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Published: April 1st 2009
After a few days chilling out in Buenos Aires again, we said goodbye to Chris and headed down to Patagonia. Chris decided to stay in BA because the Argentina National futball team was playing and it was Maradona´s first game as head coach. So Jeff and I caught a flight to El Calafate, Argentina. We arrived to brisk weather, but sunshine so it was bearable. Immediately after getting off the airplane, we knew we would love it here. The air was clean and we were out of the big cities for the first time in a long time. The name El Calafate comes from a little bush with yellow flowers very common in Patagonia, with dark blue berries.
Our hostel was amazing. It was this wood building with heated floors and spacious dorms. Plus the common areas had huge windows which overlooked Lake Argentina and all the surround snow topped mountains. It was gorgeous! The staff was so nice- when you arrive they introduce themselves to you and one girl even let us try her mate. It’s the drink of choice down here. A tea in these funny cups with straws that have hole in them for drinking and sifting
through the tea grinds. Everyone drinks it at all times of day. You practically never see a local without their mate. So when offered, of course we tried it. It was ¨not our cup of tea¨ and way too bitter for us. An acquired taste I guess. But we smiled and politely thanked her for letting us try!
We decided to head down into town to have a look around and see the lake. The town of El Calafate was really cute and reminded me of your typical ski town. The buildings were all A-framed and there were cute little pedestrian streets with shops that were all made of wood. All the restaurants had fires burning and it just had a really great feel to it. The only thing I hated, was all the dogs. This town has more dogs running around it than pretty much any town I have ever been in. They follow you around town hoping you will feed them, or there are packs of them fighting with each other, or there are two special dogs doing that special thing animals tend to do when they are with the opposite sex. I have never seen so
many dogs!
We spent the afternoon walking near the lake, which by the time we got to it, was not the teal blue we had seen from the hostel. The clouds had come in so the lake was more gray, but usually it is this teal blue color because of all the rock sediments from the nearby glaciers. It was a great introduction to Patagonia and the end of the world.
The next day it was off to the area’s premier attraction: the Perito Moreno Glacier. It is one of 48 glaciers fed by the Southern Patagonian Ice Field located in the Andes system shared with Chile. This ice field is the world's third largest reserve of fresh water. The Perito Moreno Glacier is one of only three Patagonian glaciers that are not retreating. The size of the Perito Moreno Glacier is 3 miles wide, with an average height of 200 ft above the surface of the water, with a total ice depth of 558 ft. It advances at a speed of up to 2 meters per day, although it loses mass at approximately the same rate, meaning that aside from small variations, its size has not advanced
or receded in the past 90 years. The drive out to the glacier is about 1 1/2 hours through low valley with views of the snow capped hills. We took the local bus out there and although the weather was nice in El Calafate it was rainy and cold at the glacier. Although I had four layers of clothing on I still froze my booty off. Our bus took us to a view further away from the glacier first, where you could board a boat and see it up close. We opted to just watch from the land. Since it was cold and rainy we decided to sit back in the bus with an Aussie couple we met, Chris and Bec. It was much warmer than staring at a glacier for an hour while others took a boat ride.
Then our bus took us up to a series of platforms where you can get closer to the glacier and really see its size and stuff. The best part about it is that since the glacier is moving so quickly ice chunks are constantly falling off the glacier into the water. The ice chunks that were falling off were huge
and amazing. As they crashed into the water they made a huge noise and created a huge wave in the lake. We would just sit there and stare at the glacier waiting for the next big chunk to fall. Too bad I was freezing my booty off. It was rainy and my feet felt like they had frostbite! I really wish I wasn’t cold because it kind of put a damper on the whole amazing glacier thing. The glacier was huge, bigger than it could ever appear in photos. The tops of the glacier had these amazing formations and cracks and it really was an awesome sight. We walked all the platforms around the glacier and spent the time admiring our surroundings and the glacier in front of us. Unfortunately, I could not take more than an hour outside staring at a glacier so I found us the little HEATED cafe and we had a cup of coffee to warm us up. We did take in one more view of the glacier before we left though. Then it was time to bus it back... we did not arrive back to Calafate until 9pm that night. It was a long afternoon
and we had an early morning the next day...
The next morning it was off to more ice and glaciers. We left an early in the morning to drive an hour outside town to the port. From there we boarded a boat that would take us further into glacier national park and to some other glacier in Lake Argentina. From the second we boarded the bus the views were amazing. The hills surrounding us were all topped with snow and the lake was a teal blue color. As we begin to get further back from the port, small ice chunks began floating in the lake and the boat was navigating around them. As we continued back, these ice chunks began to get larger and were turning into full on icebergs. Many of the icebergs had these amazing formations that have been carved out of them, there were ones with big holes in them, ones that looked like Swiss cheese, ones that looked like mushrooms, and pretty much everything in between.
The first glacier we arrived at was the Spegazzini glacier or as I liked to call it: ¨the spaghetti glacier.¨ This glacier is the tallest in the National
Park with a face that is over 400 feet tall. It was a bit of a mission to fight people to get photos, but after being in Asia, we are used to people pushing us to get photos and we have become quite good at holding our ground. So after pushing a few old men and women out of the way, we were able to actually see the glacier and its size. The face of the glacier went straight up and it went back as far as you could see. The size does not show up well in photos, but there was another huge catamaran like ours in the water and when you saw the other boat next to the face of the glacier, you could tell how massive it was. There were a few times that this glacier had some ice chunks fall off into the water, but definitely not as much as the day before when we were at Perito Moreno. I’m assuming this is because the Perito Moreno glacier is moving much faster than the Spegazzini.
After the Spegazzini glacier, it was time to see the Upsala glacier, the largest glacier in Lake Argentina. Before we arrived
Jeff and I with the glacier
My nose is red, like Rudolph, cause I was freezing!there, the sun came out and we were able to get some amazing photos of the icebergs floating around us. In the meantime, we arrived at the Upsala glacier to find huge icebergs floating in the water before us with very little room to navigate around them. This was the highest concentration of ice I had seen and I was wondering how we were going to get through. Well, as it turns out, we couldn't get through. We could see the Upsala glacier from far away, but there was no way we were getting too close. The captain informed us that apparently, a 3 km (yep that's like 1 1/2 miles) of the glacier had come off into the lake yesterday and all these icebergs were chunks that had fallen off yesterday, making it impossible for us to get any closer. These icebergs were quite impressive though. They were huge and I couldn’t imagine that they were part of a glacier the day before we got there. All of the icebergs in the lake have come off of one of the glaciers in the lake and they usually last 3-4 months before they completely melt down into the water. When
you see these huge icebergs, it is easier to imagine exactly how big the glaciers are themselves, considering these ice chunks don’t even make a dent in the glacier when they come off!
From Upsala, we headed to Lake O’Neil, a smaller lake that is surrounded by three more glaciers: Agassiz, Bolado, and O’Neil. We had to do a small hike through the forest to get there and, of course, the second we start hiking, the rain starts pouring down. Luckily, we had our rain jackets and an umbrella, but once the clouds come it drops many degrees and the weather was freezing. We managed to meet up with the Aussie couple we had met the day before at the Perito Moreno glacier, Bec and Chris, and walked with them to the lake. They were on the other boat that was out and about, but we still spent about an hour at the lake with them. When we arrived at the lake, the clouds were in making it almost impossible to see the three glaciers on the other side. We could catch a glimpse of the Agassiz and Bolado glaciers, but O’Neil was completely covered in clouds. Still, these
glaciers were nothing compared to what we had seen. The lake was filled with ¨ice cubes¨ and we grabbed a couple glacier ice cubes out of the lake for a photo opportunity. There were some pretty big ice cubes floating around, as well as some icebergs with some cool shapes.
From Lake O’Neil, we began heading back to the port, but we had one surprise stop to make along the way. The captain was informed that while we were at Lake O’Neil, one of the icebergs had toppled over and the part that had been under water was now above water. The ice that has been under water appears to be bright blue. When the ice is then exposed to the air and oxygen, it oxidizes and turns the whitish, blue color that we are used to, however, if you catch it soon after it has come from beneath the water, it has not oxidized yet and the color is amazing. So we headed for this downed iceberg and when we got there it was better than I could have imagined. The blue color was absolutely awe-inspiring. It was probably one of the prettiest things I have ever seen.
The contrast in color was awesome. The iceberg was bright blue, deep blue, black and white and it made for some gorgeous sights.
Then it was off to El Chalten, the hiking capital of Argentina. It is about 1 1/2 hours from El Calafate and a ¨not miss¨ on many travelers’ lists. El Chaltén is a small mountain village located in the riverside of Rio de las Vueltas, within the Los Glaciares National Park at the base of Cerro Torre and Cerro Fitz Roy mountains, the two main reasons people come here. These mountains are amazing and many people come to summit them. The village was built purely for tourism purposes, in 1985. "Chaltén" is a Tehuelche word meaning smoking mountain, as they believe it was a volcano for its peak is most of the time covered by clouds. The town itself, is definitely small. The roads are gravel and there are really no amenities except for a few stores and restaurants and the information the hostel would give us. It was a cute little town though, in the middle of nowhere, literally there was nothing for three hours and then all of a sudden there is this little town.
We arrived mid day and decided to do a short trek to a viewpoint where we could see Cerro Fitz Roy. The trek was about 1.5 hrs and uphill the whole way there. It did provide amazing views of the nearby mountains that were covered in snow and the valleys that were formed by glaciers millions of years ago. The trees were changing colors because it is fall here in the southern hemisphere and the scenery was gorgeous. We arrived to the Cerro Torre lookout point to a bunch of clouds. The mountain was there somewhere, but it was covered in clouds. The mountain is also sometimes called Cerro Chaltén, after the Tehuelche word meaning "smoking mountain," due to a cloud that usually forms in the top of the mountain, which proved to be correct the day we were there. Francisco Moreno first saw the mountain on March 2, 1877 and named it Fitz Roy, in honor of Robert Fitzroy, who as captain of the Beagle had traveled up the Santa Cruz River in 1834 and charted large parts of the Patagonian coast. The mountain is the symbol of the Argentine Santa Cruz Province, which includes its representation on
its coat of arms. It was first climbed in 1952 by French alpinists Lionel Terray and Guido Magnone. The mountain has a reputation of being "ultimate," despite its average height (although being the highest peak in the Los Glaciares park, it is less than half the Himalayan giants), because the sheer granite faces present long stretches of arduous technical climbing. When hundreds of people summit Mt. Everest in a single day, Cerro Torre may only be summitted once a year. I thought that was an insane fact. Especially since we have been to both mountains this year!
We waited for about a half hour at the viewpoint to see if the mountain would come out, but it never did. We did see the Piedro Blanco glacier, which lay at the foot of the mountain, but no mountain! It actually started to get colder and colder and then out of nowhere, it started to snow! Yep, here we were, unprepared for the cold weather as is, and it starts to snow. Luckily, it wasn’t cold enough for the snow to stick on the ground, but it still meant that I wanted to get inside... fast! As we hiked down, I
could no longer feel my fingers and toes and loved it when we finally arrived at the hostel to a heated room and a hot cup of coffee! Nothing is better than a hot drink on a cold day. We had planned to do a whole day hike the next day, before returning to El Calafate, but I began to rethink that due to my coldness. I know it may seem lame, but when you are packed for humid tropical weather, what little amounts of warm clothes we had were all being worn and I was still freezing. I wasn’t sure I would make it the whole day... it would depend on the weather. Well, the weather called for rain and snow so we decided to skip the full day hike and we booked our bus back for the next afternoon. The snow continued that evening, although none of it stuck on the ground. I still couldn’t believe it was snowing outside!
With our luck, the weather was absolutely sunny and beautiful the next day, but we already had our bus booked out so we decided just to do another short hike that morning. This time we took another route
which took us a different direction in the park. Once again, the scenery was majestic. Huge snow-capped mountains, low valleys covered in colorful trees, and the occasional glacier really do make this place heaven. Plus, the weather was nice, which helps out a lot. We had amazing views of Solo mountain, which looked a bit like the Matterhorn and was covered in snow. I think it was my favorite mountain in El Chalten. We were in a bit of a hurry though cause we had to hike to a lookout point and back in time to catch our bus at 1pm. Towards the end of our time, we were determined to get to the lookout, but our time was running out and naturally, the last part was all uphill. I was huffing and puffing and completely out of breath because I was going so quickly, but it was worth it in the end. We could see all the way into this valley, glacier Blanco, and Solo mountain. Once again, the clouds were in and over Cerro Torre, so we missed our opportunity to see the other main mountain in the park. Still, the views were unbelievable and we were happy
Sunrise over Lake Argentina
The next morning on the way to the boat we made the trip out to El Chalten.
As we drove away from El Chalten, we took one look back to admire the scenery and there it was, Cerro Fitzroy, clear as day, no clouds, amazing... At least we got to take one good picture of the mountain before leaving. It was like the mountain was laughing at us telling us we should have stayed longer, but also sending us off with a great goodbye. The sight was amazing.
From there it was back to El Calafate for a few days of hanging out together in Patagonia before heading to Bariloche to meet up with Chris. We enjoyed our hostel in Calafate so much that we didn’t mind hanging out there and doing nothing in the gorgeous surroundings- not a bad way to waste a few days! We even managed to meet some friends at the hostel and hit up the casino in town, which is pretty random that this small mountain town has a casino. Still we had a great few days relaxing and enjoying the scenery.
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Courtney Enriquez
non-member comment
Icebergs
Hey Hey... These are amazing! I can't believe how crystal clear the icebergs are and that Teal Lake is breath taking... WOW! It would have taken everything I have not to jump into the lake... I assume it would be chilly!? Safe Travels Chica! Court ;o)