Blogs from Los Glaciares National Park , Santa Cruz, Argentina, South America

After breakfast in our hotel we head to Perito Moreno Glacier in Los Glaciares Nation Park. The park is the largest park in Argentina at 2,806.68 square miles. In 1981 it was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO. A giant ice cap in the Andes the largest outside of Antarctica, Greenland and Iceland feed 47 large glaciers in the park. Perito Morton Glacier which we will visit today remains stable in size because it is accumulating mass at the same rate it is losing mass. We will visit the glacier where it terminates into Argentino Lake. At the terminus the glacier is 3.1 miles wide and average height of 240 feet above the surface of the water. Many tour operators can be found in El Calafte offering boat tours and mini-trekking options. We are not ... read more

Continuation de ma découverte d'El Calafate avec l'incontournable´Glacier Perito Moreno. Direction le Parc National Los Glaciares et une fois acquité du droit d'entrée, poursuite dans le Parc jusqu'au Port de Bajo las Sombras pour embarquer pour une navigation de rapprochement du glacier (ce qu'on appelle le Safari Nautico). L´après-midi, temps libre sur les passerelles aménagées pour voir le glacier plus en détail. Petit hic, le temps n'est pas de la partie et pour la première fois je sors les gants et le coupe-vent. Dommage qu'il ait plu mais la visite du Glacier Perito Moreno reste un incontournable pour tout voyageur passant par El Calafate. Au retour, le bus m'arrêtera à l'entrée de l'accès au Glaciarium (musée des glaces) pour un connaissance approndie de la naissance d'un glacier et pour une multitude d'informations sur le champ de ... read more

We landed in El Calafate and immediately liked the place. The view from the airport was spectacular – snow-capped mountains in every direction – and once we arrived in the town, we found a café with a gluten free menu! The first since we left Chicago 3 months ago so that was exciting. Our experience cooking in the hostel was fairly horrendous – let’s just say the breed of backpackers that make it this far south seem to be more interested in outdoor pursuits than cleaning up after themselves or being considerate to others – but we found some nice beef in the supermarket so all was good. El Calafate was a brief stop for us on the way to El Chaltén, the other entrance to Los Glaciares National Park, but it did have one big ... read more

Sorry for the long hiatus! Many things to tell you, so be ready for an influx of blog posts. First of all, the main reason for the hiatus was how much in the middle of nowhere we were. Southern Patagonia is pure tundra and mountains, so getting services can be difficult. There's no suburbs of cities; there's the city and then nothing for a while and then the city. When the internet cut out on this day, it was out for the entire city for at least 15 hours. Anyway, on to the backfill of blog posts: Today was quite an incredible day. Although we had to get up at 6:30, we had a delicious and filling breakfast buffet waiting for us, and a bus that left at 7:30. We were taken to Puerta Bandera, a ... read more

Nick: There is a bit of a science to packing a rucksack that is to house all of your worldly goods for the next six months, and unless you fancy lugging around a pack the size and weight of a small car everywhere you go, it is necessary to make some firm decisions about what not to take with you. With this in mind, my hiking boots, nor my trusty blue wooly hat, almost did not make the cut. After all, the vast majority of our intended destinations would be hot and humid, not the sort of places a heavy pair of boots would constitute comfortable footwear. In the end, we both found our packs were far emptier and lighter than we had expected, and with several days tramping through the Amazon on the itinerary, in ... read more