What, glaciers again?

Many of the places we have been on this trip can be compared to familiar places, but the caveats you have to make with those comparisons quickly make the act of comparing them at all seem ridiculous. For example, Iguazu falls is like Niagara falls, except 50 times bigger and in a jungle. Ushuaia feels kind of like New England in the winter, except surrounded by mountains and at the meeting point of 2 oceans where sea lions and penguins hang out. El Calafate is like a cross between Mendoza and Ushuaia, except for the enormous glaciers that you can walk on and take boats right up to. Let´s just say we´ve seen some things.

Today was the boat trip, and we saw a couple of glaciers more enormous than yesterday´s up close, and passed through an ice barrier, which is just a series of icebergs of varying sizes everywhere. Madness. We´re getting so spoiled with scenery (and over-stimulated by constant activities) that we napped on the way back (and Erika is continuing to nap as we speak), so we will probably just chill out tomorrow and let being in Patagonia sink in while I go to local hangouts to watch the US play Argentina in the basketball semifinals of the Olympics in the morning and then to watch Argentina to play in the gold medal soccer game late at night (at 1 in the morning). Ideally we would be in Buenos Aires and not this tiny town to watch the gold medal match, but that´s life. I´m holding out hope that when we arrive in Buenos Aires on Saturday afternoon they will still be celebrating an Argentine victory (they´re heavily favored against Nigeria) but we´ll see.

One other thing to mention, stray-ish dogs (I think people feed them, but during they day they just go wherever) have been everywhere here and in Ushuaia. They love love love chasing cars and barking at everything. Those of you familiar with my non-paralyzing but definitely existent fear of barking dogs can guess why I cut my run here short yesterday evening -- 2 dogs that were chasing a car decided that I was slower and easier to keep up with, but also entertaining, and kind of hopped up on me friendly-like as I stood still petrified until I realized that they only way to get them to stop was just to start running back to the town. They just ran with me, which was actually kind of cool. This may be boring to you, but it wasn´t for me.

Also, shout-out to the very nice and pleasant hostel we´re staying at, I Keu Ken. I will revoke this compliment if they screw up our laundry situation, as it looks like they might. More later!