Day 53: 22/8/12
Woken at 7am by texts and missed calls- those imagine people are annoying! They don't answer emails and then expect me to be ringing from Argentina! Very annoying!!
Anyway I'd no plan really today. The main thing to do here is see the perito Moreno glacier which I am doing tomorrow. So I took my time getting ready and headed into the town to see what they had. It's only a new place really. There's only one main street and it's all touristy based. Lots of souvenir shops.
I had heard there was a nice lake nearby so when I saw signs for it I followed them. It was fairly close to the main street. It was called laguna nimez. It was a nice lake with loads of birds in it!! All around there were other little lakes and mountains of course! There was a walkway all around so it was nice. Very windy but nice!
There were signs then for a museum down the road. So I went! It was a history museum called centro de interpretation historica. Look it up on Facebook! It didn't have a lot of English but they guy gave me a little folder of English information to read going round! It started off with dinosaurs and how bones of dinosaurs were found in the Patagonian area. Then there was a section about animals that lived in the area thousands of years ago but are now extinct. Most of them I hadn't even heard of- megaterio (kind of a cross between a dinosaur and an ape), mylodon (cat/anteater) and macrauchenia (kind of a camel thing). Then it moved on to humans. There were lots of Indians in the area. There are cave paintings and stuff that they did. They were called Aonikenk. They were nomads. Interestingly because of this nomadic lifestyle the women could only have kids every three or four years so they had to abstain in between! The government killed most of these Indians though. The majority of people in Argentina are of European descent rather than native Indian. There were strikes in Patagonia between 1919 and 1921 and a lot of people were mysteriously killed. There were stories aswell of children being taken away and people being killed for their bodies to go in natural museums. It all sounds quite shocking!! El Calafate itself only seems to have grown with tourism and people visiting the glaciers.
The guy who worked in the museum was very excited to have an Irish visitor. I think he said it was the first Irish visitor but his English wasnt great!!
There is a museum about the glaciers called the Glaciarium! I wanted to go there but I couldn't find it so I settled for lunch first and then the waitress directed me- it was only round the corner where you get the bus to it, but there was no sign or anything- I don't know how a person would be supposed to know!!
The museum itself was very modern. It had brilliant pictures of the glaciers and lots of videos and displays. The glaciers are made from snow being very compacted. They are moving all the time. Most of the glaciers in the world are receding due to global warming. They had lots of information about that and how it'll be the end of us all! They had information about the various glaciers around- one of them is called glacier mayo, I don't know why!! Perito Mereno is the main glacier around and it's named after this Moreno guy who explored a lot in the area and then when they were splitting the border between Chile and Argentina, he was involved in the discussions. Because he knew he area so well he managed to get much more land for Argentina than they had before! Clever!!
In the Glaciarium they also had an ice bar. We had to put on these cloaks and gloves to protect us from the cold. The bar is always at minus 10 degrees. They serve drinks then in glasses made of ice from the glaciers! Its cool. Noone in the bar with me spoke English though so it was a bit awkward!
After that I went back to the hostel. Had a shower and sorted out clothes and stuff. Then spent a while on the Internet.
Really looking forward I the glacier now tomorrow after all the pictures I saw in the museum. If it looks half as good it will be cool!