Perito Moreno Glacier - Argentina 2014

Travelling by road on the 4hr trip from Torres del Paine to El Calafate was an interesting experience!  We were with our 4 Aussie travelling friends along with 2 UK ladies and a non English-speaking driver as we headed for the Argentinian border.

First we had to leave Chile so stopped at their border.  We followed the driver inside, handed over passports, got the correct stamps and climbed back into our mini bus, another empty mini bus parked behind us.  Then both buses travelled through no-mans land and stopped again at the Argentinian border.

Out we piled again and went through their processing of passports, got back into our mini bus, passed through the gates, the same empty mini bus also following us through.  After about a 500 mtr drive we stopped and had to get out of our mini bus, collect all our bags and load everything into the empty mini bus, all without any ability of either driver to tell us what was going on.  Then our new driver headed off with us towards El Calafate and our initial driver waved goodbye and headed back into Chile.

About an hour further down the road whilst driving through a small town with a major intersection in it, we were pulled over by a police roadblock and the driver was asked to stop near a large van surrounded by police and Federal officers.  Out we got again and had to take every bag of any description to one side of the van.  This van was a portable X-ray unit and every bag was scanned before we loaded everything back into our mini bus.  Again, no English used to help us understand what was required of us except stern gestures and very grim faces.  The rest of the drive however was uneventful.

The town of El Calafate is a true tourist location like Ushuaia and its claim to fame and focus is THE glacier – otherwise known as Perito Moreno, one of the largest glacier systems in the world, excluding Antarctica and Greenland.  This glacier is also directly connected to the Grey Glacier way back in Torres del Paine.  Perito Moreno Glacier was the primary reason we were in El Calafate, a very pleasant place to stroll around, nestled near a very large lake and associated bird reserve.

Our hotel was very nice and modern with a large comfortable room and bed, relatively good internet access and views over the lake, the reason we could catch up on some posts.  Down in the bar with the other Aussie travellers, we all re-acquainted ourselves with pisco sours as the sun set over the town.

sunset over the lake and El Calafate

By a sheer stroke of good fortune, Cat and Cal were also in town and were separately heading to the glacier early tomorrow morning to go walking on the glacier itself.  We caught up with them for dinner and heard about their trekking and camping throughout Torres del Paine, the rain, the very strong winds and other challenges.

The weather the next day was stunning as the 6 of us were picked up for our tour of the glacier, which essentially involves an 80 km drive to it and then advice on the very extensive walkway system used to allow everyone to get quite close to this very striking place.  The Perito Moreno Glacier is certainly extremely popular based on the sheer number of buses and people here.

First activity once we arrived within the national park was an optional boat trip to nearish the glacier face which lasted about 1 hr. and certainly provided us with a sense of just how big this thing is.  Actually it’s about 30km long, 5km wide and around 50-60 mtrs high.  Our boat looked very very small against this juggernaut.

the boats do look VERY small

Everyone split up once we finally reached all walkways, so we headed for one we hoped would get us the closest and give us a good view down the face of the glacier, hopeful like most people to hear that very familiar and loud ‘crack’ which signals calving occurring somewhere.

on the walkways along the glacier's face

It didn’t take very long… CRACK!  We madly looked along the face of the glacier in both directions and spotted a big blue shard of ice heading for the water below.  Up came the camera and click, click, click, other people pointing to the large splash that followed.

calving underway

For the next few hours we slowly made our way around the walkways and spent much of our time simply quietly watching and waiting.  This is not a receding glacier and in fact is moving quite quickly, up to 2mtrs per day, that’s right, per day!  The thing that grabs your attention constantly is the noise of this glacier.  It creaks and groans, then that cracking sound occurs quite frequently, not always associated with a calving event.  We certainly took a few photos of this very impressive place.

For more photos of THE Glacier just click on the link below:

CLICK HERE for more photos of - THE Glacier Perito Moreno 2014

On our drive back to El Calafate we also observed quite a few flocks of flamingos near the shore of the lake, which is something we will need to explore also.

Well we had come to the final day and night with our new Aussie travelling friends and they had certainly made the last few days very enjoyable when sharing stories of what we had all just seen as well as having a lot of fun.

Time to part company and for us to head to El Chalten.