Patagonia Photo Trip – The Beginning
Buenos Aires & El Calafate
Fred and I signed up for a 12-day Photographic Tour of Patagonia. It was sponsored by Natural Habitats, a very eco-friendly outfit that does active tours all over the world. We anticipated scenery, wildlife, remote places, and a good time. NatHab made all the arrangements once in South America, we just had to show up and enjoy.
Our group was small, 8 participants. Fred and I, and one other couple, plus 4 solo male travellers made up the group. Zapa was our guide for the entire trip. The men of the group all had huge DSLR cameras with multiple lenses and gadgets. Sylvia had her iPhone, and I had my point-and-shoot camera (which has a great telephoto lens and optional manual settings).
Getting to South America, and El Calafate in particular, was a bit of a journey. Door to door, it was 54 hours of travelling! This included an overnight stay at Buenos Aires. It was never our goal to spend the night there, but flight schedules made it the only practical alternative. In the end, I’m glad we did as it broke up the trip. I was also pleasantly surprised on how much I liked the city – or at least the little piece of it we saw. We were also fortunate to arrive and depart from the same airport in BA – the International airport and Domestic airport are an hour apart!
Buenos Aires is a mix of old and new. There were some huge trees that were part of the city landscape. We did pass a very derelict part of the city, so I’m not fooling myself – poverty does exist there. But where we stayed I felt very safe. We walked four blocks to and from a local restaurant and detoured through a park. Temperatures were warm and it was very enjoyable.
The next morning, we returned to the airport and flew to El Calafate, Argentina. Zapa and Senod (our driver in Argentina) were there to greet us. After a stroll around town, we met and had dinner with the rest of the group at a nearby restaurant.
Calafate is a very colorful place and is a mecca for tourism. It was small and had many restaurants and shops along it’s main street. The picture below shows a bridge where folks have put locks in the wire lattice. I guess the tradition in Paris has carried over.
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