El Calafate & Perito Moreno Glacier

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El Calafate

I arrived in El Calafate after a pretty gruelling 30 odd hour bus ride, which went from Bariloche .. across to Comodoro Rivadavia on the Atlantic coast, down to Rio Gallegos (almost at the southernmost border with Chile) and then back up to Calafate. Managed to check into the hostel I wanted which was lucky! On my first day there I went for a wander around a small nature reserve on the edge of town (Lago Nimez or something like that). At the point where the reserve met the lake shoreline I ducked under the fence and spent a good few hours walking along that. Very windy, it really blew the cobwebs away :-) The town of El Calafate itself is quite small, with only around 5,000 inhabitants. It's really geared towards the tourists and as such is relatively expensive. They have amazing chocolate and cakes there though :-) The cakes are amazingly cheap (30 pesos for a whole cake .. and I'm talking a nice one!). I can't figure out why they're so cheap!! Not that I'm complaining! Well, my stomach was after 2 pieces of that beast (have a look at the picture).

Perito Moreno Glacier

The reason I was in El Calafate .. was to see this glacier and it really didn't disappoint. I was reasonably lucky with the weather, even though it was largely overcast it was still quite bright and actually gave the colours of the glacier even more atmosphere! The main thing was that it wasn't raining! The day before I was umming and ahhing about whether to go for the cheaper bus and boat trip, or to do the MiniTrekking, which involved the bus and the boat, as well as a couple of hours of walking on the glacier. I was so glad I went for the MiniTrekking, as walking on the glacier was a very cool experience! There were lots of deep crevasses running right into the ice ... sink holes for the water that penetrates the surface and flows right to the bedrock .. which apparantly is one of the unique features of the glacier that enables it to move so quickly (around 15cm per day if I remember rightly).

The other feature that makes Perito Moreno very famous is the fact that it 'ruptures' every now and then. As the glacier moves forward it approaches a peninsular of land (you can see this from some of the pictures) .. eventually the ice builds up against the land, and starts to dam the lake. As the water pressure builds, the water forces a tunnel under the surface of the glacier .. eventually causing a 'bridge' of ice from the glacier over to the land. Eventually the weight is too much, and the whole bridge crashes back down into the lake. The last picture in the set hopefully explains it a little better than my words ;-)

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Photos

Perito Moreno
Shot from the side of the glacier

Infront of Perito Moreno
This was about as close as I was allowed to get ... as chunks of ice are coming off it all the time

Comments

[Katerina]

Wow!
Your pictures are awesome. From the plains to the mountains to the glaciers to ... way to go .... A once in a lifetime experience Matt. Keep writing about it; it feels as if I'm part of this expedition too ...! Thank you.