El Calafate

Our first glimpse of Argentina turns out to look very much like Chile! But we have only just hopped over the border from Puerto Natales to another sleepy little town called El Calafate, the main thoroughfare for tourists wanting to visit the Perito Moreno glaciar only 50km out of town. The glaciar is absolutely enormous, the surface area is bigger than Buenos Aires! And it´s not even the biggest one in Patagonia, it´s popularity deriving instead from its close proximity to land, and is easily reached by boat. This is a terrible picture, but hopefully gives a sense of how vast it was:

Clare and I managed to work up quite an appetite here, mainly from the awesome ice trekking we did on the glaciar (watch out when I have both my hiking boots and crampons on, I´m invincible!!). We met Dennis from the Boston office (yes, still Uncle B´s spies everywhere here) for dinner at Casmiro Bigua on Av del Libertador, supposedly one of the best grills in town. Here is my first taste of Argentinian steak!!!:

Mmmm - this is a rib eye medium rare - my choice steak. I´ll try different cuts in the next few days, but I thought I would stick to what I know. The verdict? Well, definitely good, but I think I was expecting some sort of steak nirvana and I don´t think I achieved it! The top section where all the fat is was goooooooooooooooooooooooood, but the bottom, leaner part was a bit tough going given how huge it was.

We also had our first taste of Argentinian wine here with 2 lovely bottles of Malbec. It is drier than I normally like my red wines, but very quaffable! Still not beating my obsession with Carmenere though.

Next place we tried was El Puesto, in apparently one of El Calafate´s oldest houses, with a very comprehensive wine list. We tried their house specials of pork shoulder in brown sugar, beer, served with 2 kinds of apple sauce:

And beef tenderloin stuffed with vegetables (not mozzarella as advertised on the menu, much to Clare´s disappointment):

To round off the evening, we went to the wonky bar overlooking Av Libertador, the Librebar, which is lovingly lined with books, and plays some awesome international music (live versions of Portishead, Bjork, and Tori Amos the night we were there!). We sat down to some very overpriced G&Ts, and tried their crepes with dulce con leche. We were told we had to try dulce con leche whilst in Argentina - basically a sickeningly sweet, milky caramel. I had to scrape most of it off in order to eat it, but the crepe was nice!

Off we go now to Buenos Aires - have had hundreds of recommendations as to where to go, but keep them coming!!!