Laura: We woke up at 6.45am so we could shower before the mammoth 27 hour bus journey to Calafate. The hot tap refused to work so not only did we get up an hour earlier than required, we had to get on the bus feeling dirty which sucked. Also, our food for the journey was in the kitchen which was locked so we had to wake up the hostel staff! The day was off to a bad start but thankfully, the local buses were on time and we caught our 9am bus no problem.
The journey was uneventful and we managed to get some decent shut eye until the driver decided to put Bon Jovi on full blast at 8am. I was quite impressed with the hostel we booked, it was all open plan with really nice dorms and communal areas. We booked some bus tickets to take us to the most famous sight in Calafate; the Perito Moreno Glacier. I was pretty excited about it because I’ve never seen a glacier before and loads of people said it was highlight of their lives!
The next morning we got up early and it was snowing!!! Initially we were excited but then we realised that visibility was about 10 meters. Despite this we got on the bus and hoped for the best. We arrived at about 11am and started walking around the viewing balconies; it was about 3km in total walking around the glacier. Even with poor visibility, the glacier was pretty amazing. It was quite overwhelming and you get such a feeling of loneliness walking around it because it feels like you’re at the end of the earth. The ice was beautiful and bright blue in some places. The highlight was seeing parts of the ice falling away from the glacier and thundering into the lake, it was incredible! By 2pm the visibility improved loads and we could see the full extent of the glacier heading backwards. If anyone goes to Argentina, I would seriously recommend going to Patagonia because the things you see are EPIC.
The next day we literally did nothing apart from getting some pesos for Chile, playing with the local dogs (who are strays but seem to be the happiest dogs in the world – probably because they got lots of beef scraps!) We got an early night and headed to Punta Arenas the next morning.