After months of being in temperate zones that ranged from hot to the seventh ring of hell, Beth and I were excited about the prospect of a little cold weather. We arrived in Ushuaia, bundled and layered (with almost all the clothes we owned), welcoming the views of Winter Wonderland.

As we drove into the most southern city in the world, we oo’d and ah’d as the moonlight cast an illuminating glow on the vast white valley and snow covered mountains in the distance. It looked like something out of a Stephen Spielberg movie. We woke up no less stunned by the view from our room, white peaks jutting up before the vast freezing ocean.

We spent the first morning in our homey little ski lodge of a hostel soaking up the free breakfast that consisted of medialunas (of course), toast, jams, tea and coffee, and the best of all - home-made cakes and breads. It was a bit pricey for us, but we were quickly deciding that it was worth the extra pesos (http://www.posadacostaserena.com.ar/). After breakfast, we threw on our winter gear and left to explore the city.

The main street was lined with cute, tourist-oriented clothing stores and lots of restaurants advertising tenedor libres (”free fork,” meaning all you can eat buffets), parillas (barbeques), and giant King Crab meals. Somehow, ice cream seemed to be a popular treat, as there were stores selling Italian-style gelato about every block. How these stores managed to stay afloat during the winter freeze was beyond us.

We looked in some of the tourist offices to see about Antarctica cruises, just for laughs. We learned that during spring and summer months you can do a 12 night cruise for $3000 (Beth: that’s the walk-on rate — buy ahead and it costs over $6K). It was too cold by the time we were there, and the cruises had stopped running. Too bad, too, because that is so in our price range…

We headed down to the waterfront and were greeted by more breathtaking views of the jagged mountains surrounding the shore. During our four day stay, we took a few more trips down to the water to see how the view changed with new layers of snow added from the previous evening’s dusting.

One night we discovered “lomito” sandwiches, a thin layer of steaming filet mignon beef with ham, cheese, lettuce, tomato, and a fried egg piled on top.

Another night, we decided we had to give the odd Ushuaia-style barbeque a try. They cooked their meat by putting the whole animal in a strange, metal cage (reminiscent of some sort of medieval torture device) and tilt it over a big fire pit. Most of these barbeques came with a tenedor libre. Beth and I, ever the bargain shoppers, managed to find the cheapest one in town, a combination of barbeque and Chinese food. It was actually quite good… the pork could hardly have been more tender.

Another night, we stayed in with some cheese, olives, meats, and a bottle of wine and played chess by the heat of a small fireplace-shaped furnace. “We forget that there are things about the cold that we like,” we mused.

We spent our last night finally catching up on our blogging, uploading pictures, and updating the webpage using the hostel’s free internet. We pulled an “all-nighter”, which wasn’t hard considering our bus left at 5am.

That day was a bit rough, since we had a 12-hour ride up to Rio Gallegos, again going through immigration 4 times (out of Argentina into Chile, out of Chile into Argentina), and switching buses once along the way. Once in Rio Gallegos, we grabbed dinner and then got on another 4.5-hour bus ride to Calafate, the jumping off point to see Moreno Glacier. We got in at 1am, after 20 hours of exhausting travel.

We dragged ourselves out of bed at 9am and headed straight for the bus station where we booked our tickets to the glacier an hour away. We boarded the bus not long after, and drove through some gorgeous countryside typical of Patagonia; vast plains dotted with lakes and surrounded by massive mountains. Our driver stopped to point out a few eagles and even an owl along the way.

We got our first view of the glacier coming into the park and were immediately stunned with the sheer magnitude of it. It spanned the distance between two mountains and it was impossible to see how far back it went.

When we drove in further, we pulled up to a parking lot just above the end of the glacier and began trudging down the wooden path to the first clearing where you could face it. Once down on this level we really couldn’t believe how far it went. We read a sign that said the glacier went back 7 miles, but that was just as far as the eye could see. It actually curved around another mountain and continued on from there.

We got a view of the front of the glacier from this vantage point, and because pieces of ice fall off every day, we could see the interior of the glacier. Some large pieces of the frozen ice were dark aqua-blue. The glacier stood at 200 feet above the water (more than twice that size below the water), and its top consisted of thousands of Dali-esque ice ripples and frozen waves. We were also surprised that the color of the water was not the dark color of deep lake water, but a vibrant light blue that reminded us of the tropical waters of Zanzibar.

We waited patiently in the freezing cold for pieces to fall off, but nothing happened. We walked down two more levels, enjoying the different views, but still no movement. We could hear the glacier moving, occasionally sounding like the creaking wood of an old ship or sometimes like the rapid pops of firecrackers or an ear drum piercing single gun shot. Each day it moves nearly 7 feet forward, and with all the noises, you can’t help but think that the thing is somehow alive.

We finally saw our first piece fall, far off in the distance. It made a huge noise as it tore off from the glacier, and sent tons of ice crashing loudly into the water. Large waves shot off away from the glacier, leaving behind a large waveless footprint that could be seen for nearly an hour after the fall of ice.

We piled into the van to head out to the boat dock where people in our group were taking a cruise out to get a closer look. We decided to go to get another view by going along, but skipped the tour to save some pesos. From the boat dock, which was a bit further south, we could see the glacier at sea level from afar rising out of the surf.

We also got a better view of all the mountains surrounding the lake, and some of the rock beaches at the base of each mountain. I was pretty psyched to see my first iceberg (see Kerry, your dream was right! I just had to go a few miles north of Ushuaia), and almost dove in to get a better look.

While waiting for folks to get back, we went to a pretty expensive restaurant just to grab some coffee and hot chocolate. Looking at the table adjacent to us, I noticed that someone had somehow left a nearly full bottle of white wine. Always the scavenger, I was trying to figure out how to poach it, when I decided to just ask and see what it got me. Beth was horrified, saying “No, you will NOT ask to take someone’s left-overs. Seriously, Lauren. Do Not.”

Right. So the waiter came and I struggled with my Spanish asking, “Have those people left?”

“Yes,” he said slowly. Then said he spoke English, if I wanted to speak in my native tongue.

“Oh, ok,” I said. “We were surprised to see that someone left an entire bottle of wine, and thought that if no one else was going to drink it, that we could have it.”

At this point, Beth had bowed her head blank-faced and pretended to be intently inspecting something in her lap.

“Ah,” he said, looking a bit confused. He disappeared and returned with 2 glasses and the bottle of red wine that only had a tiny splash of resin left in the bottom of the bottle.

“No, no,” I laughed. “The white wine!”

He looked at the table, and didn’t know what I was talking about. I pointed, and spoke in Spanish to tell him that it was on the right.

He brought it over to the table, placed it before us and said, “This is olive oil. It would be a bit heavy to drink.”

Beth’s mortification hit a near fatal level as I burst out laughing. After he left I did get a little red. “No scruples,” Beth said. “You have no scruples.”

I felt a little better when we left - the waiter came up to me and said, “I’ll owe you some white wine for next time.” I guess he got a kick out of it, too.

When we returned to the glacier for one more hour, the sun came out giving us an even better view of the glacier. We saw several more large pieces fall off and then finally a massive chunk crashed right before us as it was time to leave. A great way to end the day.

That night, we self-catered a pasta dinner at our hostel and met an older Australian man named John. When he found out we were American, we got front row seats to our favorite show - “Angry Foreigner Blows Off Steam About the Bush Administration.” He finally understood that we agreed with him, once he asked what we both did back at home before we left, and that settled him down a bit.

We went to bed early, waking up for our 4am bus ride up to Bariloche at the northern end of Patagonia. We waited in the cold for our 3:15am taxi that we had reserved the night before, but it never came. We walked through the (somehow not deserted) streets (Beth: and up more than 60 steps) and made it to the bus station on time. Once on the bus, we were freezing immediately, and broke out a sleeping bag to wrap around us. It was going to be a long, cold ride up north - 36 hours and 3 buses.

“Ok,” I said as we were leaving. “The novelty of winter has worn off.”