Without a Traceroute

Sorry for the delay, the internet was down all across El Calafate yesterday. I finally have a lot of photos to share from the glacier hiking trip. I almost didn’t go. I woke up on Thursday morning with a really awful headache; then the medicine I took for my head upset my stomach without fixing my head. For the first 20 minutes or so of the bus ride out to the national park, I felt completely terrible. However, I managed to fall asleep on the bus, and by the time I woke up at the park, I felt much better. My headache had vanished and my stomach had settled down, so I decided to follow through on the hike.

The trip was much less strenuous than I had expected. People had told me that walking with the crampons was really tiring. It was harder than regular walking, but the seven hours of hiking included one hour walking through the woods to get out to the glacier, and one hour coming back, so we were actually only hiking on the ice for about five hours. The crampons did add a bit of weight to your feet, and every step you took, the teeth would bite into the ice and require a little extra exertion to extract them, but it wasn’t that draining once you got used to it. At the end, I came away from the trip quite tired, but not absolutely exhausted like I expected to be.

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Well, the glacier was awesome. The upload bandwidth at this hostel is practically nonexistent, so most of the pictures will have to wait until I get to an internet cafe in town tomorrow. But here’s one for now:

Yes, there is a giant glacier in Argentina.

In theory, I should be on a glacier right now. Last night, I asked the hostel staff to wake me up at 6:30 so I could meet the tour pickup van at shortly after 7. This morning, I woke up with an unpleasant start at around 8:10 am.

I freaked out, and ran to reception, and we had this little back-and-forth (in English, because my Spanish doesn’t work before about 10 am):
“You were supposed to wake me up! What happened?”
“I came in 3 times, the van came, you not get up.”
“Seriously?” (I can be a pretty sound sleeper, but I can’t imagine I could sleep through 3 in-person wakeup attempts and not remember at all)
“I tried. There was a guy and girl naked in the bed.” (Now that I know I would remember.)
“Are you sure you got the right bed?”
“Yes, bed number 3, room number 8.”
“I’m in bed 3, room 3! Can I see the sheet?”
It turned out that on the wake-up sheet, the clerk from last night had written the number 3 in kind of loopy handwriting so that it looked like a number 8. It was an honest mistake and it’s hard for me to be angry about that. Although I imagine the naked couple in bed 3, room 8 might feel differently.

I was angry that he tried to tell me that I would have to pay again if I wanted to go tomorrow (and the tour is not particularly cheap), or I could take a cab and dash over to the glacier park and try to meet the tour this morning. Both those options sucked, but I still ran to my room and frantically tried to pack to get a cab. Thankfully, I think the hostel clerk realized he screwed up, and so he called the tour company and worked it out so I can go tomorrow without paying again. It should be no skin off their back, because it’s low season right now, and none of the tours are full anyway.

Long story short, no glacier photos until tomorrow, and I’ve got an extra day to kill here. Some Irish guys told me they did a horseback riding trip that was cool, so that’s an option. I might just go hiking, too.

Yesterday I flew down to El Calafate in Patagonia. The flight (on LAN airlines, who, unlike Aerolineas Argentina, will actually accept a credit card on their website) only cost slightly more than a bus ride, and took 3 hours instead of 50+ hours. God bless Orville and Wilbur.

Sunset over Lago Argentino in El Calafate

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A guy with his tiny horse. Shot in the La Boca neighborhood in Buenos Aires.

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls…