Calafate

Calafate was unbelievable. It was such a unique place. I’ve never seen anything like it before. And it was awesome, I met up with my parents and got to explore it with them.

Calafate is in Patagonia, and is a relatively small city. There’s a large area in main town with food and such and it is right on a beautiful body of water. Never seen water that shade of blue, and it’s from the glacier water that melted I believe.

It was my first time in Argentina as well, which is where I’m going to be stationed, more or less, for the next 3 months.

Horses and steak

First day, we took a horse ride around the area and had an amazingly tasty dinner.

The horse ride was cool to get a big overlooking view of what was going on in the area and the steak was some of the best I’ve ever had.

Chalten

The next day, we went to a place called Chalten. Had a 3 hour ride there and stopped along the way to capture some photos and appreciate the beauty.

There’s a lot of cool history about the area, and this huge mountain that people have died trying to climb, and was first summited in the 70s or something. Then we got there and did this beautiful hike.

It was crazy because there was so much in one place. Huge bodies of water, lakes, glaciers, mountains, grass and prairies. I honestly didn’t understand how all these things were happening at once haha.

At first, driving up it was like this:

And then this:

*that little patch of lighter blue over there is a small glacier.

And then this:

It honestly doesn’t even look real. Super beautiful place, and we only stayed for the day. But there seems to be so much to explore. It’s a small little town where people live which is really cool.

Perito Moreno Glacier

The next day, we went to the Perito Moreno Glacier. It is this massive glacier, and we were lucky to be able to walk on it. So we took a boat across the little body of water and then got off on land and walked over to it. It was so massive.

It is just endless. And what’s crazy is that it sort of looks like mountains, but it’s all ice. And it’s built up pretty tall too.

To get a sense for the height:

Took our breath away. And, similarly, makes you think, this thing has been there for so long.

What’s really cool about this glacier, specifically, is that it isn’t receding. The amount of ice that is getting added to it each year through snow is equal to the amount melting/falling off. Means it could be around for quite a while more.

Thoughts

The time with my parents was super nice. It’s really special to be able to travel and explore the world with them.

It was interesting because as amazing as Patagonia was, it made me appreciate the jungle even more. This stuff was unlike anything I had ever seen, took my breath away, so on. But, I didn’t get the same feeling here that I had in the jungle. That was interesting.

It also made me realize I’m a warm person. Enjoy warmer climates over cold ones. But it was so crazy there.

Really fun. Tourism in Calafate was probably the largest of everywhere I was except Machu Picchu and that’s too bad. Tourism on one hand is good, but change the structure of a place a lot.

People move there to make $ from tourists and it changes the structure and make up of the area. Less authentic and stuff.

In some ways as if tourism is a bad thing because of that. In Tena I remember some people told me they were happy that there wasn’t more tourism because they didn’t want to deal with all that it would bring.