I'm still a stranger in a strage land

Weird place-ness continues...

Yesterday we got picked up before the sun came up to go out for 10 hours, 7 of which were on a boat to experience the crazy Glaciers of El Calafate. We got to the port, got on a catamaran (boy, do I love a catamaran), and set sail for a long haul over the weirdest water that I have ever seen. It's called "glacial milk" here because it is glacier water, and the sediments are held in permanent suspension. Here's a pretty good representation of what it looks like against a wall of rock, which is what this whole place is made out of:


We started to see some icebergs, which were small after seeing the ones in Antarctica, but still very pretty:




check out the water dripping off of this one:


Eventually we rounded a corner and were shows way off in the distance, Upsala Glacier, which is packed in with bergs, so we could not get very close. They wheeled us around the corner and we saw this, flowing like an avalanche (in slow motion), coming down the mountain (thanks Pepper). This is Seco. Check out how the trees roll right up to just before the glacier line:


And then round another corner to see Spegazzani, which rolls into the lake:


(that wall of glacier, up from the lake surface is about 100 meters tall, just for scale).


I think this piece of ice is proof that there are Decepticons hidden in there somewhere, waiting for Megatron to find the all-spark and return them to service:


ANd then a long haul over to another finger of this impossibly huge lake (like, you sometimes cannot see the other side, big) to see Perito Moreno (also really huge), but it was really sunny out and very difficult to photograph. I bet Chris has better ones:




And then back through the desert (this is right outside of the port)


for a bus ride home through every crazy steep, dirt road in this town in a huge bus to drop everyone back off at their hotels. I'd tell you more about that, except that it would make my mom concerned for my safety and I'd have to get an email about it about not getting on buses like that again.

Today we are off to El Chalten, where we hope to see Mount Fitz Roy. I'm not sure what the big deal is about this mountain, but Chris wants to see it, so 3 hours of us driving through Guanacos is what we will do!