Buenos Dias folks, Well we have been in El Calafate for the past few days and have really enjoyed our time here chilling with some great siteseeing also. We cheated a little to get here and took a plane from Ushuaia as it ended up only being marginally more expensive than taking two buses which would have taken about 18 hours! The first day we took a day trip with some friends we had made in Ushuaia to the Perito Moreno glacier. It was a beautiful drive through the national park which was covered in snow. We took a boat ride out on the lake and got within 100m of this beast of a glacier. It is 60m high and bigger than Buenos Aires iin size. Incredible. It was a glow of colours - white and beautiful shades of blue. It was extremely noisy whenever a piece of the glacier fell and you could hear huge crashing sounds echoing around the area (the glacier is continuously growing and as it grows parts of the glacier break away and fall into the lake). Later when we went for a walk around some viewing platforms we were lucky enough to see some small pieces of ice (okay small compared to what they fell from but really huge chunks of hard ice) fall away from the glacier and splash into the lake below making a huge noise and splash! On the boat we shared a whiskey to warm up which had a piece of ice from the glacier in it. Being so close to all that ice was pretty cold. On the way home we saw some black eagles and also some condors high up on a cliff face. We also spent some time chilling watching the world cup and getting excited with a crazy French man and some Germans when their countries went through to the next stage. The other hightlight was ice skating on a lake near the town. Shane, myself and Caroline (Dutch) went for a walk to the lake to check it all out. Caroline and I rented some skates and took some wobbly steps out on to a very bumpy icy lake. Shane was the photographer for us. It was great fun with a friendly dog following us around the whole time. Skating on a natural ice rink like this is so different to skating in a nice groomed ice rink. You could actually see plants and things frozen under the ice, and skating in the fresh air with the surrounging mountains was quite surreal. We have both had a brilliant time in this sleepy town. We woke up today and it had snowed in the night and everything is all freshly white....but good things have to come to an end, so today we take a flight to Bariloche up north where we will then cross into Chile (hopefully if the pass is open). More soon.... Love Sarah and Shane xx