Lunch with Father Christmas at the Glacier. Patagonia 2006.

I thought it might be fun to share some of my unpublished adventures in South America with you, as well as the unfolding screen play story, especially as the screenplay is becoming extremely intense.

Lunch with Father Christmas at the Glacier.


Perito Moreno Glacier in Argentina is world famous. It’s a three hour drive from El Calafate where Father Christmas and I are staying.

Jeff (Father Christmas) and I have chosen the Alternative Glacier Tour starting at 7am. We will be picked up outside our budget accommodation, and join a bus load of young world travelers.
This is the only way you can get to the glacier, except if you hire a car. We considered the car hire, but decided the guided tour would be a lot more fun.

Jeff is a big man. An extrovert. Originally from the East End of London, 25 years ago he became a sheep farmer in Australia. He is boyish, friendly, loquacious , and endearing.

The alternative tour leaves town by an old not much used dirt road. It includes a vigorous two-hour hike with a guide and a half-hour boat trip across an opal colored lake to the face of the glacier. All other tours take the main road though flat prairie like land.


After bumping along the dirt track for about half and hour,avoiding pot holes, in the purple far distance we see the shimmering mountains of the Parque National Perito Moreno. Snow -clad, majestic, they wait to receive hundreds of visitors today.
With wild excitement I feel I'm being 'drawn by a star,' once again. This is why I am here. These mountains feed my soul.

My guidebook paints up a picture of today’s destination:

Because of it's magnificent natural beauty, this national park and was declared "World Heritage" by UNESCO in 1981.
Perito Moreno National Park, is a virgin wilderness where jagged peaks are reflected in limpid lakes, and condors wheel overhead.

There is less than one person per square kilometer here.

Unfortunately for me, despite the spectacular views, the bus journey quickly becomes one the worst days ever for my cursed food allergies. All my energies go into preventing the food inside my body from finding a way out.

I try a simple mediation, hopeless. Counting to fifty and backwards, hopeless. Picturing every house in my village and the families who live in each house. This works till I stop visualizing the scene. Then, OMG, what am I going to do now ? Stop the bus without a tree or bush in sight ?

Just as I have this thought, we stop in the middle of a vast expanse of ochre colored prairie land. Twenty of us pile out into the cool early morning air and stampede towards a watering hole/shack/cafe.

Our young guide elbows his way into the only rest room. Oh NO ! I gasp. I have to be first. Waiting graciously in queues has never been one of my best life skills.

At last, safely locked in the rest room, one of the worst five minutes of my life unfolds. Slight exaggeration.
I am very ill, throwing up everywhere, awful terrible pain. No paper hankies. No towel. No soap. Thank God for the basin and the one trickling, cold water tap.

Then it passes, it's all over, and I float back to life like a feather flicked by the wind.

The delightful shack/café looks like it’s been nailed together by a poet, an amateur carpenter, and an artist.

They sell freshly made coffee peculating on top of tall pear-shaped iron stove. The smell is strong and somehow deeply comforting. There are fat cheese sandwiches in brown bread and honey and chocolate cookies for sale, handy for people how have forgotten to bring a packed lunch.

Plump long-haired sheep, lean brown goats, dogs ,cats, and horses wander nonchalantly around the cafe under a vast blue sky.

Back in the bus, we head north towards the glacier. Because we are having an alternative experience, we detour and stop beside the opal colored lake.

The water is limpid and very cold. In the distance we can see a small piece of the glacier, the rest is hidden by pine trees.

We begin a challenging hike along the rocky shore of the lake, then veer inland, scrambling up through a dense forest dotted by enormous boulders.

The unfit stragglers have a hard job to keep up. At various points we see the whole
magnificent glacier.

I find myself striding up with the leaders despite my inappropriate green slip on shoes!

“You’re like a mountain hare” Jeff tells me when we pause to regroup.

He lags near the end of our party . His recent four day hike in almost constant torrential rain, sleeping rough, has taken its toll. He explains this with a grin, stuffing a caramel in his mouth, then stroking his beard. His eyes twinkle. My heart skips a jump.

Three days ago when I met this larger than life sixty year old Australian he was wearing blue carpet slippers and an XXL outrageous yellow Hawaiian shirt, the only dry clothes he had left he told me.

He looked like Father Christmas on holiday. His long white wispy hair was tied in a ponytail but most of it was standing straight out from his ears, as if he’d been electrocuted.

Jeff is everybody’s friend, and mine for a short while. Big smile, big belly, and big heart pulsing with life.

After our exhilarating hike though the pine forest above the opal colored lake, we arrive at the viewing platforms of the Perito Morneo Glacier.

It is truly an awesome sight, despite the coach loads of visitors who have driven three hours from El Calafate (like us) to see it.

Hundreds of visitors apparently arrive every day, seven days a week, twelve months of the year. Twenty people a day come with the alternative tour.

Jeff and I find a place in the shade and eat our lunch. It’s a hot day. It’s nice to have friend. I tell him this.

We’d searched the local shops for treats for this picnic the day before. His is an enormous special baguette, mine is a large shimmering glistening raspberry tart. The dark sweet red fruit is utterly delicious, the pastry crisp and still fresh.

Jeff ploughs into his gigantic baguette, which has all the fillings that were on offer in the bakery.

We offer each other generous portions of our special treats, but neither of us accepts the others.

A plain looking German woman in her fifties comes and sits herself right between us! She proceeds to munch her lunch, which is a sandwich and a piece of cake.

I feel very strange about this intrusion.

Jeff gives a grin then switches his interest to the glacier, which is just about 500 yards away from us.

Our German companion tries to engage me in conversation but I’m not in the mood.

Jeff gets up and invites me to explore the viewing platforms of the glacier with him. They descend in tiers till the last one is very close to the ice.

Swarms of tourist now encircle us. Swarms. I decline.

The glacier releases great thundering roars every now and again and huge chunks of ice crack and fall dramatically into the lake. It’s a thrilling sight to see and the noise of the thunder behind the ice is primordial.

My new friend slings his backpack over his shoulder and asks me again to go with him.

Our German picnic gatecrasher flaps and chatters in my face so I can’t hear what he’s saying.

I want to retreat to a private place to savor all the sights and sounds, especially the sounds, so I let Jeff slide away unanswered.

He disappears like a rainbow after a lovely little shower. And when we re meet two hours later, like the rainbow, I know he’s gone, for good.

“For everything you have missed, you have gained something else, and for everything you gain, you lose something else.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson