Perito Moreno Glacier - Argentina

10/22/05

We departed at 08:30 A.M with a small group of tourists to visit the Perito Moreno Glacier. I confess I wasn't really excited to visit that place, after all, it was a glacier, something I had already seen in the Alps and in New Zealand, but I was terribly wrong and it turned out not to be just another glacier.

Perito Moreno is today a National Park, Los Glaciares, and the trip from El Calafate to the entrance of the park takes from one to one and a half hour. On the way a guide told us lots of interesting things about the region.

Well, to begin, the road goes along the huge lake that is 20 kilometers wide and 100 kilometers long. In some days the wind speeds up to 100 km/h making the waves reach up to 3m high. If it wasn't for the wind and the icebergs you could well bring your board and surf on it.

The guide also informed us that Argentina and Chile still dispute the border of that region, they still quite don't agree on which mountains and lakes belong to what side.

The density of the population in Patagonia is of 1 person per square kilometer. The average distance between towns (and they are tiny towns) is of 500 kilometers, sometimes with no gas stations in between.

El Calafate received an airport and a new road, so they expect now more and more tourists to visit Perito Moreno due to the facilities to reach the town, and that only was enough to turn El Calafate into the most expensive town in Argentina. They expect the population to grow from 12 to 50 thousand in the next 10 years.

The town inherited the name from a bush that grows widespread in the region and that produces a little yellow berry that can be used to make jam, but in the past it was rubbed on the casque of the boat to make it more resistant to water.



Early europeans, tried to populate the area but with little success. The environment is not adequate for farming, so any kind of food had to be brought over from very long distances. Some people tried to raise sheep and the towns existing today were actually stops on the way to ship wool to Europe.

While listening all those stories we didn't see the time going by and suddenly we stopped in a viewpoint. The first place where from you can see the Perito Moreno Glacier.



The viewpoint was 6 kilometers away and there I started to see how wrong I was about that being just another glacier because this thing is simply massively huge. Looking into the valley the ice stretches for 30 kilometers (and that is not a typo). The face is 1.5 kilometer wide and the vertical drops are 60m high, something like a 15 stories building.



The view point is still outside the National Park; after that we drove into the Park area, parked the van and walked on the rocky border of the lake to get a bit closer.



From here you can have an extra by touring by boat (12 $US extra). Since we are not fans of boats we preferred to stay on land and explore.



The glacier is constantly moving, there are huge pieces of ice falling into the water every five minutes, the sound is of an explosion, the whole thing is really impressive. For that reason, to make the boat tour safe, it won't get any closer then 300 meters from the face of ice (60 m high).





boat panoramic 1

boat panoramic 2

With this picture you can have another idea of the distance that the boat keeps from the wall.



Here we are, at the end of the little hike by the shore of the lake; you can climb up a hill where from you can get very close to the wall.



This area has lots of smaller pieces that have just fallen from the wall.





We kept moving to other places, there are many different view points where you can observe the glacier. The extension we see here is of 30 km into the valley.



When we were moving to another spot we heard an immense explosion and we looked back instantly. A whole part of the face had fallen into the water.



Again, from another spot, looking into the valley.



Believe it or not, some crazy people tried to hike over this, of course they died and today it is forbidden.





There closest viewpoint.



The corner.



Here we see a very interesting formation. The glacier advances and forms a natural dam, the level of the water on the left is much higher then on the right. At some point during a period of time it breaks out, but it is very difficult to catch that moment, as it depends on the temperature, evolution of the glacier, rain level and many other factors.



A closer shot shows the blue coloration. Because it is highly compacted it has little oxygen which makes it blue. Also, the very face of ice you see here formed hundreds of years ago some 30 kilometers back there in the valley. It slowly slid to get here and finally fall into the lake. So what you see is a quite old piece of ice.



The more blue it is, the less oxygen it has.



Just below this wall is a place where tourists use to have access, but with this thing moving forward so often the result couldn't be another, some people died due to falling blocks of ice and the access to the area was closed.



Well, this thing is really huge and there are hundreds of ways to see it.



A true wonder of nature.



At the end of the day we went back to El Calafate and from there we took a bus to El Chalten.