Perfect Perito Moreno

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From Puerto Natales (Chilean Patagonia), we did a day trip across the Argentinian border to Glaciares National Park, containing 350 glaciers including the most famous, Perito Moreno. It is one of the only glaciers in the world that is not receding. For the last few years, it´s been in equilibrium - growing 2 metres a day but also receding 2 metres a day.

The border crossing - our first of many dodgy overland crossings - was quite funny as there´s just a little hut and they don´t even bother checking your bags!! Argentina are much slacker than Chile, we didn´t even need to get off the bus. The Moreno glacier is breathtaking - 5 kms wide at the front and rising 60m above the water, and 200m below. You can feel the cold of the ice bouncing off it. The most awesome thing though is the eery sound of chunks of ice falling off and crashing into the water. There are beautiful green lakes all through the park which get their colour from the glaciers feeding them. We also saw lots of stray icebergs floating in the lakes.

That night, we arrived back at 11pm and had to roam town in search of bus ticket back to Punta Arenas to catch our flight the next day. Things were looking grim as all the companies were either full or closed, until we found the bus company that we arrived here with - and surprise surprise, we ran into our little mute friend again, who was so happy to see us that he seemed to think it warranted a kiss for Ashleigh, which was hard to avoid despite me ducking and weaving. Our friend did come in handy though as the office had just closed but he managed to get the manager to give us the last tickets.

So the next day was another full day of travelling, finally arriving back in Santiago for one last night. All up, we´d spent over 30 hours in travelling time to get to Patagonia, but as you can see from the photos, it was absolutely worth it, and the remoteness is all part of the appeal!

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Photos

The glacier in equilibrium
The sound and sight of chunks falling off the glacier was awesome

The view from the plane
Flying back to Santiago over the Glacier National Park