Lisa to the rescue again! Plus glaciers, and murder!!

El Calafate
Perito Moreno Glacier
Incidents
Champers!

Before continuing I'm just going to do a quick runthrough of the overland gang. I will be mentioning them a lot, so here's who and where they are from. Group pic is also below.

Crew
South Africa: Pete
Australia/UK: Kirsten
UK: Graham

Group
UK: Heather, Vanessa, Sue, Keith, Jeanne, Neil, Anthony, Tony, Robin, Terry & Lesley, Steve & Karen, Colin & Jane
N. Ireland: Ken
Australia: Duncan & Angela, Geoff
France/UK: Francois
Denmark: Mikkel

Now, back to the trip. With no more locker mishaps we left Puerto Madryn and headed en masse to the bus terminal to catch a sleeper coach to El Calafate. Before pulling out of the station a passenger alighted from our bus after discovering he was on the wrong one - not something you want to discover 18 hours down the line! Gazing out of the top deck window I watched him take his bags from the luggage compartment. I noticed that he had removed a bag with bright yellow padlocks, which was just like Geoff's. I also noticed that the bag had a brand new Thermarest attached to the side, again just like Geoff's. At this stage a little lightbulb went ding and I realised feck sake it was Geoff's bag and either by an honest mistake, or an opportunist manoeuvre, it was now being transferred to another bus. Cue frantic hollering up the bus and exaggerated hand gesturing trying to get Geoff's attention to his bag's plight. Thankfully Kirsten alighted from the coach and sorted the issue out with the officials. Geoff's bag was rightfully returned to our coach. The attendants were super apologetic to Geoff and gave him a bottle of 'champagne' for his troubles. Being the fine gentleman that he is, Geoff presented me with the bubbly and we toasted my eagle eyes. This spate of incidents and my ability to save the day has me veering into superhero territory - will have to come up with an alias for this new found career path!

Despite the minor baggage hiccup, this second sleeper bus totally rocked. The staff ensured that the movies they showed were either in English or at least had subtitles. We played bus bingo which did wonders for helping me recognise spanish numbers; unfortunately none of our group won the bottle of wine top prize. Views of the Andes as we headed into El Calafate were amazing, I'm a big fan of pretty snow capped mountains!

On arriving in the town we checked into a luxurious apartment 'hostel'. Me and Heather shared a room that consisted of two single beds and a double bed in the middle. Needless to say with all that space I had major bag explosion issues, thankfully so did the rest of the group. Having too much room to pile luggage can be a very bad thing indeed.

Went to see the absolutely jaw-dropping Perito Moreno glacier in Los Glaciares National Park and I spent about 4 hours watching the glacier. That's right, 4 hours watching a glacier!!! Seriously there was always something cracking or falling off. You kept seeing different formations, being awed by the different shades of blue, listening to the resounding roars of the masses of ice crashing into the lake, watching the sunlight reflecting off different sections - it was utterly enthralling. The glacier front is 5km long and 60 metres above the water. I would have happily stayed there all day. We waited for ages hoping to see a massive rupture similar to the calving in 2004, however we had no such luck. Instead we were treated to many small ruptures and a significant collapse just as we were leaving. Everyone left beaming, delighted with our stay.

The following day I went with a smaller group to Laguna Nimez, an ecological reserve, to try and see some pink flamingos. Unfortunately they were a distance away so no close up photos were taken. Instead I had to satisfy myself with seeing them though the binoculars. We did however witness a mass duckling genocide at the beaks of evil seagulls. A pair of ducks with their six ducklings were swimming happily in a stream and before our very eyes the family was decimated down to just the parents and two chicks. It was horrific, yet a bit David Attenborough-ish, to watch. The gulls would gang up, distract the parents, swoop down and pluck the ducklings from the water. One greedy seagull grabbed two chicks and we watched in horror as one duckling freed itself but plunged to what I presume was its death after free falling about six feet onto gravel. Another gull then promptly gobbled it up. There was an attempted intervention by a member of the group, but that sadly had the opposite outcome and simply sped up the murdering process. We left when there were still two ducklings alive, however judging by how ominously the gulls were lurking around the parents, I would bet that none of the chicks made it out of the stream.