Day 60: Oh my gosh, what am I doing here?

When I booked the 5 nights in El Calafate I really thought that this would be a good idea... Result, there's nothing here except hughely expensive tours or so it appears. Well, I'll just have to look for budget tours.
On the up side there's the hostel, America del Sur. Together with Las Retamas in Ushuaia the high point in matters of service, cleanliness and working interior :-) Ok, maybe a quick note on the last point. This is really hard to imagine for a German. But most roads, buildings and as a result the furniture have long passed their prime. Repairs are patch up jobs or the craftsmen don't really care about doing a good job (according to a local). Maybe they do but it's not what a German would consider a good job. But most things work and the Argentinians seem to have arranged themselves with the situation. For a "decent" German this can be challanging. When the water in the showers runs away from the drain (so far in 50% of cases), the water is gone shortly in the middle of a shower or the toilet door doesn't have a lock or already the 5th improvised one. But everybody who has stayed on a simple camp ground and was able to cope should be fine and even may find this as part of the charme. All others should better not travel to South America.

But now for todays tour to the Upsala glacier (no, not in Sweden). But apparently there were a lot of explorers from nothern Europe in this area.
With a boat we sailed for 2.5h accross Lago Argentino heading north. On the way we came across icebergs.

Is it the reason why tours don't get close to the glacier any more. In the past there even were kayak tours to the glacier. In the last years more and more big pieces of ice broke loose. That's why we sailed to Estancia Cristina from where we took a 4x4 to drive over adventurous trails to a vantage point. The glacier extends for more than 50 km. Year back the Argentinian Airforce used it to practice landing on ice for their expeditions to Antarctica.

From there we walked the 14 km back through a gorge to the estate. On the way we could see intersting stone formations and fossils. This is what remains of ocean floor after some 110 million years or so...

And here the fissilized remains of squids...

For me the most impressive picture was that of a mountain. We saw it after the gorge when we were still 6 km away from the estate.

Great, right? Still the questions remains if a trip like this is worth €280.-... You just can't shake the feeling that the tourists are there to put the country back on its feet. But maybe I'm missing a proper reference from home...