Patagonia and Southwards

Well, time to put down some words on all of this southern Argentina I´ve been seeing lately. Outside of being on the bus a ton, I have gotten to see the Perito Moreno glacier in El Calafate and world´s end, Ushuaia, the world´s southernmost city.
I´d never seen a glacier before, so Perito Moreno was going to be pretty special however it went. Still, I was as or more blown away by the surrounding scenery than the glacier itself. I saw some pretty awesome glacial lake and valley action when I went to Ancash awhile back, but this was Ancash twice over. The mountains were not as large, but everything was covered in snow and the glacial lakes were massive and completely ringed by the forested peaks. There were several, and they all had that powdery turquoise color to them common to most glacial lakes.
The glacier itself was a crazy shade of blue, almost like something out of a kool-aid packet, and massive. I was intrigued by how jagged it was... I was expecting something more flat and ice-cube like I guess. The real reason glaciers are so cool, though, is the periodic shearing off of large chunks of it, which fall into the water with enormous splashes. I didn´t see anything incredibly dramatic, but I did see some car-sized pieces break off with the sound of a cannon firing and plunge into the lake below.
Afterwards I headed towards Ushuaia, where I´m at now. This is a port town on the tip of Tierra del Fuego and as I mentioned before, about as far south as you can get conventionally without going all the way to Antartica (someday...) The setting is pretty spectacular, with the town surrounded on three sides by snow-capped mountains and the Beagle Channel and its port providing the fourth. When I got it it was honest-to-god snowing, the first time I´ve seen that in just about two years, and it was beautiful. I´m those at home won´t be all that impressed, but I was smiling like a six year old and thoroughly enjoying it. Today I did a nice hike along the coast to a beach and ate some spam sandwiches while staring across the channel at an archipelago of islands... the last land left before hitting the seventh continent. Tomorrow I´m heading off for what will be a pretty crazy stretch in bus before seeing Santiago and Valparaiso, Chile and heading on back to the canyon just in time for the big parties... should be great...