nuestra casa en calafate/ petit moreno

I was now facing the decision to watch another episode of the good old American series 'friends' via the Netflix access of our AirBnB located on the outskirts of Punta Arenas, or ... to write another blog post. Okay, you won! And since Helmut just jumped into the shower, I can even bring the words online with the laptop for once and don't have to painstakingly use my phone with the 2-finger technique. So if the text should be longer today: You already know why! ;o)

Short update: We have been here since yesterday, at the southernmost tip of our journey. Punta Arenas is already vis-a-vis with Tierra del Fuego. From here you can travel to the Arctic, it is quite cool for summer, green, hilly, and with a beautiful view of the sea. Why do many Patagonia travelers come here? Punta Arenas has an airport that takes you back to the north or the center of Chile, which would not be possible by car or bus due to water (= fjords). That's also our plan, we'll fly back to Santiago tomorrow to spend the last weekend in Chile in Valparaiso before the next flight takes us back home to Hannover on Sunday morning.

The regular reader knows: we last reported from Puerto Natales, from Torres del Paine. From there we made a detour to El Calafate in Argentina because we wanted to visit one of the few glaciers that are still growing. You can easily travel the 5.5 hours across the border by bus every day. You can also easily come back if you A) reserve a bus early enough. (We had to replan everything just arrived in Calafate at the new bus station on the old airfield. The intended bus for 3 days was already 'completo'). And if you B) cope well with all the funny control mania of the Chileans at the border (They actually make you unload all your luggage and carry-on baggage from the bus and let it run through a control ribbon at their mini-border crossing in the middle of nowhere. Just in case someone wants to bring an apple across the border).

In El Calafate, we also reserved accommodation via AirBnB and it was really great. We had a small apartment for ourselves and a fantastic view over Lake Argentino with flamingos and other funny birds in the garden ... But the nicest thing about the accommodation was actually the landlords: Argentinians with their main residence in Buenos Aires, who have made it their goal to make tourism more hospitable and personal on site. Very lovely, very talkative. We were a little weakened by a cold on a few evenings. The hikes, the sweat, the cold wind ... But there was actually no better place to recover. Apart from visiting the glacier, El Calafate offers only limited possibilities (tourist shopping, the glacier ice bar, I can't think of a third thing anymore). So Sunday, our last tourist tour: a visit to the Petit Moreno glacier. I spare you the details of the joy of traveling to the glacier with a poorly organized bus and then seeing it together with about 5000 others. But! But! The glacier impressed us nevertheless. We could get quite close by boat. And suddenly there are masses of ice in front of you, 70 meters high, blue water below, brown mountains on the edge, blue sky above. With the increasing sun, you could hear the loud cracking that sounded like thunder. And then smaller pieces and larger columns of ice fall into the water in front. The glacier calves. I'll post a few pictures for you in a moment.