Advertisement
Only a 5 hour journey to El Calafate including the annoying border crossings again, so not a bad journey. Also had the overly jolly Spanish women from the Torres tour on the bus too.
Arrived around lunch time and luckily the hostel I wanted to stay in was represented at the bus station ready to take me to the hostel! Excellent!
Grand new hostel so great rooms, all 4 people with ensuite toilet, shower and washbasin, all separate. Kind of chalet like with all rooms in an outdoor section leading back to the main house.
Went for a wander and have lunch, very bad service! Then booked my ice treking tour and a bus out. I had already heard the nightmare of leaving El Calafate due to Ruta 40 being closed for winter. Went for a huge hot chocolate in Casablana also hoping to see the 2nd fittest bloke in Calafate (according to Andrew and Darren), turns out they have no taste! Also saw the people from my hostel bus pick up so sat with them all afternoon. A kiwi couple and a South African who was also staying in my room. Many red wines later and some lazing in the
Me on glacier
I´m ice treking!! hostel (it doesn´t have great social areas) we met another Brit couple travelling the world on motorbikes (2ridetheworld.com), 3 years in and still a long way to go, how ace would that be!! Then shattered by 11 so we went to bed.
Up early for my 8am pick up, but yuk weather, loads of rain. Slept on the bus until we got to the viewing point, terrible for photos so I literally took 5 mins. Then we continued to the jetty where we got a boat to the far side of the glacier. From here we made a short walk to some refuges in the forest and learnt about the glacier.
The Argentinian Ice Field is the largest in the world the only masses of ice larger are Antarctica and Greenland. We are about to climb on the Perito Moreno glacier, the third largest but most famous, named after an Argentinian selfless explorer. The glacier moves 3m per day at the edges and about 40cm in the centre, which is crazy! Every now and then the glacier joins with the bank on the other side of the lake forming an ice bridge, this in fact happened this year! The water
Ice hole
Huge hole made by passing water flow running between the 2 lakes is stopped causing the water on one side to rise, this fights against the bridge for many months until it breaks a small path through. This grows enormously in just a few days and suddenly the whole things collapses and floats away! I could still see the lump of ice on the far bank where the bridge had collapsed about 10 days earlier. We were due to climb on a part of the glacier that is moving least and not likely to drop off at any point... Argentina has this huge ice field due to the weather conditions, the cold wind blews over chile and then meets the warm air over the Andes causing snow fall. The snow forms ice and this compacts over thousands of years to form the glaciers. As the ice compacts it releases the air from inside, the less air in the ice, the older it is and this means when light hits it, it can only reflect blue from the spectrum and that is why old glaciers look blue, or something like that...
We trekked through the forest to the point where the glacier meets the hill and attached crampons
Guide
Show off! to out feet. After 5 mins instruction we were off. Walking up the first part of the glacier was bizarre as your brain feels you will slip. After getting used to that, the downhill comes! Even worse, you have to lean back or you will go flying... We walked around for a few hours looking at craters, huge crevases, water pools where bubbles were appearing from 300yr old ice. We stopped to be held over one huge hole where the water had worn a path threw the ice. The two guides made it look so easy running about all over the ice, while we walked one behind the other in nervous lines. The helper guide would also run off with axes every now and then to climb up peaks, little show off!
We were almost at the end of our treking time when we climbed over one last mound, not the usual scenery, but a bar serving whisky while the guide chipped glacier ice for the glasses. Excellent finish to the day as my legs were tired from the heavy crampons. We had a drink then back to the lodges for lunch and back on the boat. The boat got
Edge of the glacier
At the edge, the view back to land. very close to the glacier on the way back so we had great views. Then the coach took us to the official viewing platforms. The scenery just got more and more impressive, from up here I could really see the depth of the ice field and managed to get a chunk falling off on film! Stunning views and so peacefull except for the occasional roar of falling ice. After an hour back to the coach for the return journey, everyone is asleep.
Dull evening of dinner, then forcing myself to stay awake for the journey to Bariloche. Due to the closure of Ruta 40, the trip is 36hours and the only way to manage it without a night stop over is to start at 3am, so here I go...
Advertisement
Tot: 0.071s; Tpl: 0.014s; cc: 11; qc: 32; dbt: 0.039s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb