Make mine a scotch on the rocks

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We´ve never seen as much ice before as what we´ve seen over the last 10 days or so, or realised how beautiful it is. The glaciers are part of the Southern Patagonian Ice Field, the third largest continental ice after Antarctica and Greenland.

There are literally glaciers everywhere. Sadly many of them are slowly melting but, the Perito Moreno glacier visited from El Calafate is one of only two in South America that is considered ¨stable¨(the other one is Bruggen glacier in Chile). It grows a staggering 2 metres everyday in the middle of the glacier which results in a 40cm growth in length - on our trip to see it you can actually hear it cracking and groaning, loud thundering sounds from the constant movement. We saw a couple of chunks of ice fall off the face and it thunders and echoes all around which make you think the whole thing is going to collapse. We did a little mini trek with crampons up onto it and at 60 metres high you get a real sense of it´s scale. It´s amazing how blue it is, especially in all of the cracks and crevasses, lots of vibrant blue lines. You can easily spend hours just watching and listening to it.


We really loved El Chalten, a tiny little place which is still really being built. The man who owns the accommodation where we stayed moved to El Chalten 13 years ago when there were only about 40 people there! Now he thinks there are about 1,000 - so it´s definitely growing but like everything in Patagonia it´s taking it´s time.

It definitely feels more remote than anywhere we have been so far. There are lots of day walks to be done with the main attraction being Cerro Fitzroy, which although is only 3,375m high, it´s considered to be one of the world´s most technical climbs. The sheer granite face makes it near on impossible, so you´ll not be surprised to hear that we didn´t make it to the very top! The Argentina/Chile border actually runs over the top. The scenery is stunning and the walks go through beech forest, pass by glaciers, mountains, lakes and rivers - the colour contrasts in autumn would make it a great time to visit. We also saw a bit of wildlife, condors, hares and woodpeckers but our search for wild pumas continues. A fair amount of patience is required when trying to see Cerro Fitzroy as a lot of the time it is totally covered in cloud. Every morning at 6am Sam would leap up out of bed to stick his head out of the door looking to see if the peak could be seen - whether it was or not he would still drag me out of bed and march me on an 8 hour walk or so. Luckily we had great weather one day so we made a dash for the base and enjoyed the views - the photos speak for themselves!

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Photos

Cerro Fitzroy
At last a cloud free zone - almost

Sparkling in the sun
Perito Moreno glacier

A wee dram
One lump of glacier or two?

More ice
I just couldn´t stop taking photos of it!

Laguna Sucia
At the base of Cerro Fitzroy..yes I am very cold, hence the silly hat!