El Calafate is Spanish for Freezing!

Panchos Hot Dogs and 24-Hour Internet Store
El Calafate, Pagatonia, Argentina

So its been a week since I´ve been able to add to this blog. Forgive me. I feel like I´m in confessional. But its been very tough to get connected when I´ve been traveling like mad south from Buenos Aires to Patagonia where free time is scarce and internet shops that have good connections are even scarcer (or more scarce, not sure the grammar here).

The internet connection in El Calafate is 256mbps...256...remember the 90s everyone? But hey, this is almost the end of the world down here. I´m an overnight bus from the most southern city in the world.

So there is a lot to cover, lots of cool pictures and little happenings. Over the past week (where the hell is the colon on this keyboard).

Fri-Sun - I spent the weekend in Buenos Aires, having good dinners and having a bit to drink with a cool 23-year old Aussie named Andrew.
Mon-Wed am - flew south to Puerto Madryn, where I saw whales from the beach, elephant seals, pink flamingoes, salty dog argentinian fishermen, and of course the cous de gras, about 200,000 magellanic penguins in Punta Tombo.
Wed am - tomorrow (Saturday) am - flew from Trelew (south of Puerto Madryn) to El Calafate, land of the glaciers. Wednesday and yesterday saw and walked on the Perito Moreno Glacier, and today took a 3 hour bus north to El Chalten, to hike and view the Cerro Fitz Roy mountain range. Fly to Buenos Aires tomorrow for a stopover to Mendoza.

I will definitely upload some pics when I get to Buenos Aires tomorrow. But since the connection speed here is only 256, all I was able to upload were six pictures from B.A. Six. They are pretty random. I had a whole picture story for you. But this computer here only allowed me to upload these six. So I´ll try to put a story together based on these randoms.

Uh, so this one is of a dude walking dogs. Actually, Buenos Aires is an extremely dog-friendly city. I saw a park that had about 500 dogs playing with each other. And the owners were running around frantically trying to leash theirs up. Plenty of dog walkers too. And plenty of doggie poop. So for those coming to Buenos Aires, please watch where you step. I asked these dogs here where the nearest ATM was. Luckily the yellow lab spoke English and told me the nearest ATM he knew of was a few blocks away, next to the Petco. The black poodle mix refused to help me and would only speak French. I know he knew how to speak English though. What an a-hole.



I ate a LOT of steak while I was in Buenos Aires. It´s hard not to.
People eat it as an afternoon snack, a late-night snack. I saw someone in my hostel brushing his teeth with a t-bone.
I actually was walking around quite a bit and last Saturday, and I went down to Avenida Florida, the big walk of shopping, and I walked into a really nice galeria. And they had a food court downstairs. This picture is of a place called La Branca I think. Look at the pictures on their menu. Left to right - let´s see - steak, something chicken-related, burger, burger with cheese, steak sandwich, steak sandwich with cheese, parilla (basically a platter of meat), another steak, another steak, and finally another steak. What´ll it be sir? I´ll have the steak with the green sprig of parsley.



This was lunchtime. I have a great picture of three old ladies arguing with each other, dining on steak. And another young couple, eating the parilla, which is a sizzling platter of like 6 different cuts of meat. I´ve always been a steak fan, but this is like one of those things that you wish for, and then when you actually get it, it´s not as cool as you thought. In 7th grade, I remember going back and forth with my buddy Dan Brewster on having an unlimited supply of different foods- and how that would indeed be heaven. We started with pizza, barbecue chicken...good openers...then we moved into the serious stuff- ice cream, candy bars...I remember finally trumping his unlimited Chips Ahoy chocolate chip cookies with an unlimited supply of Doritos Cool Ranch tortilla chips. Game Over. That was indeed heaven on earth - having all the artifically flavored tortilla chips you wanted. But the following year I remember realizing my dream and almost vomiting after consuming one and a half small bags. It´s just not the way you envision it. So for this I think it´s better that I didn´t meet Vanna White like I wanted to back in 1987.

This picture below explains something my mother has taught me. So there I was, still in the food court, having polished off a small steak (very delicious) and I see this line forming over at some place called Freddo. It was the only line in the entire food court. And following my mother´s intuition of jumping in any line of people over 10 in size and figuring out what it is later, I was in. As I moved forward slowly, I found it it was a gelato place.

It was worth the wait. Chocolate and Dulce de Leche. Fantastic. Thanks Mom!

Below is a picture from my steak Saturday night. Yes, steak for lunch and dinner. This was not just any steak dinner though. This was one of the best dining experiences of my life. It´s a place in the Puerto Madero area (the port) in B.A. It´s an area that is getting some really nice restaurants and shops, right on the water. This place has been there for a bit - it´s called Cabaña Las Linas. It was incredible. I went with Andrew the Aussie. We decided it was time to break out of the hostel life and live large. For just under $60 each we got the best steaks we´ve ever had (they have their own ranch in Las Pampas where the cows graze all day), a great bottle of Malbec, salad, warm bread, appetizers, soup, and full stomachs. We had about 6 different people waiting on us, all in perfect time, it was like watching a concert. There was a baker that brought out fresh breads periodically. The best was the chef who cooked our steaks actually came and delivered the steaks to our table.
I had the Lomo - the little tag says ëstoy jugoso¨(i am rare).

And this is how I wanted to relax after that dinner. This ad is all around town. I think it´s the new corporate casual ¨dress down fridays¨Argentinians are implementing.

That´s it for now. It´s 1:15am and I need to catch some zzzs.

Tomorrow I´ll update the venture to Puerto Madryn and the penguin adventure, and then my time in El Calafate over the past three days.

Buenos Nachos Doritos todos.

Have a great weekend.