South America adventure Oct/Nov 2018 part 6 - end

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Patagonia

Torres del Paine

It is about a 3 hour drive from Mount Fitz Roy near El Chalten to the Perito Moreno Glacier, outside of El Calafate.

The Perito Moreno Glacier is one of the few advancing glaciers in the world.  It directly feeds Lago Argentino.  A thirty minute drive from El Calafate, then walking the scaffolding to the glacier is worth the trip.  Getting up close you sense the size of the glacier, but I don't fully realize it until I spot a tour boat cruising alongside.  If I didn’t look close I would not have seen it.

South America adventure Oct/Nov 2018 part 5

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Patagonia

Les Eclaireurs Lighthouse
in the Beagle strait

I always thought we were pretty remote driving through NM, AZ and UT.  We are not even close to remote compared to Patagonia.  It makes up the southern portion of Chile and Argentina.  It is huge; over 400,000 square miles, slightly larger than Texas and New Mexico combined.  It is also empty, averaging 5 people per square mile; imagine only 2 million people living in Texas and New Mexico.

We put on over 1,800 miles driving from Punta Arenas to Ushuaia, then El Chalten, El Calafate, Puerto Natales finally returning to Punta Arenas.  This is just driving from point to point, I haven’t included the miles going to the sites we visited, easily another few hundred.