Advertisement
Published: August 7th 2007
Edit Blog Post
Moreno Glacier
How cool is this... Glacier Spotting in Ushuaia and El Calafate
South America » Argentina » El Calafate » Perito Moreno Glacier By The Smiles
June 16th 2007
We wrapped up warm the following day and thought we make a trip to see the martial glacier. It was absolutely freezing and apparently you can walk to it from our hostel in a few hours but we copped out of that one and hopped in a taxi to the chairlift. According to the guide book, it was supposed to be a two hour walk from the bottom of the chairlift and we were told that the chairlift wouldnt be working at this time of year. We arrived and the chairlift, to our surprise was up and running. We jumped on and got dropped off at the top...the views were spectacular...snow covered mountains and forest and lots of little streams trickling by...It started to snow quite heavily and we followed a sign pointing in the direction of the glacier...after about an hour of tramping through the snow, we were absolutely soaked as every time we took a step in the snow, our feet sank about three feet and I kept falling over...the snow was
Where´s the glacier
i think that points to the sky... that heavy, we could hardly see three feet in front of us, all around us, we were surrounded by massive mountains and no sign of a glacier...the
Where´s the glacier
i think that points to the sky...locals at the chairlift must have thought we were off our rockers coming up to the mountain on a day like this looking for some random glacier!! We found one sign for the glacier which seemed to be pointing stright up into the sky...no help whatsoever and unless we were going to climb mountains which might as well have been the height of everest, David and Jen were never going to find the glacier...we were doomed from the start...we looked up into the distance and we could see five tiny dots moving down the side of the mountain..we started roaring with laughter as these were obviously other daft tourists who had made it slightly further than us to the glacier and were now faced with the challenge of trying to hike down the side of the mountain, feet sinking three feet for every step in the snow and in these snowy conditions...they looked like they were on some sort of Everest expedition...we couldnt stop
Kinda lost....
Never finding this glacier... laughing and thought there is no way on Gods earth that we were heading up there to look as daft as they looked so we cut our losses and decided to turn back...so no Martial Glacier
Kinda lost....
Never finding this glacier...was found that day! The views though made it worth of it! The locals did laugh at us as we came back down the chairlift...a bit like I told you so you daft eegits!
The next day was more successful...decided that we would spend our Sunday in Tierra del Fuego National Park...a local dropped us off in his so-called tourist bus and we hiked for about 3 hours! It really was nice...we were so lucky that we got such a nice day for it as it was a dry day and our trainers and trouser bottoms were covered in muck but if it had of been raining, we would have been drenched as there were quite a lot of marsh lands so you can imagine us trying to hike through that in the rain....There was a lot of wildlife, rabbits, foxes, eagles and we managed to spot a condor! The forest was all colours from the green grass
Are we gonna fly or not??
Clearing snow from our plane...a tad worrying.. to the red, brown and orange trees to the purple heather and then to grey and white for the snow covered mountains and then the blue sky...
The next day, we left Ushuaia and hopped on a flight to El
Are we gonna fly or not??
Clearing snow from our plane...a tad worrying..Calafate (which we werent sure whether the flight was going to make it or not). They had us on the flight, off the flight, delayed for a few hours because of blizzards and finally back on the flight for take off. We landed hoping it would be slightly warmer than Ushuaia and were disappointed. We have come to the conclusion that it was even colder! Booked into a lovely hostel and organised our trip to the famous Perito Moreno Glacier. We imagined El Calafate to be a delightful town in the Summer town, full of nice restaurants, markets, shops all made out of wood looking like little cosy lodges, (although, a definite tourist trap) but unfortunately, most of these had closed down. There were only a few restaurants open and apart from that, it was a very sleepy town...David also named the town, "City of Dogs" as
Tierra Del Fuego
National Park - Autumn Colours... there was an extreme amount of feral dogs lazing about the town whom at every opportunity latched onto you so as your face beams with embarrassment as locals pass by thinking that you own these 10 homeless, misbehaving dogs which are barking, chasing cars and attacking you for food....
The glacier really
Tierra Del Fuego
National Park - Autumn Colours...was spectacular...absolutely huge and it was the coldest ive been in my life...we both had two pairs of trousers on, three tops and jumpers, coats, hats, gloves and we were still freezing! I didnt realise that icebergs are blue...such a class colour and the water around it was such a strange torquoise colour...It is 250 km² in size, 30 km in length, and is one of 48 glaciers fed by the Southern Patagonian Ice Field located in the Andes system. This icefield is the world's third largest reserve of fresh water. Its about 5 km wide, with a height of 60 about meters above the surface of the water, with a total ice depth of 170 meters. It grows at a speed of up to 2 m per day, although it also loses about 2 meters a day of ice
which means that the glacier has not advanced or receded in the past 90 years. At its deepest part, the glacier has a depth of approximately 700 m. (Info from Google! - im not that knowledgeable) It was huge! We took a boat ride out to see the glacier close up and we managed to see huge bits of ice
Tierra Del Fuego
Nice views....collapsing from the iceberg into the sea which created huge waves and our boat ride became quite rough for a few minutes while it battled with the waves...The glacier made such thundery noises as pieces broke off it. We were lucky in the fact that there were only about ten people there to see the glacier so there was no battling for photographs or for the video which everyone wants of huge pieces of ice breaking off and landing in the water. I ofcourse would be constantly videoing hoping to catch the moment when that huge crack appears in the ice along with the thunder noise and collapses into the sea...although I had my hood up and everytime a piece fell off, David would shout, "Did you get that Jen?" and I didnt want to tell
Moreno Glacier
The massive Glacier from above... him that I didnt because I couldnt hear where the noise was coming from over the sound of me munching on my box of barbeque flavoured pringles...whoops! We would then start arguing and fooling about from boredom of waiting, taking photos of birds etc when the iceberg would collapse in two behind us and we would completely miss the video opportunity again!!! Ha! It
Moreno Glacier
The massive Glacier from above...was quite funny...however, David has managed to find some videos on the internet which other tourists successfully managed to capture...heres the link,
Here is our rather unexciting video of the setting of the glacier (maybe you should watch this one first before the other one)
The next day, we took a walk to the ecological reserve which turned out to be a skip yard beside some marshy land so we decided to give that a miss and spent the rest of the day drinking hot chocolates and vino tinto later that evening...
We left El Calafate and returned to Buenos Aires for one night before getting a bus to Mendoza, Argentina´s wine capital where we would spend the next few days wine tasting...mmmmnnnn...look
Moreno Glacier
The Glacier and the freezing seas around it... out Mendoza...we all know what Jen´s like on the vino tinto...
Talk to you all soon,
love David and Jen x x
Advertisement
Tot: 0.246s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 13; qc: 55; dbt: 0.1773s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
rrruss
Russ Pearce
Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
And I thought it was cold here in Salta! Glad you are enjoying yourselves depsite the cold. Great photos of the glacier which brought back some great memories. Salta wines are better than Mendoza ones, but I have to say that as I am living in Salta now!! Russ.