Without a Traceroute

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

My cabbie on the way to the airport was quite chatty. Among other things, we had the following exchange (in Spanish):
“How long have you been in Buenos Aires?”
“About a month now.”
“It’s a beautiful city.”
“Yes, very beautiful.”
“And the Argentinian women?”
“They are very beautiful as well.”
“If you want to meet some girls…I know a place we could go.”
“Thanks, but I really need to go to the airport.”
“They’re whores, you understand?” [He clarified in explicit Spanish, to make sure nothing had gone missing in translation. I'd gotten it the first time.]
“No, I need to go to the airport. I have a flight.”

I’ve heard that in a lot of places, it’s common for cabbies to help people find hookers, and they’ll even receive a kickback from a pimp or madam for bringing clients to certain brothels, but I have no idea what was going on here. It’s hard to think of a worse prospective john than a guy headed to the airport at 10 am on a Monday morning. Maybe business is slow in the mornings?

In any case, I made my flight sin prostitutas, and arrived in El Calafate. Everyone had been warning me to hurry up and get down south because winter is fast approaching, but it’s still surprisingly warm here—around 18° C (65° F) during the middle of the day. After so much time in big cities, it’s refreshing to be someplace this rustic. Most of the roads are gravel, and there are horses and dogs just wandering about. There were packs of stray dogs in Buenos Aires, but these dogs seem well fed and looked after; some are sporting collars. I think many people just let their animals roam. There are also a lot of tourist shops here, because it’s the main jumping-off point for visiting the Perito Moreno Glacier. Taken together, El Calafate reminds me very strongly of Estes Park in Colorado or perhaps Moab, Utah.

A slightly larger horse just walked up outside and started chowing down.

Tomorrow, I’m going to hike the glacier. I’ve signed up for the 7-hour “Big Ice” trek, which seemed to be the most hardcore of the excursions offered. Apparently we’ll be strapping on crampons and everything, so I hope I’m up to it. They said to bring waterproof gear in case of rain, so I spent a couple hours today trying to track down an inexpensive poncho. All the shops wanted to sell me stylish, expensive gore-tex jackets with built-in harnesses and other flourishes. I did finally find a place that would sell me what amounts to an unfashionable plastic sack for more than it’s worth. I expect if it rains tomorrow, I will appreciate it. Oh, one thing I thought was cool is that they told us we don’t need to pack water, because we can just melt and drink the glacier itself! So that’s pretty sweet.

I also got a haircut today, but I might post photos of that later. I need to sleep now because our trip leaves bright and early at 7 am tomorrow.