El Calafate

The rest of town looked much like this.

One of the stores displayed these. An Argentine pleasure and passion. Nearly everyone uses this stuff (maté). It's some herb on which they pour hot water, e.g. like a tea, and sip it. I tried it in Ecuador, where a couple of Argentinians were volunteers running the hostel in Quito. They laughed when they saw my face. It was bitter and pretty disgusting. They said that they thought so too, the first time around. I said, and what the hell kept you coming back for more? It's even found in Syria and Lebanon, even though I did not find it there.

Once the spring thaw hits, this will be all part of the lake and completely submerged.

With the glacier trip, time went by quickly. Don't ask me what this is. It was near the city square, such as it was.

For me, to my delight, the morning I stepped out of the hostel, waiting for the VES bus to come and pick me up, I had this cool, large bird landing not far from me and very unconcerned about me frantically opening my closed and packed camera bag to get my camera and right lens out. My bird expert tells me that it is a Back Faced Ibis. The only other one I saw was in Brazil.

 

And then there was this one, the one that took me to Buenos Aires.

 

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