A very big ice cube

The day after hiking in Torres del Paine we were on another bus to another town, El Calafate, with a pleasantly laid out main street devoted entirely to selling the one attraction in town.  Actually, the Perito Moreno Glacier is about 90 minutes away by bus.  We knocked about in El Calafate, had a quick look at the tours and decided to just bus out and tread the boardwalks ourselves.  We then raced across to the bus station with our hearts in our mouths after some suggestion that this weekend was “really busy” and the buses were all sold out; they weren’t. 

The next morning we had a lie-in and a nervous wait until 10:30am to see if the hostel laundry had our clothes cleaned on time.  Thankfully they were done, otherwise Kiz would have been enjoying the glacier in her summer dress and me in my board shorts. When we went over to the breakfast area we were treated to a spread of cakes and pastries, jams, yoghurts, cereals, fresh fruit and juices, hot chocolate and the rich smell of good coffee.  The attendant asked for our room number and we told her and she pointed not to a table but to the door.  “You have the other breakfast, in the kitchen.”  The other breakfast was running low on bread and jam.  And that was it, with some powdered coffee and powdered milk.  It was cruel.

   We took the 1pm bus to the glacier, with the prospect of 5 hours to wait until the return bus.  Actually one of the selling points of the tours is that you are not stuck out there for 5 hours in the face of chilling winds straight off the ice.  When we arrived it was about 20˚C with blue skies and barely a breath of wind.  For most of our five hours we sat on a well-sited bench, out of the way of most of the tourists.  In fact for the last two hours it seemed we had the glacier almost to ourselves.  I think everyone else was camped out in the café in the parking lot.  For most of that time we were chatting with a British couple, Lou and Masha, and watching splinters of ice slip from the face of the glacier into the lake.  As is the way of this travelling lark it turns out that Kizzy was taught by their daughter at Shene school and I worked at the Birkbeck student union with someone Masha has also worked with.  Hopefully we’ll catch up with them again in the Lakes District.  With the weather we had the five hours were a blessing. 

   Earlier in the day, as we were walking to the bus station, I was fretting about the time and hurrying Kizzy along.  She doesn’t take so well to being hurried along and as it turned out we were there over 15 minutes before the bus was due and 23 minutes before it actually left.  Kizzy reminded me of a conversation we had with my mum the first time I took Kizzy back to Melbourne.  “It’s at times like this that I remember the snort your mum gave when I said that you were a laid-back person.  ’Myles?  Laid back?’ she said and then she laughed.”  Our five hours at the glacier had a very calming effect, completely capturing the mind and the eye.  For the duration of that experience I actually was a laid-back person.