Calafate: Switzerland or Patagonia? - In Calafate the grip of the cold embraces us even just to collect our luggage and get into the car, accompanied by a well-fed blonde girl who speaks almost impeccable Italian (due to her origins) and explains a few things to us, up to the hotel. Switzerland or Patagonia? Sloping roofs, little houses that look like cabins, perfect lawns, flower pots on the balconies. Calafate with its wooden villas, often brightly colored and large chimneys on the pointed roofs, has no real centre, at least not as we understand it. It all happens on both sides of a wide straight road, Avenida Libertador. But there is a more lively stretch, with craft shops, dozens of agencies that organize excursions, wood-scented bars, small restaurants and restaurants (like Pura Vida, made famous by the LP, but which, for our pace, opens too late ), huge spits behind the glass that rotate slowly to calmly cook the poor ropers, reduced to flavored corpses and then banks, exchange offices, hotels and lots of meticulously cared for greenery. And, omnipresent, docile, caressed by everyone, many many perros, mostly large in size and with deep good eyes. Ah, the impanadas… with spicy or normal meat (often guanaco). With queso and onion, with tuna, with vegetables… Low cost, pleasant flavour.