I'm in Kerala, Southern India right now feeling like an Indian Princess overlooking the Arabian Sea sipping mint tea with honey and wearing a long woven cotton Indian gown (there must be a proper name for this outfit). Since I want to keep these blog postings in sequential order of the trip that brings me back to Patagonia viewing massive glaciers. I'll get back to India. I'm here for 4 weeks and just arrived today. Should be able to catch up on blogging since my schedule for the next 8 days is lightly filled with massage, yoga, boat rides on the backwaters of Kerala and adventuring through nearby villages.
El Calafate is almost at the very end of the earth in Patagonia. Not quite as far down as Antarctica. Close enough and cold enough to view spectacularly gigantic glaciers. The one and only reason to visit El Calafate is to go into Glacial National Park and get on a boatride that takes you to the 4 -5 glaciers. Some people camp in the park if you're really into that sort of thing. Josh and I met a couple at dinner one night from Redding, CA who were camping in the park. Most people stay in a hotel. The hotels are underwhelming at best. The food, other than one or two restaurants, is forgettable and even those aren't worth mentioning.
IT'S ALL ABOUT THE GLACIERS and they're worth the trip.
Lucky for us before we went to El Calafate Josh's mother gave us the tip to buy a VIP seat on the top of the boat. She said we'll be in a much more intimate setting with very few people instead of down below with over 150 other tourists. Thanks, again, Susan. This made the experience so much better and we never would have known about the VIP option. The cost of the 7 hour excursion including transportation from/to hotel, lunch and all day cruise with VIP seating was less than $70 per person.
I've posted 50% of the pictures already and the rest will follow. More of the same, big blue chunks of ice jutting out of the water. FACTOID: An iceberg is 85% underwater - you're only looking at the head of the whole body.
I tasted my first Alfajor in El Calafate. It's a cookie made out of maicena flour (corn flour), coated with powdered sugar and filled with dulce de leche, that delicious creamy caramel stuff.
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