El Calafate !

We'd seemingly only had a few hours sleep before leaving our "#$&@hole" of a hotel in Buenos Aires early a.m. to fly back down to Sthn Patagonia and the town of El Calafate.

Our 3 and a half hour flight (Argentina is huge !) was punctuated by a few mid air screams (apparently coming from Henley's direction) caused by some severe en route air turbulence.

No doubt the huge round of applause on landing was the Argentinian version of kissing the ground plus I think some historical reference to past decades of terrible Sth American flight safety !

First impressions of El Calafate were that the town resembled some Wild West landscape with barren terrain and widespread isolated housing ! Our opinions did however change as we wandered numerous kms from our lakeside hotel into town in the rain discovering as you'd expect a tourist driven landscape of shops, restaurants and cafes.

Having well acquainted ourselves with the surrounds and having established that the large packs of marauding dogs were mainly friendly we back tracked to our hotel with a $5 taxi all set for tomorrow's adventure to the spectacular Pereto Merino Glacier !