In awe of the power of nature and the size of the glacier
Having settled into La Calafate and enjoyed the local culture the day before, it was time to set off on the must do adventures, according to the tour guides. There is something particularly beautiful about glaciers, so we put that at the top of our list.
We decided to go with Patagonian Dreams as the operator, via TripAdvisor. In all aspects it was a good trip, picked up on time, comfortable coach and friendly, cheerful guide.
La Calafate is the main town in Southern Patagonia, with hordes of summer visitors coming for the trekking and the sightseeing. It is positioned on the edge of the National Glacier park and alongside a massive lake called Lake Argentina, which is the biggest in South America and is absolutely vast. It covers the same square kilometres as Buenos Aries and is an amazing turquoise colour.
The source of the water for the lake are the massive glaciers in this region, so our first trip was to see one these magnificent natural wonders. The main glacier in the national park is Perito Moreno, the journey to get there was across a barren desertscape, vast flat valleys that have been created by glaciers way back in time.
As with all things in Argentina, there is the unexpected park entrance fee that relieved us of £20 each and we headed into the park. The first glimpse of the glacier was a distant white wall in amongst barren hillsides.
The first view of the glacier was from sea level, or lake level. We travelled out in a specially designed boat that more like a mobile viewing platform. The water temperature was 2c, but we still had the safety briefing that told us where the life jackets were stored.
It seemed a bit academic as we would be dead within 90 seconds in that water temperature, but we all seemed happy with the suggestion we would survive a sinking under the glacier and after the briefing we all rushed outside to find a place on the rails.
Even though the glacier was obviously huge, it was difficult to get the scale of the thing as we headed out in the boat, as we got close the full magnitude of this 70m wall of ice became obvious.
All anyone wants on a trip like this is the National Geographic shot of the ice wall breaking, and I’m sure some people did get it because there were regular booms and ice falls into the sea. Unfortunately, I always seemed to be looking the wrong way, or the camera was in my pocket when it happened.
I stood at the front of the boat feeling very safe as we pottered our way through the ice, when for some reason, a huge cloud of icy spray came up over the bow. It wasn’t anyway clear why this had happened, maybe we had some ice under the bow.
However the consequences for me were dire, everyone else seemed to see it coming and jumped back, leaving me to take the full force of this icy spray, even worse, as everyone else backed off they created a wall of bodies and there was no retreat for me. I was absolutely soaked; I had a momentary sense of humour favour it is fair to say.
We spent an hour under the glacier which was a truly awesome (much overused word but not in this case) experience, but you can have too much of a good thing, especially when you are soaked in icy water so we headed back to the dock and off to the walkways around the headland.
By this time, we had become friendly with a couple of fellow travellers from Scotland, Shane and June, who bought a whole new level of humour to the proceedings as we got to know each other’s lives, which had alarming similarities.
In the afternoon we spent another two hours on the walkways looking at the glacier from different angles. If the glacier was awesome from below, it was equally awesome from above, because we could see the full length of the glacier stretching back 19 miles into the distance giving us the 3D perspective that you don’t get from the water.
The Glacier has two faces and feeds two different channels. The left hand face feeds a channel that is more of a lagoon, whilst the right hand face feeds that channel that runs into Lake Argentina. During winter the lake contracts as it has no water source until the iceberg melts in the spring and water level in the lake rises again.
In the company of our new chums, we had a great afternoon wandering the walkways, listening to the ice break off and sharing “empty nester” stories of past and recent travels and our families. In fact, this might have been the reason why we didn’t see an ice fall as we were too busy yapping and laughing at our similarities.
Sadly, all good things come to an end, and we headed back across the desert to El Calafate feeling knackered, but not too knackered to meet up with our new chums, enjoy the great local Patagonian beer and their amazing lamb burgers.
Returning to our room ready for sleep, the next adventure to El Chelten manifested itself in an unwanted way, but that is our next story.
In the meantime, I hope you enjoy the video of our boat cruise and me getting soaked, which I sort of caught on video.
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