Perito Moreno Glacier

 On Monday, March 20th, we drove through El Calafate, along the lakeshore, where we saw a number of birds, including flamingos.

Some distance outside of town, by the side of the road, there was a makeshift shrine to the folk saint Gauchito Gil, a nineteenth-century army deseerter, killed by police, who supposedly worked miracles after his death.  He is not at all recognized by the Catholic Church, but truck drivers and others make offerings (beer, cigarettes, etc.) at roadside shrines like this all over Argentina.

 

The principal attraction of Los Glaciares National Park is the Perito Moreno glacier, which flows into Lago Argentino, frequently "calving" little icebergs into the lake.  Our first stop was at an overlook.

Then we went on to the pasarelas, the wooden walkways directly across from the glacier.  I started with my 50 mm. lens, then shifted to the 24 mm. wide-angle lens, but after a while, ice is ice: I took a lot of pictures from many different viewpoints, but many of them are nearly indistinguishable from many of the others.

We ate our box lunches in the parking lot, then got on the bus to go down to the boat dock, for our boat ride up close to the glacier.

After getting back to our hotel, we walked past a herd of sheep, visited a little church, and eventually got downtown, where Mary Joy bought some craft items at an artesan market, while I picked up, at a bookstore, a book of "Mafalda" comic strips.  I had been introduced to Mafalda in one of my extension Spanish courses at the University of Minnesota.  "Mafalda" is to Argentina what "Peanuts" is to the U.S., and in Argentina, Mafalda's picture is as ubiquitous as Snoopy's is in the United States.

We eventually had dinner (oven-cooked lamb, sort of like a pot roast) at La Lechuza.  Pretty good.