Day 31 - Perito Moreno Glacier

Our 25-passenger tour bus picked us and a few more people up before we headed off to the Glaciers National Park. El Calafate (the name is a type of blueberry) is about 28,000 today but was only 5,000 in 2001, before the airport was built. Driving around the town, you can see the tourist orientation. There are many hotels and hostels plus lots of restaurants, curio shops and tour agencies. There are several outfitters carrying well know brands.

We headed west and south towards the Park. The route rolled along Lake Argentino around a small bay where flamingos grazed. Although these are the foothills of the Andes, the Lake is only 580 feet above sea level. The Santa Cruz River flows out of the lake, across the pampas and into the South Atlantic. Further along we drove through flat lands of low scrub and pasture. The estancias (ranches) in this area raise cattle and Merino sheep. The estancias are huge - maybe 60,000 acres - but they have to be since the scrub is so thin and sparse that it takes 5 to 10 acres per animal. Out in the field among the grazing sheep at one point, we saw several Andian Condors on the ground and in the air. The land is mostly glacial till - gravelly with cobbles and boulders. When you think of Patagonia, you think mountains but 90% of Patagonia is this type of flat pampas.

Entering the park, the vegetation changed to forest. The trees are mostly three types of beech with a native evergreen among them. The paved road wound around the steep hills hugging the south arm of Lake Argentino. Our guide said we were fortunate today because it was sunny; many times it is cloudy or foggy. The Perito Moreno Glacier came into view and we stopped at an overlook some 3 miles from it then continued to the main viewing area. The Glacier gets its name from the Argentine explorer, Francesco Moreno who, in the 1870s, was the first European to explore the southern pampas and came to Lake Argentino. He never saw the glacier that carries his name but was hailed as a "scientific expert" (perito). He went on to found the Argentine Scientific Society and is still highly revered.

At the road's end, we spent over two hours marveling at the glacier. The glacier flows out of the Andes and empties into the Lake. Unlike many retreating glaciers, it is quite stable. It butts up against the mountain here. The extensive viewing area has a set of metal-grated, elevated walkways that wind back and forth more than three miles across the mountainside opposite the glacier's faces. The walkways have many viewing platforms at different places and you stroll down and up the mountainside getting different looks at the faces.

There are three faces, north, front and south. The combined faces stretch about three miles from one mountainside to the other. At the top of the walkways, you're about 1,500 feet from the front face; at the lowest, it's only about 1,000 feet. The south face rises about 160 feet above the water while the north is about 240 feet high. Across the front face, a narrow channel connects the south arm of the Lake to the north. At this point, the channel is only about 700 feet wide. At times, the glacier pushes up against the mountain, blocking the channel and the flow of water. This last happened in 2016 and the channel was blocked for more than a year. This caused the water in the south arm to rise more than 60 feet (the high water mark is readily visible along the shore of the south arm). When the water pressure finally overcame the ice pressure and cut a channel through the glacier, it was quite a spectacle. The visitors center has video of some of it.

The glacier is constantly moving (5 to 10 feet a day) and calving small icebergs into the lake. As you walk the ways, you can hear the ice cracking and see small, sometimes large, sheets split off the face and crash into the water. I caught one medium size chunk falling off on video (which I'll try to post on my Facebook page). The ice exposed to the air is white but the deeper ice, compressed by the weight of that on top, is a deep blue. On the pictures (and my video) you can see the contrast between the newly exposed blue and the older white face. It was a fantastic experience.

We concluded our visit with a catamaran ride on the south arm to within 1,000 feet of the south face. The sun was behind the ice and illuminating the changing colors. On the far end of the south face, some tours let you walk up onto the sloping glacier. Everyone on the boat kept hoping for a big calve but only a small one happened and that was behind us. Back on the bus, our guide treated us to a shot of calafate liquor (very blueberry tasting) and a chocolate. We rolled back into town to end our tour.

We've taken a dozen or so tours on this trip but, for me, this was the best.Baca lagi