El Calafate
Thursday January 29, 2015 (Argentina, Patagonia, South America)
Travel day! It was time for the early morning bus ride from El Chalten back to El Calafate.
A bit of a mix up as we were leaving the hostel. I had booked the place through booking.com and assumed that they had my credit card on file. Not the case. We end up looking like some real dopes as we walk out of the place without paying. They chase us down the street and we return to pay the bill. To top things off (for maximum travel difficulty), they only accept cash. This is getting really annoying. So now we’re struggling to cobble together enough to pay for the hostel stay in cash. It basically wiped out all of our clever cambio money we exchanged on the “blue market” in Buenos Aires. So much for that.
Upon arrival in El Calafate, we check into our hostel. Looking forward to clearing up a backlog of blog posts and pictures, I can’t wait to use the great Internet we’ve heard so much about. Until we’re told that the Internet is down here. And by “here”, we mean the whole city. And cell phones too. Great.
We arranged for our bus in a couple of days to get us to Puerto Natales, Chile. That’s the launching point for treks in Torres del Paine, and it’s supposed to be gorgeous. So we’re booked for that. And had to pay in cash. Hoorayyy! More trips to bank machines where we get dinged $8 CAD for daring to get money out.
More importantly, we booked a tour to check out Perito Moreno (the giant, constantly calving glacier). We’ve heard universally positive reviews, so we’re very much looking forward to it! Hopefully we’ve got some great pictures/video of that glacier in action once we’re back.
We’re having a debate about how to get the videos up here. Given the quality of the Internet we’re seeing here (quality… hah!), it’s not really feasible at this point. We’re hoping to find some place with magical Internet where the video may be more realistic to upload. Wish us luck.
Time to get some sleep. If only the packs of homeless dogs would stop barking. You can’t escape them here in Patagonia! At least they’re friendly, if not quiet.