A String Bean Country's alot Colder than a Fat One

---

Geo: -51.7325, -72.5051

We'd (okay, I'd) wanted to do this trip since I'd first read of it. A boat trip through the fjords of southern Chile and all those beautiful mountains and glaciers, the whales, dolphins, sea lions and condors--it sounded gorgeous. Right?

What they don't tell you is it rains and blows cold every stinking day and is much colder in summer than the same distance from the equator going north. Hmmm. Did that make sense? What I mean is, 49 degrees north is a lot warmer in the summer than 49 degrees south in their summer.

Why?

We ran up alongside a glacier our last day--more on that later. But I asked our guide why he had a glacier here at sea level when Kalispell was only 2 degrees different, yet had a much warmer climate.

He explained it this way. The northern hemisphere has a large body of land to warm in the sun while Patagonia has only this very narrow slice--90%!m(MISSING)ountainous--surrounded by ocean. This means it's not only cooler in the summer down here, but the ocean keeps it warmer in the winter. Temperatures in Patagonia are more constant year round than temps in Canada, for instance.

He explained that in the summer the temperature at the top of the glacier is 32 degrees while in the winter it only gets down to -12F. And this is at 49 degrees south, about the same distance from the equator as Vancouver, B.C.

Now you don't see glaciers at sea level in Vancouver B.C., do you? See what I mean?

And then there are the volcanoes. There is a string of them, active and inactive. Chile has the region's largest number of historically active volcanoes, with 36 (ranking it 5th among nations, behind Russia's 52 and ahead of Iceland's 18)... http://www.volcano.si.edu/world/region.cfm?rnum=15&rpage=highlights

All that ash blocks the sunlight and drops the temperature, he says.

So dress warm and bring dependable rain gear. This is not the time to say, oh, it'll be good enough.

---

Photos

Tiny Tiny Boat Lower Right
That's the capitan getting ice for the passengers' Pisco Sours --a glacial tradition.

Comments

[Tom]

Is that the Perito Moreno Glacier?

[bobnkaren]

No. Perito Moreno's in Argentina just across the border. This is the Iceberg Glacier and it's much, much smaller. Perito Moreno is absolutely amazing. You can get really close to its towering wall of ice--astounding.