El Calafate-One or Two Horse Town?

So we decided to come to El Calafate for a few reasons. First of all, everyone goes to El Calafate, and it was the next logical step on our course. Second, there are glaciers to see and hikes to do. Third, our friend Yesica lives here and we wanted to visit and catch up since we haven't seen her for a long time.

Well, turns out this place is like Carmel, as in totally expensive, nothing to do, really, and the shops all have the same junk. On top of that, we are seriously running through our money, as the guidebook I have is usually a minimum of 50 dollars under in everything, so we have been having to pay a lot more than expected. Originally we were going to do a galcier hike here, but we both decided that we don't really care if we do that or not, we saw a lot of glaciers in Torres del Paine and they are pretty much all the same, so we opted instead to spend the money on a 4 day "safari" up to Bariloche. It will be us and 9 other people in a van for 4 days stopping at some national parks and estancias (ranches) etc. Should be interesting...

So once we spent the money for that it pretty much left us to wander this town and do things as cheaply as possible. Yesterday we asked at our hostel what we could do for under 100 pesos, you know, like a half day tour or a boat ride or something, and she looked at me like I was crazy. "Nothing is under $125!" she said, as all the tours are all day and all of them have fixed rates. I was feeling a bit dejected, but Levi and I had decided before I asked that on our last day here we would just wander around town for the 37th time, no big deal, and see if there was an interesting t-shirt or mate gourd we had missed the first time around, when she said "Or, you could go over the little bridge to the duck pond and look at the ducks and flamingos." Well, you don't have to say flamingos twice to get my attention, so today I dragged Levi over to the store to buy some bread to feed the ducks and we headed out to the laguna.

Now, yesterday, as we were looking at the aforementioned t-shirts there was one that said "Patagonia, Land of the Wind," and we thought that was really funny because it is pretty windy here. Well, today it was like trying to cross the Sahara desert during a tornado or something. This town is tiny and only the main street is paved, the rest is gravel and dust and rocks, so there we were, walking over these gravel roads in a terrible windstorm, bag of bread in hand, on our way to the lake. We got there and of course, being so windy, there were no birds to be seen. After an hour of fighting our way around the lake Levi spotted some ducks. We got close, started throwing the bread (more like hurling wadded up pieces so they would go a little further and not boomerang right back at us...) and the little patitos scuddled away! So we ran around to try to throw the bread closer to them and they swam away again! Apparently in Agrentina ducks don't eat bread! Who knew? (When I turned my back Levi ate it, though. He walked away stealthily and when he turned around he had a giant piece in his mouth, shrugged his shoulders guiltily, and gave me a look like "Well at least someone's eating it!")

So now we are just hanging out trying to relax from the fight against the gale and tonight we are staying with Yesica which should be great, and I get to sleep in a hammock! She is cooking us dinner and then we get up at the crack of dawn to start our overland adventure. We will be out of contact for another 4 days or so, but when we get back online we will have (hopefully) tons more pictures and stories to share!