Upsala Glacier cruise
Another early start at half 6 to be ready for our pick-up at 7.15am to go on our glacier cruise. Our transfer picked us up and a few more folk before going on to Puerto Banderas via Condor Alley! Took about 40mins and had to pay a National Park fee of 30 pesos to enter the park. Then on to the Catamaran Quo Vadis - pretty big boat with 3 decks, the top one being open for viewing. Wather was v. windy and was also raining a fair amount when we set off, but it started to brighten up as we got further way from port, sailing along Lago Argentino. Our route first took us up Brazo Norte and into Brazo Upsala where we saw our first icebergs. They were absolutely amazing - simply beautiful and with so many shades of prussian blue. The catamaran got surprisingly close (set you wondering about the 80% of the iceberg thats hidden under water ' its like ¨watch out!¨). After gazing in awe at these incredible ice sculptures for a while, we carried on to Lago Onelli where we had to disembark and walk 20mins through the forest to see the lake and our first glacier, Gl. Onelli. After all the walking we'd done over the last 2 weeks, 20mins was nothing!! Hardly worth lacing your boots up for!! The lake was very bleak, windy and with some very big chunks of ice floating around in it! Hardly conducive to you wanting to take a dip! We left the maddening crowds behind for a bit and wandered round the other side of the lake as far as we were allowed to go. We then found a spot relatively sheltered from the wind and hunkered down for lunch. The empanadas I'd bought in my grocery dash yesterday were much appreciated! Also had some bread and an "interesting" mix of various meats, cheese chunks and pickled onions! Mmm....

After lunch, was time to hop back on board the boat to see 2 more glaciers - Glacier Upsala and Glacier Spegazzini. Gl. Upsala is supposedly bigger in square footage than all of BA, even though both glaciers have retreated dramatically over the last decade. On the way to one of the glaciers, we saw a condor launch itself off the side of the mountain - hopefully Sam got some good pictures as i completely messed it up! We got back to P.Banderas around 5pm, so it was a long and tiring day, but also very enjoyable. Came back along Condor Alley and so Condor Watch resumed, although many condor candidates eliminated due to a too high flappiness index. Slowly dawned on us that the best condor shots we'd got all trip were the ones in Bariloche where we thought they were vultures!

Got dropped off in town where we bought some food for supper - steak (what else?!) and potatoes and veg. Really getting to know the supermarket very well! Then back to hostel (10min walk out from centre of town) where Sam and I sprawled across the whole table and set up the computer and various charging devices! In total, Sam has already taken over 2000 pics (and i've taken nearly as many!) so there's just a little bit of photo editing to be done! Also finally started to update my blog, now that we're back in the land of the internet! The hostel was showing The Shining on DVD so i sat up late and watched that and finally went to bed around 1am. Probably woke everyone up when i went to bed, but its impossible not to make any noise at all!! Good night!!