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Published: August 6th 2007
Flying to Calafate, we had our first glimpse of glacial milk, greenish-blue opaque water that resembles some kind of artificial colouring-laden icing. It's somewhat healthier, however; this shade is a result of mineral input from the glaciers. We later discovered that the "milk" has even spawned an ice-cream flavour in a convincing turquoise hue. But enough about ice-cream for the moment and back to the natural wonders of Patagonia.
The town of Calafate is a handy base for visiting the southern part of the Parque Nacional Los Glaciares. Located on the Lago Argentino, the third largest lake in all of South America, the park is home to the Upsala, Spegazzini, Agassiz, Onelli and Perito Moreno glaciers, amongst others. Boat trips allow you to get up close to the glaciers and freeze your bits off on deck whilst spotting icebergs. And I'm not talking piddling bits of ice, this is Kate 'n 'Leo stuff here; massive, groaning things, some of them with an eerie blue glow, and the most disturbing aspect is knowing that the other 7/8ths of the 'berg are lurking below! That's not to diminish the impressiveness of the glaciers themselves - the Upsala, for example, extends over an
area three times larger than metropolitan Buenos Aires. Yup, they're big.
The idea of trekking on the Perito Moreno glacier had me excited yet somewhat apprehensive due to my extreme clumsiness. But it came with recommendations and reassurances from friends, and in actual fact all I had to worry about was walking in a rather ungainly, spread-legged manner whilst surrounded by numerous virile young guides. Despite Raúl's attempts to hit me in the face with an ice-axe and push me down a crevasse, I escaped unscathed.
Watching the glacier from viewing platforms is just as exciting. One of only a few advancing glaciers on the earth, it creaks and rumbles as chunks of ice fall into the waters below. While you may not see anything falling you can certainly hear it, and can probably make out sudden waves or pieces of ice bobbing to the surface of the lake as a result of the glacier's off-loading. The falling ice we witnessed from the platforms was, at that distance, too minimal to be easily discernible in our photos (gotta get a bigger zoom!), but the sound effects are what really create the atmosphere. Unless, of course, you are lucky
enough to be visiting the glacier when it performs one of its periodic massive ruptures. These have happened on a number of occasions (March 2004 often cited as a recent, impressive example) and are caused by water pressure building up when the ice advances and forms a dike on the Lago Argentino.
All that ice and we just had to have some more. Argentinian towns and cities are full of
heladerías serving copious amounts of ice-cream in an overwhelming variety of flavours. (Aside from thirty-two other flavours, our local parlour has five versions of
dulce de leche helado and ten variations on a chocolate theme). We couldn't leave town without sampling ice-cream made from the berries of the local calafate bush, especially when the saying goes "
el que come el calafate, volverá" (he who eats the calafate will return).
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