At the turn of the century 6400 people lived in El Calafate (named for a local shrub) and nowadays thanks no doubt to internet notoriety the city has grown to 25,000 people and it shows.
Our campground was close to downtown but there was no reason to spend time there. So we cleaned and…napped.
The downtown aspires to being classy considering La Anonima is a supermarket chain but here it’s neon free and clad in wood.
The town was created in 1927 to attract immigrants to this harsh countryside but when the Glaciers National Park was created in the mountains with those lumps of ice the town became one of two centers of outdoor tourism.
The other town of El Chaltén is further north and is considered the gateway to the Fitzroy mountains and the trekking capital of Argentina. As we have Rusty the parks are closed to us so we decided to bypass that town.
Argentina is struggling to overcome years of inflation and economic crises and the new president has promised tough times as he tries to curb government spending. People are out of work and public infrastructure is crumbling.
Outside the immediate downtown the city has spread into dirt streets with not much infrastructure. I was curious how people cope here but we were just another couple of tourists in a flood of them.
This is the height of summer in the southern hemisphere and that’s vacation season. Europeans are here to escape their cold winters and there are overlanders everywhere alongside Argentine vacationers and Brazilians enjoying a cold break from their tropical country. Locals are overwhelmed by is all. Shades of Key West.
This is the outskirts of town and I think it looks weird but Rusty enjoyed getting a walk here.
We took off north on Monday morning with no real plan except to drive to the town of Perito Moreno eight hours up Highway 40.
Patagonia looks like this, and I had no idea it was such a desert.
Our first stop was under a bridge and it started out pretty nice with sunshine on the turquoise waters.
Some Rusty photos to make up for sticking him doggy day care where he appeared to be quite happy.
There were tons of campers on the highway overhead. The wind picked up and we had no cover so when some locals parked up close to us in this vast snort dice we decided to leave.
Ten miles further north there was another bridge.
With wind protection we decided this would do for some time alone.
We had driven all of 33 miles from El Calafate but we had no deadlines, no need to anywhere and I’m reading a biography of Winston Churchill of all things and I’m enjoying it. Layne had 350 glacier pictures to edit for her Facebook account so she was pretty busy too.
Rusty had some sleep to catch up on.
Starlink keeps us in touch. So here we are until we get bored. Probably tomorrow.
It’s nice to be able to pull over and anchor where we feel like stopping. “I love this life” Layne said spontaneously so we must be doing something right.
