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Bookmark & shareA Top Day in El Calafate
Any visit to El Calafate implies a date with one big, brooding blue hunk of ice. I start with a double cortado (coffee with a splash of milk) at el ba'r, a corner caffeine stop where hipsters knit sweaters and stray dogs adopt lost gringos. Next stop, the grocery store for fruit, cheese, adorable mini bottles of wine, and cocoa mix for the thermos. Most visitors go to Parque Nacional Los Glaciares by tour, but driving affords the luxury of avoiding (admittedly, some) of them and the hulking tour buses. Then it's on to glacier Perito Moreno. At 30km (19mi) long, 5km (3mi) wide and 60m (197ft) high, it's more than double the size of Manhattan. Hardly a sight, it is an audio-visual assault. The crack and collapse of huge icebergs falling from the glacier's face is pure spectacle. After checking out every angle of it from the terraces, I wander down to the lake shore, where few visitors linger. There are no souvenir shops or food stands here (yet). It's the perfect spot to haul out a picnic and prolong pondering the ice floes. On the drive back, still hungry for scenery, I make detours past estancias (ranches) in yellow-grass solitude. I'm satisfied.
Dinner in Argentina usually means consuming prodigious quantities of beef and wine, and though I am an unambitious carnivore by most standards, Argentina can make it worth anyone's while. Like half of town, I head to La Tablita. While my friend and I wait for a table, we pass the time trying to match the faces from Caras magazine with those fancy fur-trimmed tourists before me. A flank steak and garlic fries satiate my hunger. With the last drop of steam I consider a nightcap at Shackleton's, tango at Don Diego's or karaoke at the Grouse, but the call of my cosy down-shrouded bed beckons the loudest.
Author: Carolyn McCarthy
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