Patagonia Day 9 - The final destination

Our final day on motorcycles. We rode from El Calafate to Los Glaciares National Park and gave the motorcycles away at a ceremony beside the Perito Moreno glacier. The day started with nobody in a hurry, except for Jeff, our mechanic. Jeff had 13 motorcycles that had taken 10 days of hard riding and had to return them to showroom shape in just a few hours. A bunch of us pitched in and helped where we could. We drove the bikes up to the carwash five-at-a-time and got all the Patagonia dirt off of them with a time to spare.

Our short ride for the day. Click here if you cannot see the map.

I only went on one bike-wash trip and then I devoted a few minutes to music. I brought with me on this trip a small travel ukulele. The body of it is about the dimensions of a 10" 2x4 and it has a concert ukulele-sized fretboard. I had taken it out a few times and played it and as bad as I am, I was still the only one there playing songs. During the long boring stretches of paved road, I kept my mind occupied by writing a song. The premise of the song was to take fictional characters and put them into the setting that we all shared in the Patagonia Rally for Rangers ride. I would ride for a while, make up a verse and when we stopped, I would write it out. I ended up with about 5 versus and managed to trim it down to three with a bridge to tie them together. My goal was to sing the song for my closing interview with the media crew and time was running out. This was the last day and all I had was a few short verses and tune in my head- I still had to figure out the chords and key. I went up to our room and wrote the song out onto paper and started putting in the chords as best as I could figure out in the short time I had to prepare. Once I felt the chords were close enough, I went and sang the song in front of the camera. My first crack at singing the song out loud was recorded. I even racked-up my harmonica and played that too. I messed up a little bit, but with all things considered, I pulled it off. Dylan and Aha were very encouraging, they liked it and I felt relieved to have completed my goal of writing and singing an original song from the roads of Patagonia. The photo at the top of the page is of me singing the song later in the day. Thanks to Phil Bond for the great photo.

Kurt and Mike are travel companions. They came to the rally together and are staying for another week to look at vintage motorcycles in Argentina.

The glacier fed lake that the town of El Calafate is built alongside. A few years ago there were 6,000 people living here. Now it is closer to 20,000 thanks to increased tourism.

Our hotel in El Calafate where we spent the morning cleaning the bikes up in preparation for the donation ceremony.

Next was to deliver these bikes to the rangers at Los Glaciares National Park. As we were fired up and ready to go, Steven asked me if I had my ukulele with me and I said "no". He encouraged me to grab it so I dashed back up to my room grabbed it and tossed it in the support truck and we headed to the park. The ride to the park was to be about an hour and we were told that it was going to be a really nice ride. It started off rather plain - if anything in Patagonia can be called plain- but it sure did change into spectacular in a hurry. Before heading to Patagonia, I had looked on Google Earth at all the places we would be going so I knew we were going to see a glacier at the head of a large lake. We were also told by Roberto, that this is probably the most beautiful scenery so far in the entire trip. But that did not prepare me for what a sight the Perito Moreno Glacier would be.

The flat road through the barren Patagonia tundra turned into a beautiful mountain road that wound its way along the shoreline at the mountain's edge. The climate too changed and where just a few minutes before there was hardly anything growing, now there was a lush forest that we were riding in, there was even a little bit of humidity. The road was smooth and twisty, a dream-come-true for motorcycle riders. Chuck took up the position of riding on Roberto's tail and the rest of us followed close behind enjoying the road and new vistas. I knew that eventually we would come around a turn with a view of the lake and see a glacier. What I was not prepared for was just how amazing that view would be.

This is the Perito Moreno glacier from about 10KM away. The wall of ice that you see is feeding into two lakes. It is about 60 meters high and another 120 meters under water. The lake that you don't see is off to the right side of this picture and all the pictures you will see from the Park are of the part of the glacier that you don't see in this picture.

This is the roadside lookout where we were first able to see the glacier.

Panoramic view of the lake and Perito Morino Glacier.

Arlette and myself. We spent another day together in El Calafate when our flights were cancelled.

Elias enjoying the view

Chuck was my roommate during the whole rally and I could not have asked for better company.

After leaving this roadside "mirador", we continued down the twisty road until we arrived at the park. We checked out the sights briefly, grabbed coffee and then made our way down to the boat tours where we spent an hour getting a close-up view of the glacier with the hope of seeing it calve. Whenever our backs were turned from the giant glacier, we would hear a thunderous crack and and pounding splash but it seemed we never got to see a sizable chunk of ice fall. We did see some pieces of ice break off but they were rather small- or at least that was the perspective. The ice sheet is so huge that what looked like a small block of ice falling was actually the size of a Lincoln Navigator and it would tumble and crash its way to the lake below and a give rise to a sizable splash-wake. The whole place was incredible as were the park facilities with several kilometers of walkways along the side of the cliff overlooking the massive blue glacier.

Little icebergs that calve off the glacier and melt into the turquoise water.

Preparing to board the boat

Looking down the lake. If you were on the glacier, this would be your view.

Panoramic shot of the glacier. Remember, this is only half of it.

Who could turn down Johnny Walker Black on Glacier ice. You can see million-year-old life-forms frozen in the ice.

A close up view of the bug frozen in the ice.

Preserved for a million years? Still tastes good with Johnny.

There was a reception being held at the park while we were there and they were serving this wine. It was not for us.

My beta motorcycle provided me with 2776 KM of trouble-free, mostly wide-open-throttle operation.

After the boat tour, it was time to give the bikes away to the park rangers. We lined up the bikes and one at a time we rode the bikes up and presented the keys to the appreciative park rangers. It was a very gratifying experience to give the keys away after all the time and miles that we spent together. We learned that the motorcycles would be shared among other less-funded provincial parks here in the Patagonia. Los Glaciares National Park is a very well funded park and it is not really suited for motorcycle patrol, but we saw first hand in the past 9 days the vast and rugged terrain where these bikes will be invaluable tools for the parks service in both Argentina and Chile.

A park ranger at Los Galciares National Park taking one of the bikes for a ceremonious ride.

Our banner at the edge of the Perito Moreno Glacier

After the ceremony, we gathered in this reception area and enjoyed some empanadas and wine with our new friends. Afterward, we parked all the bikes inside and took a bus back to El Calafate.

As we were finishing with the reception, I grabbed my ukulele from the truck and brought it down to the reception just in case a musical opportunity arose. I was not going to try and play in the the reception room as it was a small glass room with too much echo. It then dawned on me that I was at one of the most amazing places I have ever seen and I had better get a picture or a video of me singing and playing ukulele here. I mentioned to Aha that I would like to at least take advantage of the setting for a photo opportunity but he thought it prudent to take that one step further. As the ceremony wrapped up he announced that I was going to play the song I wrote back up at one of the glacier's observation decks. I didn't have the words or chords memorized so I needed a music stand. Steven volunteered to be the music stand and he held the lyrics up for me one page at a time while I sang the strange little song that I wrote.

Steven as a music stand with the Perito Moreno glacier in the background as I played my travel-uke and sang the song I wrote from the seat of a park ranger's motorcycle. I borrowed this picture from Arlette's Facebook post.

When I got home, I corrected the chords and learned the lyrics. I also like the sound of it on guitar better so I recorded myself in my Livingroom.

Below are a few more photos from the park

Finish this off with a selfie.

Full photo gallery on Google Images