For the last four days I´ve been whiling away my time in El Calafate on the shores of Lago Argentino, staying at Hostal America del Sur which occupies a prime spot overlooking the town and the lake. Like Chalten, El Calafate is a tourist town set up to extort money from helpless foreigners who want to go and see the Perito Moreno glacier nearby. Despite the mock alpine chalets and habitual outdoor sport shops, it has a great feeling of openess and acts as a springboard for National Park Los Glaciares and other spectacular countryside.

On the first night in the hostel, I met a Danish guy who said that he was bored of his home country and couldn`t wait to escape. While the rest of the Scandinavian countries were blessed with mountain ranges and lakes, Denmark had nothing. The only mitigating factor is the Danish women, and even then, he compared them unfavourably with the Brazilian girls he had seen in Rio during "carnival". Apparently girls in Denmark "dont know how to flaunt their femininity".

America del Sur is one of the nicest hostels I have stayed in to date with a large chill out area and huge picture windows looking out to the lake. Nevertheless, one morning I woke up to find that I had been bitten at least a hundred times all over my arms and my back. The hostel denied that the beds were infested with bed bugs and implied my clothes might need a wash. The cheek! Gonna go to a lavaderia soon.

One disadvantage of Patagonia, though, is that it is frequented by the more mature traveller. Since leaving Buenos Aires, I havn`t met anyone below the age of twenty and doddery old guys aren`t an uncommon sight. This probably reflects the price of goods in Patagonia; in most of Patagonia, a litre bottle of Quilmes (the local beer) costs upwards of 10 pesos or two pounds. In Cordoba (and, incidentally, the home of David Nalbandian), it costs 5 pesos.

Israelis are everywhere in Patagonia. Most of them have been firing rifles and other firearms for three years and need a break. Military service must be a great way of imbuing people with certain sentiments, for good or ill. What would most British youths turn out like if they spent three years being told that the world was in the hands of a Jewish conspiracy. On my penultimate night in El Calafate, I was dragged to the casino by my three Israeli roomates and watched as they staked my fifty pesos on roulette. The seemed to think that they had come up with an infallible formula for making money by putting nine chips on the diagonals of the thirty six squares. Maybe they were right because two hours later I left one hundred pesos richer.

The real highlight of my stay was the trip to the Perito Moreno Glacier, a 50km tongue of ice that descends from the Campo de Hielo Sur, before breaking up in Lago Argentino. I was woken up one morning at 5am to the sound of my Israeli roomates forraging around, intent on getting to the park before 830 when you have to pay for an entry permit. I left in bright sunshine, but the rainclouds became ever thicker, spattering the bus with light rain and snow. Even in these conditions the glacier was spectacular. You look down at the snout of glacier, a vertical wall of ice 40 metres high which extends back for tens of kilometres. Deep fissures divide it into great daggers of ice which advance around a metre a day in the centre, letting off creaks and groans. Photos can never capture the intense, pulsating blue of the glacier. Every now and again, a huge chunk of ice, the size of a car, breaks off the face of the glacier and plunges into the water below with a boom that reverberates for tens of seconds. Some said it sounded like thunder. In my opinion, it sounded like a condensed, compressed explosion, ripping the air apart. From the top of the walkways you can appreciate the glacier`s extent, from the bottom, its height. The volumes of ice are almost inconceivable. Its all the more amazing when you reflect that you can only see a small portion of this glacier, which is itself but a small finger of ice descending from a huge icefield, which itself pales in comparison to the ice field which once covered Patagonia, extending from near the Pacific to the Falkland Islands.

The following day I cycled around Lago Argentino, repeatedly pursued by dogs of every size and type. I discoverd yesterday that I can´t ride faster than a dog can run. Even when two small dogs are chasing you, their barks and bared teeth make it a pretty scary experience.

At the moment, I am in Puerto Natales, Chile, preparing to depart for Parque Nacional Torres del Paine, on a walk (the "w" which should last about four days. I thought for a long time about hiring a tent, but I just know that I would end up wet and miserable. Gonna stay in the refugios, despite their inflated price. Just went to the supermarket to buy provisions and came out with rather more food than I had intended. Huge portions of rice and lentels it is then, washed down with some nutritious canned tuna and anchovies. As a side note, I would like to say how much I miss my mums cooking. Only when I started to buy food myself and to cook it did I realise what I was missing at home. Fantasising about food has been a staple of this trip. There just arent any grazing opportunities when youre travelling. And no, they dont have any Jacobs cream crackers. The apostrophe has just stopped working. I think thats a sign I should sign off. Until later.....