Day 31 - Spending quality time at the border

Puerto Natales (Chile) to El Calafate (Argentina)

The bus station was swarming with trekkers when we rocked up arround 7:15am, many with what seem to be brand new hiking clothes and backpacks ready, to head to Torres del Paine. We've never seen so many people wearing North Face gear, and as it turns out the founder of North Face died in a kayaking accident in Southern Chile only last December. You can usually spot the Aussies - they're the ones wearing Kathmandu gear - including M!

Our bus trip today was north and back over the border to El Calafate in Argentina. The only way to get to the southernmost regions of Chile via land is via Argentina, as the Andes and the ice fields can't be crossed by normal means. This means border crossing are the norm, but they can be quite time consuming - today's entry into Argentina for our bus took at least an hour, there seemed to be just one guy on an old computer, looking up details over what was probably a slow network connection.

I saw this in El Calafate but I'm not sure what it represents, sorry.

We finally arrived in the tourist town of El Calafate, with the main drawcard being the Perito Merino glacier. We have planned for two full days here, and the weather forecast said the day after tomorrow was going to be the best day, As it turns out what we wanted to do here was booked out for tomorrow, so we think we've planned well .... we'll see!