Hyena tourists

I have so many pictures of glaciers and icebergs to sort through from yesterday, so I’m starting with the easier ones that include people.

We did the All Glacier Tour yesterday and saw a million icebergs, Spegazzini, and Perito Moreno again. We should have seen Upsala, the biggest glacier touching the lake, with a surface area four times that of Buenos Aires (!), but the channel was blocked by icebergs so that’s why we saw Perito Moreno again. Which I found out is as big as Buenos Aires. My goodness.



They were all incredible, and when there was no blue ice in sight I looked at incredible mountains with tons of small waterfalls feeding the lake. And roaming the mountains, believe it or not, was a bunch of wild cattle. I didn’t realize cows could live without people taking care of them, especially down here in the cold, and especially on the harsh mountain terrain! Apparently they were abandoned by settlers.



We also saw some wild Andean condors, with a wingspan of 3 meters. I think that’s probably the big bird that I saw on the way out of Bariloche that I mentioned in the last post.

I was expecting Perito Moreno to be really boring, since I looked at it for about three or four hours straight yesterday, but actually today there was some really cool new dark blue ice in front of it. I think the guide said it came from deep down. The coolest thing of all was when we were leaving and we saw the glacier calve a big chunk! (I hope I’m using that verb correctly.) I felt so lucky to have witnessed that. I didn’t get any pictures; we were already far away and it happened so fast.



I made friends with a really cute little girl sitting in front of me. At first I was playing games with her like making faces and popping out from behind the seat, but after a few minutes she got relaxed enough to start chattering a little and I realized she was probably too old for those sorts of games. I don’t really know. She mostly just said words and some very simple sentences. The really great part was when she kept saying, “El señor! El señor!” over and over, looking behind me, and eventually I turned around and realized that she was talking about this old guy who was sort of pressed up against the glass about eight feet away and looking into the cabin. He may or may not have actually been looking at her; I didn’t look closely. But whatever he was doing, he stayed like that for a couple more minutes, long enough for her to start saying, “Miedo! Miedo! El señor! Miedo!” which means “scared.” At first I think she really was scared but her parents and I told her not to be and then she started joking about it.



That reminds me of another funny thing involving windows. In the bathroom there was one stall that had a really big window, but it was reflective to people from the outside. Still, when there were people outside literally aiming a camera straight at the window for a couple pictures, I just couldn’t bring myself to use that stall even when the other one was occupied. I guess it would make a cool picture for them, since they saw it as a mirror, but it was just way too weird!



The tour should have included some hiking around Upsala, but we didn’t end up hiking at all. That made the day kind of boring because we were on the boat forever (somehow I thought there would be more exciting moments). Still, it wasn’t bad, just more chill than expected. Well, except for prime photo opportunity moments, at which we were all competing like hyenas after the kill. That boat definitely needed more deck space!


This dramatic picture was totally an accident. I took a self-portrait without realizing the camera was zoomed in so far.



There was also competition for seats, at least in my mind…when we got on, all the rows of two seats near the windows were taken, so we had to sit in the middle section. Then I found an unoccupied row, and we sat there for about ten minutes before a woman showed up and said it was hers. When we moved, I noticed that she took the window seat and her husband took the window seat of the row in front of her. That is totally unfair, right? You can’t use two rows for two people! So I passive-aggressively asked to sit next to the guy, hoping to make them feel awkward enough that they would move to the same row. But they didn’t, and I gave up after a few minutes. Well, I thought it was kind of a boring day, but there was plenty of human drama apparently, ha ha.