ice age 3

Our hostel friend, Andy, gave us great advice about the park. One thing he mentioned was the glacier trip, which we decided we would like to do. The first day of the trek, we hiked to the campground by Lago Grey and signed up for the trip the following day. The next morning we were glad we had signed up before because there were a few people waiting and hoping that someone wouldn´t show up. Our guides gave us our packs which were equiped with crampons, a harness, a mug, a chocolate bar and a cereal bar.
We hopped on the smaller motor boat that took us out to the boat. The boat ride took about 45 minutes and took us past large pieces of the glacier that had fallen off and close to the face of the glacier. There is an island in the middle of the face of Glacier Grey that creates 2 very different looking appearances. On one side the face was sharp and jagged, which would have been like the white water of a river. The other side was more like rounded rolling hills, the eddy of the river. Big pieces of ice fell off as we were passing; it was the most incredible sound. We handed Dave´s little digital camera that I had been using to a woman to take our picture. She turned to us to see how to use the zoom, and the camera fell out of her hands. In slow motion, the camera bounced on the upper deck of the boat where we were standing and slid towards the edge. There was a chorus of gasps from everyone, including us. Unfortuntely, it appeared that the lens had been bent, and I was unable to take pictures for the rest of the trip unless I borrowed Dave´s camera. Fortunatly, on the bus on the way out of the park 4 days later, Dave was able to fix the camera. If only we could tell the woman who dropped it that she didn´t break it. So that put a short damper on our trip out to the glacier. Thankfully, Dave is always a positive person, and was able to put the disaster behind us.
We took the little boat to the edge of the glacier and climbed up on the rocks. Our guides gave us a quick intro to the glacier and helped us into our crampons. Stepping out onto the glacier was incredible- we had perfectly sunny beautiful weather and the glacier seemed to go on forever. The beginning of the walk got my heart beating very quickly when I looked down into some of the crevaces that were extremely steep. However, most of the walk was along a more rolling landscape. There were beautiful bright blue streams that meandered through the glacier. We learned about erratic rocks (also the name of our hostel here in Puerto Natales). If I understood correctly, a small rock gets thrown up to the top of the glacier and the sun warms it, which causes it to melt a small hole through the glacier. With the help of the sun and the intense winds, these holes grow bigger and bigger and make a moulin, a deep hole in the glacier. Pretty interesting stuff. We also got to go into a small cave in the glacier. At the end of our trek, the guides rigged the ropes on a wall of ice and we had the opportunity to climb. I struggled at first, but once I got a rhythm down, I loved it! I can´t wait to try it again.

(when you get to the top, you have to kiss the caribeener, or else you have to kiss the guy who's holding your rope when you get back down... and i forget what he's called... but it's a funny saying)

We really enjoyed our day out on the glacier. I kept thinking maybe we´d see the little guy from ice age, searching for his little morsel of food.

Dave filling up a cup of delicious glacier water.

more updates to come... for now we have to figure out where to go next!