Shock and Awe

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Today I saw one of the most amazing aspects of the natural world that I could ever want to see! The Perito Moreno Glacier is one of the largest ones that you can visit and get close.The glacier is huge too! It rises something like 160 meters and can be viewed from the top from a vantage point of the hills opposite it. The park that it is located within, Los Glacieres National Park, has been declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site and is recognized as a location of high importance internationally. This glacier itself, though not the biggest one in the park, is the most famous both because you can get up close without having to use water access, as well as because it is the only glacier in the world that has a portion touching the land. It is amazingto hear about the process that place. Since the glacier moves about 2 meters everyday, every once in a while a portion will push across the small amount of the Argentinos Lake that separates it from the land. This creates a sort of natural dam and causes one side of the lake to rise higher than the other - somewhere in the range of 10 to 25 meters higher than the other side of the lake! When this happens the lake water begins to wear away at the glacial dam, eventually creating a bridge or an arch. As the water melts the arch huge chunks of ice will come crashing into the lake, causing huge waves and some of the most impressive noises. The creation of the dam and destruction of the arch takes only about 3 days in total, and obviously it hard to be one of the lucky people to visit the arch during that time. There was a portion of the glacier on the mainland at the time though. There is no way of knowing when the next dam will form, and people all over the world wait to travel to the glacier during the time of the arch! It sounds like an amazing experience, and judging from how amazing it was just to watch the chunks that I saw fall it is a fantastic sight! Other than the trip to the glacier we've just been bumming around town. Calafate isn't exactly one of the most amazing places as far as cities go. It's completely toursit driven, and devotes most of the resources of the town to buidling more hotels, restaurants, tourist shops, etc. That's what it seems like anyway. Judging by a comment that our guide made, that before the airport was built in the year 2000 there were only something like 4000 inhabitants of the town and now there are 17000, it would seem that the tourism is the main income. It makes sense though. While I was there I also took the time to buy some calafate jam. Calafate is the plant that the town takes it's name from, sort of a berry like boysenberry maybe but with the appearance of a miniature plum. It tastes good, that's all I know. There's also a legend that says that anyone who trys the calafate will return again to Patagonia. I hope it's true, I would love to have the opportunity to come back again during my lifetime!

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Photos

The Sky has Fallen
This is where the arch forms across the water of the lake, it was beautiful whether it was there or not though!