We picked up a guide in El Calafate and I was chuffed at understanding most of what he said. This was a good thing as the only other English speakers on the trip were a couple of guys from the US who obviously spoke Spanish. It would have been embarrassing to have to him repeat everything in English just for my benefit.
The first sight of the glacier from the road was a bit of a 'wow' moment. We then got a boat which takes you along one face of the glacier. This is a negligible distance away from the shore, on the grand scheme of things, but does give you a closer view.
We were pretty lucky, the boat was waiting at the pier when we got there, when we got back there was a big queue of people freezing their arses off waiting. It wasn't as cold a wind as on the open ground near the border but it wasn't exactly balmy either.
As I said the other day, I went with the Chilean couple from my hostel so I appear in a few photos, if they ever make it to the internet.
After the boat trip we went over to the walkways where you can observe the glacier from shore. A bit stingily in my opinion, we had an hour there and that included whatever time we wanted to spend having something to eat.
But the view from the walkways is good, even if we were a bit rushed. As I was passing through a wooded bit out of sight of the glacier I heard a big crash as some ice broke off. But I did see a couple of small falls afterwards, so that was something. The noise is surprisingly loud for what look like tiny chunks of ice coming away, although I suspect in practice they are actually enormous if you saw them right up close.
We stopped in El Calafate for 40 mins wandering around time on the way back. It was kind of nice to be able to add it to my list of places I've been, but it was a bit pointless really. I'd rather have had that time at the glacier to be honest. Still, El Calafate seems a pleasant enough town from what I saw of it.
I couldn't sleep on the way back for some reason, so I was able to observe the endless scrubby land with a very occasional sheep to break the monotony. Well, not break it, but dent the surface slightly.
The woman sat next to me talked to me a bit, it turns out her group (of 3, I think) are on the same flight as me to Puerto Williams on Tuesday.
She did also point out that the Torres del Paine mountains were visible in the distance at one point, which was cool, and something I'd have missed.
Had something to eat and now back at El Bar del Ruperto for the last time. It won't be a late on as I have breakfast at 8am, need to pack (admittedly not a major task) and get the bus at 10am tomorrow.
Oh, a guy on the tour asked me via the guide what I thought of South America. I chatted with the guide a bit - he had studied English in Loughborough, FWIW - and when I mentioned preferring it here to Brazil the guide said something unprompted about being told it was too dangerous and it making people nervous. Obviously I'm not the only one to have felt like that.
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