Perito Moreno

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More gawping at glaciers

A short bus (5 hours) from Puerto Natales took us back to Argentina and to El Calafate. El Calafate is a real tourist hotspot, particularly because a magnificent glacier called Perito Moreno is only an hour away.

Being a tourist hotspot also means it is horrendously expensive, so for the first time on our trip we booked into a dorm room for 2 nights. One night was enough to make us realise we are too old for it! Unfortunately it was a 12 bed dorm and Lynne was the only girl. On top of this, a group of Israeli lads did their bit for international relations and furthering the Israeli cause by viscously farting as if no one else was in the room, and then deciding to come back at 3am and again behave like no one else was in the room. A crap night’s sleep was not really needed seeing as we were on an 8am bus to Perito Moreno, but Lynne had her revenge by nearly slamming the door off its hinges as we exited at 7.15!

Perito Moreno is stunning. Despite seeing countless glaciers in the Antarctic, due to the mountain background, it was far easier to get a sense of the scale here. It is said to be one of the few remaining advancing glaciers left in the world. It is 3km wide and has sheer ice cliffs 60m tall. The glacier cascades down from the mountainside and then meets a lake, Lago Argentino. It physically blocks the flow of the lake from one side to the other, so the water is constantly trying to find a path under and through the ice. What this means is that bits of ice carve off regularly, and just being there for a day enabled us to see 3 or 4 sizeable chunks of ice fall off, accompanied by monstrous creaking and crashing. Eventually, the current undercuts all of the ice, spectacularly removes the blockage and then the glacier starts the process of flowing forward and blocking the lake again.

El Calafate itself is nothing much to write home about. There is supposedly some great hiking nearby in the Fitz Roy range, but seeing as we’d just finished the “W”, we didn’t have much desire to do more. It is also a bit of a pain to go north overland, as it takes 2 days to get to Bariloche. So instead we managed to get a flight at a palatable price and hot footed it back to Buenos Aires, to get some sun and to make our way over to Uruguay.

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Photos

Ice cliffs
The boat gives a sense of scale