El Calafate & The Perito Moreno

Oh . My. God.
The Perito Moreno was THE most amazing thing I have ever seen. EVER.

We are now in the town of El Calafate, about the midpoint of the Patagonia region. After an 18 hour bus ride, a dinner of imiation M&Ms and gummy worms and buying coats off of random girls at the hostel, I passed out to wake up and find out yet again, wake up calls were not received. Luckily we got our stuff together in time to get on the ice trekking tour of the glacier. 
The weather was awful. It was pouring and cold and I the glacier was beautiful, but I didnt know how we were supposed to walk on it with the rain coming down.  But we made friends with Joel from Australia, went to the cafe for coffee and crossed our fingers it would pass.
And sure enough, the rain disappeared, the sun came out and a rainbow shone over the glacier, as if to thank us for our patience :)

We took 3 boats (the first 2 were broken) across the water to the back side of the glacier. As we took the boat through the water, chunks of ice that had broken off (if you wait long enough you can watch the ice fall in to the water), colored aqua blue, floated past.  We strapped on clampons and climbed on the glacier for about 2 hours. On the ascent, it looked like we were climbing up to heaven. All you could see above you was blue sky and giant clouds. INcredible.  It was beautiful weather, amazing to be up there, and one of the best experiences of my life to date. Close to seeing Machu Picchu.

At the end they surprised us with a table on the ice set up with whiskey and chocolates. Nice way to end the experience!  I learned today that El Perito Moreno is the 3rd largest glacier in the world, followed by Antartica and Greenland!  Also, on the way back so many chunks of ice had melted and fallen off, which the guides said happened only once before this season, that we had to walk about 20 minutes through the woods so the boat had somewhere else to pick us up and not have to hit chunks of the glacier on the way!

Tonight we are going out with our new friend Joel, and then tomorrow sleeping in and relaxing since I haven´t had a day of rest since I left my apartment which feels like years ago (it hasn´t been a week!) This town is super cute, it feels like a little Swiss ski town, and has lots of cute restaurants and homemade chocolate shops. So tomorrow I will sit and eat and relax and do absolutely nothing but enjoy Patagonia. Ciao!