Argentina Travel

Bariloche to Calafate

May 15, 2003

Just like the day before, we awoke to a beautiful sunrise over Lago Nahuel Huapi which we started to watch from our room and finished watching while we ate breakfast on the floor above. I don´t know why, but sunrise here seems kind of late - probably a combination of how far south we are and the fact that all of Argentina is in one time zone. Michaela didn´t eat much this morning, but was very very active, crawling into the kitchen and all around the dining area.

After breakfast, we headed for a large supermarket we had seen the day before on the way to the waterfall to pick up diapers. During the trip, we have bought the cheap Pampers available locally and another brand we hadn´t heard of previously. They both were aweful. Neither were as absorbent as the ones we brought from the US or the expensive Huggies we had bought here. So now we resolved to only buy the expensive Huggies and we were nearly out of diapers - with our trip to Calafate later that afternoon.

After picking up a large package of Huggies, we parked downtown and walked around the town one last time. We stopped by a Havana store so that Margarita could have her favorite Argentine treat - which she had claimd was this brand of alfajore, but she ended up buying a havanette. We also picked up some sandwiches because we weren´t sure what we´d be getting on the plane. On the way back to the car, however, a young child asked us for money and Margarita explained to him how we don´t give money to begging children. So she asked if he was hungry, he said yes, and we gave him one of the sandwiches we had just bought.

We parked outside the rental car office and Margarita finished the contract and paid for the rental car. We had gone more than 1,000km in four days. The salesman jumped in the car and we made our way to the airport for our 12;15 flight. What a sight at the departure area - we were the only traffic. After a quick check-in (we were the only ones at the counter), we made our way to security. I went through the metal detector a number of times as first my change, then wallet, then belt were removed. Finally, we figured out that the Palm Pilot was setting it off. Meanwhile, security detected our pocket knife in our carry-on. However, unlike in the U.S., I was allowed to take the pocketknife outside of the secured area, and they check-in personnel managed to place it in the outside pocket of our luggage. Go Aerolineas Argentinas!

In the waiting area, Michaela spent plenty of time exploring and making lots of noise. She seems to have discovered her vocal cords can produce quite loud noises recently and she is loud nearly all the time now. Finally, when a line formed to finally board the plane, Michaela had a captive audience and she played it to the hilt. She smiled, clapped, waved and entertained the waiting crowd until we boarded the flight. It was obvious she enjoyed all of the attention that she was receiving.

On the plane, Michaela was pretty well-behaved and ended up falling asleep about halfway through the flight. Since we didn´t have a window seat, I can´t tell you much about the scenery on the flight, but the last part was pretty desolate. The plane moved around quite a bit before the landing and I guess it made people nervous, because they applauded when the flight landed - or maybe they just don´t fly much.

The Calafate airport was just as nice as the Bariloche airport - it seemed new as well. I had expected to be walking on the tarmac again, but was greeted by a jetway into the airport. We decided to share a cab (22 pesos) from the airport to the toursit office in Calafate with a couple of women from Sydney that we met in line for the flight from Bariloche. Meanwhile, what appeared to be a resident cat made its way around the baggage claim area. Strange, I thought. The lugagge from all of us barely fit in the taxi, but we managed, and off we went to Calafate.

The trip was uneventful and we were soon at the tourist office trying to find suitable hotels as well as options for seeing the glaciers. We decided on a less expensive hotel which we were told was 60 pesos, but didn´t include breakfast. We chose it because it was relatively close the travel agencies that we wanted to visit and because we felt we spent too much money while in Bariloche. We walked the few blocks from the tourist office and soon found ourselves at the Cerro Cristal. Margarita went in to check out the rooms and found that it was 50 pesos (instead of 60) and breakfast was included.

However, when I went to take the suitcase into the hotel, I found that it was leaking red fluid. The jam we bought in Bariloche? Nope. It was the bottle of ¨mountain wine¨ we had bought at a tourist trap on the Curcuito Chico in Bariloche. I had forgotten about it. Note to self - don´t ever pack glass bottles with other things you don´t want to get wet or stained. Yes, I´m sure you all remember such things when traveling, but we didn´t. This combined with Michaela´s complaining and the room´s lack of a TV had Margarita frustrated. The wine-soaked clothing and Margarita´s frustration were getting to me. In all of the rooms we had been in to date, cable TV was available and Margarita had been taking advantage of it to catch up on Buffy, the Vampire Slayer. Tonight was an episode she didn´t want to miss.

After briefly considering leaving hotels and searching for a laundromat, Margarita asked about getting a TV in our room and found out that they had a TV available for our use so that she could see Buffy. Sometimes the little things are very important. Then I found out that the hotel would only charge us 12 pesos to clean our clothing, which settled that issue. Most importantly, we got Michaela entertained and fed so that she stopped complaining - and not necessarily in that order.

We went to the supermarket in search of milk for Michaela and when we were filling a bottle for her, we ran into the Argentine woman/US man couple that we had met on the boat trip to Isla Victoria. While we had flown from Bariloche, they had returned to Buenos Aires to drop off their daughter at her new job and then flown from Buenos Aires to Calafate that morning. Small world. After talking about their planned excursions (and learning that there were more available than the tourist office told us), we decided to go to the travel agency they used and ended up scheduling the same excursion on Sunday. Since we have Michaela, we can´t go on the glacier mini-treks (a stroller can´t be used and they don´t allow backpacks), so tomorrow we´ll head to the Moreno glacier, which is one of the few that isn´t actually receding. Both trips are full-day trips, so our plate is filled for both of the days we are here.

Dinner was at the hotel, which was convenient, since Michaela fell asleep pretty early. It was cheap - 10 pesos each and consisted of pesto with spaghetti noodles and baked meat. It was actually quite good. We were also given a pitcher of what seemed like Tang, which I enjoyed.

Good night - off to the glaciers in the next few days!

Posted by mike at May 15, 2003 06:27 PM