TRULY MINTY GLACIERS

So, Day 2 in Bariloche - Sam woke up with a v sore throat and the inklings of a cold, poor love. Goes to show what nasty things await those who take 3 wks off work to go gallavanting around South America....

After yesterday's adventure of the Circuito Chico, we opted to go off the beaten path a little and head towards the glacier of Mount Tronador instead of the more regular touristy route of driving the Circuito Grande. Picked up the car from the supervised car park at 9am and headed out of Bariloche. Got to the park at around 11am (after numerous photo op stops!) and figured we'd be easily there and back to the glacier in a couple of hours, if that! Hmm. Our little white rental VW Polo wasn't really your classic off-roading touring vehicle, so it took us about 3hrs on unpaved, bumpy and generally liability insurance-defying "roads" to make it to the closest point of the glacier. Was absolutely worth the arduous drive, though, as the glacier was absolutely spectacular. Just after we arrived, a big chunk fell off (which i managed to capture in a sequence of perfectly blurred photos), so then began a game of cat and mouse between us, the glacier and my handheld JVC camcorder as we tried to capture the next big chunkfall on video. After about half an hour of sitting around, mentally willing the glacier to release a few bits just for fun, we gave up and carted our frozen bottoms back to the car, safe in the knowledge that the microsecond we'd drive away, a huge piece would go spectularly crashing to the valley below.

Anyway, drove back with reckless disregard for the car's suspension, taking lots of pics of duck-type things on the way (subsequently learned they were Southern Lapwings - noisy buggers!). Were also loads of condors and other various birds of prey - none of which, unfortunately, conveniently hung about long enough for me to (invariably) change the lens on my camera and take a decent picture! Got back to the hostel in Bariloche around 7.30pm, after a quick shopping stop in Carrefour. Yet another kick-ass steak (got the hang of the griddle thing this time) and some nifty photo-editing before hitting the sack! Tomorrow, we catch our flight to El Calafate for the next part of our Patagonian adventure!!