The Americas Week 7 - Border crossings, penguins, rock concerts and glaciers

It's been a busy week. We started with two border crossings in two days. Ushuaia is in Argentina, I wanted to stay in Argentina, but inconveniently a bit of Chile gets in the way and seperates the bottom bit of the country from the body of it.

Fortunately the border crossings here are very smooth and fast - except if you queue for 45 minutes in the wrong line 🙄.

Whilst briefly in Chile I spent the night at a town called Cerro Sombrero (literally Hat Hill) which was purpose built in 1958 to support petroleum industry in the area - it strongly reminded me of Australian purpose built towns like Woomera, right down to the obviously limited maintenance after the initial build enthusiasm had waned.

One of the problems of swapping countries is dealing with money. Both Argentina and Chile use the Peso - but different Pesos. The Argentinan one has an exchange rate of 15 to the dollar whilst for the Chilean it's around 500. It gets very confusing working out prices and whether things are reasonably priced or not. (And as an aside it's worth noting neither country can be considered cheap - prices are on a par with Europe and Australia).

Anyway having safely made it back to Argentina my first appointment was with another Penguin colony. Nut rather than the 10's of King Penguins we saw a week ago this one had 100,000+ Magellan penguins - slightly smaller but still enchanting.

Whilst in that area I also saw the southernmost lighthouse on the American continent mainland. Unfortunately I couldn't get closer than the photo below because it was back over the border in Chile. Later in the trip the hunt will be on for the northernmost one!

From therr it was off to El Calafate to see a glacier. But when I got to the town I found the town had its annual music festival on and was packed solid. Turns out all the concerts were free and huge numbers of Argentinians travel to it. So what could I do but attend.

This band above used the traditional means to make sure the males og the audience were happy. But the band belowe, Los Fabulous Cadillacs, who have apparently been an Argentinan staple since 1985, just used good music and energy - a fantastic night in a packed crowd (another aside; whilst alcohol did not appear to be banned virtually no one was drinking and it wasn't sold there. Instead families from toddlers to grandparents attended as big groups - a pleasant idea)

Having enjoyed the town and music for a couple of days it was off to see the glacier which is the towns normal tourist attraction. A few facts, 5 kilometres wide and 800m deep at its core, 70m tall at its front. It had to be one of the more awesome and impressive sights I have seen in my travels. Apart from that I'll let the photos tell the story.

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