glaciers, one of them being the biggest outside the antartic, another being the tallest, and a smaller one which descended into a lake we could walk around (or walk on if we arrived 2 weeks before we did, gutted!). Again due to the warm weather a lot of icebergs were in the lake as they were dropping off the glacier at a faster pace. All the glaciers we saw today are receeding, perito merino is the only one which is advancing. Seriously, it is the mostamazing experience in the world to be speeding through iceberg channels and then quietly floating around in the milky blue glacier water surrounded in all directions by the most amazing huge icebergs in all different shapes and sizes. Its like leaving a kid in a sweet factory, its exciting every direction you turn, every angle you see them from. Some of them are bright blue where they are so densly packed. If only the titanic were a catamaran, they could have sailed through like we did! It was so so cold out there, we had to cover every inch of our skin, Toms lips even bleed after leaving them uncovered for a short period. To be fair he was standing at the front of the catamaran when it was at full speed, so had his self to blame! Me and Nikki dashed around the boat like excited kids snapping pictures of every iceberg we found amazing, which for me was 131 of them, and you will have to sit through all the pics when i return!!! After that we headed to the lake and the smaller glacier, where we stopped for lunch and to take pics around the lake which was full to the brim with more icebergs. Us being us decided we'd take lots of fun pics first, scooping small icebergs out the lake and posing with them (friggin well bloody cold), we left ourselves 15 mins for our packed lunch we'd proudly brought and made ourselves the night before. Unfortunately the cream cheese on my fresh rolls didnt agree with me, and we had to make the quickest march back the 800m to the boat so i could block the mens toilets up!!!!!!!! note to self, no more cream cheese! We decided to sit upstairs this time, as we were the first back and no one was given seat numbers. However we sat in seats which some spanish people decided they had all eternal rights too and they went to the staff to complain and have us turfed out. So being polite we moved back downstairs and slagged them off for the next few moments,until more amazing icebergs took our attention! The icebergs after lunch were even more amazing and the catamaran inched very slowly through the icebergs as they crunched underneath and around us! In all the clothes we were wearing at least we'd survive a few minutes more than the poor unfortunate folks on the titanic! Finally we headed over to the tallest iceberg, and this wasnt dropping loads of icebergs from it, so we got really really close to it on the boat. But to be honest, glaciers are better when you can view all the ice above as it dissapears into the distance, when you really see the full scale and vastness of the glaciers. It truely is amazing to see the size of them and to think that the icecap behind all the glaciers and mountains is a million times bigger and the glaciers are just streams! Anyway, we went home even happier and ate at a homemade food restuarant who wouldnt make tom pasta with chicken, only pasta with sauce! then went to bed, night night.....

Saturday 22nd September

Again another delay at the airport for our flight to Ushuaia, you really get used to this in Argentina, they fly when they fancy it, or when they can get a full flight! See ushuaia entry for continuation!