En Patagonia: Chapter Four

 

It was evening time when the bus pulled into El Calafate bus terminal. The wind had picked up, but the grey drizzle of the day had rolled away – replaced by this crazy colour that seemed to saturate the very air.

Late-evening skies, El Calafate

I shouldered my bag and made my way down unfamiliar streets to find the place I would be staying for the next three nights. I had booked a cabin-type-thing, a perfect sort of space for one person, and with a communal grassy area outside with chairs. Much of the world was dry and dusty here – El Calafate is more Patagonian Desert than Patagonian Forest, although that lay not far away. But with the nearby water source of Lago Argentino – a freshwater lake with a surface area of 1,466 km² - it was not uncommon to see gardens of verdant green against the grey and brown of the scrubby land (I don’t think hosepipe bans are a thing here). I dropped my bag and went for a little stroll – glad of the fresh air after a day sat on buses, delighting in the wonder of taking my first steps in this new world. My legs felt unsure at first though, as if weighed down by some arbitrary sort of significance I had placed on the whole thing. It made me think about the space that we occupy in the universe, and that as I was walking down the dusty, gravel roads here, I could be just about anywhere in the world. Not because all roads look the same, but because we are much the same wherever we go - and putting a name to that place (unless that place is called home) makes very little difference in the end. I’m not entirely sure what I mean by that, except possibly for this: I had dreamt of Argentina for so long that maybe I had built up some sort of grand personal importance about the place. But in reality, I had simply stepped off a bus, and now I was here, and I didn’t feel any different at all. It made me think that I could have stepped off a bus just about anywhere and I would have felt exactly the same – a little unsure, a little worn down and weary perhaps from the months that had gone before. Whatever changes that Argentina might bring about in me were yet to come – not as a lightning bolt moment, but rather as a gradual accumulation of experiences and time. 

Not because all roads are the same....

The following morning, I had booked to go on a tour of the Perito Moreno Glacier – approximately 80km by bus from El Calafate. I wondered if I had seen enough snow and ice recently to last a lifetime, but this was something else – it was absolutely astonishing. The glacier is 30km in length, and it is one of 48 glaciers fed by the Southern Patagonian Icefield. Of specific note is that the Perito Moreno Glacier is one of the only few glaciers in the world that is not retreating. It is understandably a tourist hotspot, and it is one of those places that even when you’re there you struggle to take in the enormity of it. At its terminus the ice stands 70 metres above the surface of Lago Argentino, with its total depth being 170 metres.

70m above the surface and 100m more beneath

There were a series of short trails that you could walk around and view the glacier from – most of them crowded with people. And all the while I knew that I was one of those people too – I was more the crowd than I was an individual person. I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who found themselves wishing that the whole experience was more conducive to quiet contemplation rather than feeling much like a fairground attraction. But that is often the compromise I suppose – you either see it like that or not at all. Besides, I suspect that much of the restlessness I felt that day was because of my ongoing struggle to adjust to life post-Rothera, rather than as a result of any particular external factor. But with all that said, I was very glad that I had had the chance to go there, and to have had that chance to feel dwarfed by something so much bigger than ourselves. I feel that for much of the time I live a small life – a life consumed by worries and trivialities, and self-absorption. A life where I don’t often look far beyond myself. And maybe this is how most of us live most of the time. And yet, having the chance to see such immensities of nature compel us to step outside of ourselves for a little while. We gain if but for a moment a wonderous new perspective on the world and of ourselves – and it might feel like nothing much, or it might feel like everything, but it feels different whether in the quiet, or in the crowd.

The Perito Moreno Glacier