Because all the trips we wanted to do were booked for today
our first full day in El Calafate consists of not much more than hanging around
town. This isn’t necessarily a bad
thing, as we have had a lot of travelling so far. To put it in context we have travelled the length
of England in 10 days on some pretty poor roads (Ushuaia is as far south as Newcastle is north, and El
Calafate matches Plymouth).Because we are not under time pressure we start the day fairly late, and we head off to the local bird sanctuary at about 11. This is the extent to which being in South America has turned us into bird watchers (and it happened the last time, I remember searching for pictures of Toucans and Condors before). This time it is the Chilean Flamingo which is our primary target, and we do get to see a few of them at the lake, although from a bit of a distance. However we do get close to some other birds, including a few birds of prey which try to swoop on a dog that is hanging around. But as with all bird watching there are more failed photos than successful ones. As well as the two small lakes that the bird reserve is built around, we also walk along the shores of Lago Argentina, the biggest lake in Argentina.
Other than that we just hang around the town all day, going
up to a mirador (viewpoint) overlooking the town (which didn’t really have much
of a view because of all the trees lining the streets), eating ice cream (made
from Calafate berries, the town is named after a type of blackberry) and
shopping for food for our upcoming trips (where we have to supply our own
lunches).In the evening we ate again at our hostel, although this time we learnt our lesson from the previous day. Instead of having a shared salad to start and two massive main courses, this time we had two soups to start, and we shared a massive main course.
No comments:
Post a Comment