El Calafate, Argentina & Perito Merano Glacier – March 10-12, 2011
I was caught up with these blogs but now I find I’m already three days behind. We arrived in El Calafate around noon on March 10th and it’s already the evening of March 12th. Oh well, I will do this quickly and hopefully get caught up again before we leave for Torres Del Paine National Park where internet may be questionable.
When we left Buenos Aires early in the morning on the 10th the temperature was already over 30 degrees Celsius (and heading for 37 degrees that day) and very humid so the first thing we noticed after our four hour flight to El Calafate was a drastic temperature change. The high on the day we arrived was 12 degrees and when we arrived it was less than that so the 20 degree (40 degrees Fahrenheit?) drop in temperature definitely caught your attention. The second thing you notice right away is that it is incredibly windy in El Calafate. The wind never stops blowing. It just seems to blow hard or harder. The third thing you notice but much later on is that the air is extremely dry. The cold air, continual wind and dry air are definitely wreaking havoc on my skin. I left a bag of stuff back in Buenos Aires as we end this tour back there and one of the things I left behind was my body lotion. I wish I had it back now!
Now I do have to add that on the 10th and the 11th the sun was shining brightly so that definitely added a bit of warmth to the day. The sun doesn’t set until about 9 p.m. as this is their summer so we even had lots of light for touring around. On the first afternoon we took a taxi to our hotel and checked in. It’s actually a hostel but it’s very nice. The town is small and everything is within walking distance. The population is 8,000 and most of the homes are quite small so the town is very compact. It is on the shore of Lago Argentino or Lake Argentina but in fact they have s safe distance between the town and the lake, I guess in case of flooding. El Calafate was founded by the Argentinian government in 1927 to promote the area and increase its population when the main industry was sheep farming. There is still a large sheep industry in the area with many large sheep stations but the government has had to restrict the number of sheep per kilometer as the little guys were eating all of the grass, of which there is not much to start with. As far as the city is concerned, it wasn’t until the creation of Los Glaciares National Park that the town really grew with tourism as its main economic driver.
As you wander through the main street of town you definitely know you are in a tourist area. Almost everything is on the main street or within the first block off of it. We are probably only talking twenty blocks at the most and yet there are probably a hundred restaurants, cafes or ice cream parlours of various sizes. Despite the competition prices are still high, almost as high as in any large city we’ve been in so we no longer have the really cheap food we had grown used to. Along with the restaurants and cafes you have a few bars, one casino, some grocery stores and corner 7/11s although they don’t call them that. The rest of the stores are retail stores that sell a lot of souvenirs and a lot of stores selling hiking gear. With the national park nearby and the weather being what it is, I imagine these stores sell a lot of warm weather and wet weather gear. The brochure for the national park says the climate is cool temperate with a mean temperature of 7.5 degrees Celsius averaging .6 in winter and 13.4 in summer. The high areas in the park get lots of precipitation but the areas to the east, like El Calafate, are in the rain shadow and get very little rain. On some of the steppes there is not much more than grass and what I would consider sage brush.
Our first afternoon was spent walking around the downtown area. We had lunch at a local restaurant and then continued on with our tour. We went to the National Park office but it was pretty empty. There were some pictures to look at and a few displays but little else on the inside. There were a few exhibits outside as well. It didn’t take long to see the whole place both indoor and outdoor. There is a small church on main street and it was very pretty, albeit very plain, on the inside.
It was getting colder and windier so we decided to head back to the hotel for another layer of clothing. Right next door was the Regional Museum so we went there for a visit. We had a great tour guide who spoke very little English but who was eager to play charades with us until we figured out what she was talking about. The museum has lots of old pictures of the early days of El Calafate including the wagon trains coming to the area. They looked like the usual western movie wagon trains except these wagons had wheels that were taller than a man. There was old farm machinery around the museum and it looked just like the old machinery you see in museums in Canada. The first phone exchange switchboard was on display and the first printing press and other such objects. As well there were displays of plants and stuffed birds and animals from the area so it was good to finally see the name in print for some of what we have been seeing and hearing about. After that we went back to the hotel for a quick break and then went out to dinner. It was a bit more expensive than usual but very delicious.
We went downtown on our second morning and booked a taxi to take us to the caves at Punta Walichu, wait for us while we walked to the cave, and then bring us back into the city. This is an historical sight as cave paintings were found on the cliffs and they date back to 1,800 to 4,000 years ago. The people were much shorter then and the lake has filled the bottom of the caves with stone and sand so the cave is very low in most places. As a result the paintings are very low and almost hidden from view. There were hand prints where the person had put his died hand on the stone and also where the person had sprayed die around his hand that was on the stone. They were faint but once they were pointed out you could indeed see them. There were also some feet prints and some drawings of stick figures of humans and animals. These are the original paintings from this area. There are similar cave paintings in other areas and these have been photographed and reproduced in another section of these caves. Some of these are quite elaborate compared to the local original ones. At the end they also had a replica of how they would have built their homes.
The caves and rocks themselves were fascinating with lots of curves and hollows and cracks and holes. They looked like masses of carved boulders with the carvers trying to make each one more ornate. We were walking right along the lakeshore so it made for a very beautiful setting with the high snow-capped mountains on the other side of the lake. I could certainly see why they would want to live here, especially if there were fish in the lake to eat. The caves would certainly provide them with a bit of shelter from the wind, which would be a blessing in this area. The rock in some places looks very hard with layers and layers of different colours. In other places it looks almost like paper or sand with tiny holes and bubbles in it. That part didn’t look very secure to be living under as it looked like it could fall down or blow away at any time.
We then walked to the Lagoon and on the way stopped at the Centro de Interpretacion Historica. It claimed to explain Austral Patagonian identity. I finally had to look up the word austral as I had been hearing and seeing it so often and it simply means from the south. The museum was all in Spanish and there was lots of reading. However, they had English books to go with the readings so we could follow along wearing a head lamp that they supplied (since some of the rooms were rather dark). The museum started off millions of years ago and explained how South America and Patagonia was formed. It then got into the dinosaurs and they had several life size skeletons on display. Eventually it got to humans in the area and their development. And of course it went through the geology and information about glaciers. The final room was a video on the glaciers and mainly on the ruptures of the glaciers when they were touching the peninsula and the water had to work its way through. The museum was good and very informative but there was way too much static reading for my liking. Seeing the timelines though certainly helped to provide a perspective.
From the museum we went to the lagoon. It is in a very flat area and the wind was blowing fiercely the whole time we were there. We were supposed to see lots of birds around the lagoon and we did see many: ducks, geese, snipe, white swans, black necked swans, flamingoes, chimango caracara, coots, ibis, horses, etc. Okay, so horses don’t quite fit the category but they were there just running free on the one side of the lagoon. At the one end of the lagoon we were at the lake so stopped and took some pictures there. The whole trek only took about an hour but it was so incredibly cold and windy that I’m not sure any of my shots will turn out as I couldn’t hold the camera steady. We couldn’t go all the way around the lagoon because one section was washed out, or at least too soggy. That meant we had to return by the same route but at least it was a nice easy walk and all on level ground.
After the lagoon we walked back into town, had some lunch and then caught the bus to another museum. The Glaciarium was quite a ways out of town but had a bus service (for a fee). It is definitely out in the middle of nowhere but the building is very attractive. It’s a modern construction and all of white. I assume it is to represent the front edge of a glacier and it certainly has the vertical walls and striations to indicate that. The glaciers in Patagonia are some of the largest in the world and they are certainly bigger than anything we have in Canada. I thought our glaciers were big and impressive but these ones are in a totally different league. They are huge and that’s what I remember most from the museum. After the museum we came back into town and went back to the hotel where we had our introductory tour meeting and then went to dinner and bed.
Los Glaciares National Park is 50 km from town and covers almost 4,500 square kilometers with 40% of it covered by ice fields including 13 glaciers. The Perito Moreno Glacier is located at the west end of Lago Argentino 80 km from El Calafate. It is probably the only advancing glacier in the world. While others are shrinking in size, there is so much snow falling in the Andes and feeding this glacier that it has actually been maintaining its size since 1917 when they started keeping detailed records. The front of the glacier is five kilometers wide at a height of about 60 metres. In other words, it towers about 20 storeys above the lake that it empties into. The front of the glacier empties into the Brazo Rico arm of the lake and is very close to the peninsula that forms Brazo Rico. Some years the glacier actually touches the land and that creates problems as it stops the flow of water from Brazo Rico into Lago Argentino and creates flooding. Eventually, however, some water will find a way through the ice and leave a hole making an ice bridge. Eventually this will collapse and the channel will be free and the water will again flow freely. Today there was a small flowing channel in front of the glacier but there certainly wasn’t much of a distance between the land and the front of the glacier, and there was one huge chunk of ice still sitting on the peninsula.
We started the 11th, the first day of our tour, by driving the back roads, and yes they are dirt in Patagonia, to the glacier. We made several stops to take pictures of the scenery and to see animals that appeared such as buzzard eagles, hares, ostrich/emu like birds whose name I forget, etc. We saw several of the sheep stations and had a quick rest stop at one place with lots of sheep and a baby guanaco (another camelid). The place was small with just a couple of rooms and the baby animals roamed around inside. The hot chocolate was delicious but I can’t say the same for their cake which was hard as a rock on the outside. Later we wondered if they had any electric power in the place or if all of the cakes and goodies were cooked in the stone oven that filled a large part of the kitchen. That might explain the burned outer crust. We even stopped at one point just so we could all get off the bus and go taste the berries of the calafate bush. The town is named for the bush or berries. They are small and purple and turned your teeth and tongue very dark. We weren’t allowed to bring any back on the bus because they apparently stain everything they touch. They were tasty but really seedy so I didn’t enjoy them that much.
We started our tour of the glacier by taking a walk from the road down to the lakeshore. Yes, that was definitely the easy part! We wandered around the lakeshore and took pictures of the glacier. At that point we were still about eight kilometers away but it was still quite impressive. Then we had to walk back up to the road. That was only a ten minute walk according to our guide but I certainly took longer and others took even longer. The path was one shovel length in width and there really were no steps or anything. You just plowed your way up by stepping wherever you thought you needed to go. The branches of trees were crossing the path and hitting you at head level and at ankle level. It was definitely an uphill climb but I made so that’s what matters – at least for today. Our new tour group has been together for a while and yesterday they did a 16 km hike up and around the side of Fitz Roy. That I think would have done me in so I’m not sure how I’ll keep up with these guys. However, I’ll worry about that later.
From the walk we took the bus to the main lookout for the glacier and that is a serious of paths and stairs that wander around the front of the peninsula so that you can have a great view of the face of the glacier. There are many viewing platforms or balconies with seats so you can have your lunch and watch the glacier and hope to see it calving. We were lucky and heard a lot of cracking sounds and splashes into the water. We didn’t always see them in time but we certainly did hear them and then got to watch at least the final splash and the resulting waves and icebergs. It really was quite impressive. And the face of the glacier is really amazing with deep crevices and cracks and some streaks of darker colours. Overall the front of the glacier was a lovely shade of whitish blue with darker blue patches. It was a cloudy day and that apparently brings out the blue in the ice. The top of the glacier is very jagged and rough with thousands of pieces of ice jutting up above the main surface. The hard jagged landscape is fascinating.
The glacier flows from the mountains and seems to come from about five directions as it flows down the hillside. The mountains in the background were hidden from view most of the day due to low clouds but the size of the glacier is impressive enough. I don’t remember the exact dimensions but I do remember the guide saying the area of the glacier was larger than the area of Buenos Aires which is home to over six million people so that sort of puts it in perspective. We spent two hours wandering around the walkways, having our luncheon and sitting and watching the glacier.
The last part of our visit to the Perito Moreno glacier involved a boat trip on Brazo Rico to get a closer view. We of course couldn’t get really close but it was good enough to get a better perspective of the height of the glacier. On this cruise we were looking only at the south face of the glacier. From the terraces we were looking only at the middle or east face of the glacier. The north face of the glacier could not be seen from either location so we may only have seen half to two-thirds of the total glacier. The boat trip and closer view just emphasized how cracked and creviced the glacier really is. On the very left side of the glacier there were people walking on the ice as part of another tour. I guess we’ll have to save that experience for another time. From the boat we could also see the large rocks along the shoreline and they were certainly identifiable as having been scraped by a glacier moving over them as they had deep grooves and distinct layers of different colours. It was quite impressive to see. Also impressive were the marks indicating the flood levels when the glacier closed off the channel. It can certainly back up a lot of water when it’s blocked.
I shouldn’t really leave the Perito Moreno Glacier without saying a few words about Moreno the person. He seemed like quite an interesting person and certainly gave a lot of his time and money to the area. He supported numerous projects like schools and day care centres and was very well respected in the local, national and international communities. I’m not sure he was a politician but he certainly seemed to be involved in political endeavours. I don’t know a lot more than that about him but he certainly sounded interesting – perhaps someone to look up later.
We took the main highway home and were back at our hotel around 5 p.m. The whole tour group went out for dinner as a welcome to the new people who joined today (just two of us) and the people who are leaving tomorrow (just two of them). Then we came back and backed to get organized for our journey to Puerto Natales the next day. Okay, I’m now writing this after dinner and I can honestly say that my meal was the best lamb I have ever tasted. They grill the half lamb on a spit over a fire in the corner of a restaurant and then carve it as needed. It was incredibly tender. You could cut it with a fork and it literally melted in your mouth. I also had a Chilean wine which was very nice - a Latitude 33 Chardonnay. Some of the group went out to drinks but most of us came back to call it a night. Tomorrow we are off to Puerto Natales and Torres Del Paine for more adventures.
I was caught up with these blogs but now I find I’m already three days behind. We arrived in El Calafate around noon on March 10th and it’s already the evening of March 12th. Oh well, I will do this quickly and hopefully get caught up again before we leave for Torres Del Paine National Park where internet may be questionable.
When we left Buenos Aires early in the morning on the 10th the temperature was already over 30 degrees Celsius (and heading for 37 degrees that day) and very humid so the first thing we noticed after our four hour flight to El Calafate was a drastic temperature change. The high on the day we arrived was 12 degrees and when we arrived it was less than that so the 20 degree (40 degrees Fahrenheit?) drop in temperature definitely caught your attention. The second thing you notice right away is that it is incredibly windy in El Calafate. The wind never stops blowing. It just seems to blow hard or harder. The third thing you notice but much later on is that the air is extremely dry. The cold air, continual wind and dry air are definitely wreaking havoc on my skin. I left a bag of stuff back in Buenos Aires as we end this tour back there and one of the things I left behind was my body lotion. I wish I had it back now!
Now I do have to add that on the 10th and the 11th the sun was shining brightly so that definitely added a bit of warmth to the day. The sun doesn’t set until about 9 p.m. as this is their summer so we even had lots of light for touring around. On the first afternoon we took a taxi to our hotel and checked in. It’s actually a hostel but it’s very nice. The town is small and everything is within walking distance. The population is 8,000 and most of the homes are quite small so the town is very compact. It is on the shore of Lago Argentino or Lake Argentina but in fact they have s safe distance between the town and the lake, I guess in case of flooding. El Calafate was founded by the Argentinian government in 1927 to promote the area and increase its population when the main industry was sheep farming. There is still a large sheep industry in the area with many large sheep stations but the government has had to restrict the number of sheep per kilometer as the little guys were eating all of the grass, of which there is not much to start with. As far as the city is concerned, it wasn’t until the creation of Los Glaciares National Park that the town really grew with tourism as its main economic driver.
As you wander through the main street of town you definitely know you are in a tourist area. Almost everything is on the main street or within the first block off of it. We are probably only talking twenty blocks at the most and yet there are probably a hundred restaurants, cafes or ice cream parlours of various sizes. Despite the competition prices are still high, almost as high as in any large city we’ve been in so we no longer have the really cheap food we had grown used to. Along with the restaurants and cafes you have a few bars, one casino, some grocery stores and corner 7/11s although they don’t call them that. The rest of the stores are retail stores that sell a lot of souvenirs and a lot of stores selling hiking gear. With the national park nearby and the weather being what it is, I imagine these stores sell a lot of warm weather and wet weather gear. The brochure for the national park says the climate is cool temperate with a mean temperature of 7.5 degrees Celsius averaging .6 in winter and 13.4 in summer. The high areas in the park get lots of precipitation but the areas to the east, like El Calafate, are in the rain shadow and get very little rain. On some of the steppes there is not much more than grass and what I would consider sage brush.
Our first afternoon was spent walking around the downtown area. We had lunch at a local restaurant and then continued on with our tour. We went to the National Park office but it was pretty empty. There were some pictures to look at and a few displays but little else on the inside. There were a few exhibits outside as well. It didn’t take long to see the whole place both indoor and outdoor. There is a small church on main street and it was very pretty, albeit very plain, on the inside.
It was getting colder and windier so we decided to head back to the hotel for another layer of clothing. Right next door was the Regional Museum so we went there for a visit. We had a great tour guide who spoke very little English but who was eager to play charades with us until we figured out what she was talking about. The museum has lots of old pictures of the early days of El Calafate including the wagon trains coming to the area. They looked like the usual western movie wagon trains except these wagons had wheels that were taller than a man. There was old farm machinery around the museum and it looked just like the old machinery you see in museums in Canada. The first phone exchange switchboard was on display and the first printing press and other such objects. As well there were displays of plants and stuffed birds and animals from the area so it was good to finally see the name in print for some of what we have been seeing and hearing about. After that we went back to the hotel for a quick break and then went out to dinner. It was a bit more expensive than usual but very delicious.
We went downtown on our second morning and booked a taxi to take us to the caves at Punta Walichu, wait for us while we walked to the cave, and then bring us back into the city. This is an historical sight as cave paintings were found on the cliffs and they date back to 1,800 to 4,000 years ago. The people were much shorter then and the lake has filled the bottom of the caves with stone and sand so the cave is very low in most places. As a result the paintings are very low and almost hidden from view. There were hand prints where the person had put his died hand on the stone and also where the person had sprayed die around his hand that was on the stone. They were faint but once they were pointed out you could indeed see them. There were also some feet prints and some drawings of stick figures of humans and animals. These are the original paintings from this area. There are similar cave paintings in other areas and these have been photographed and reproduced in another section of these caves. Some of these are quite elaborate compared to the local original ones. At the end they also had a replica of how they would have built their homes.
The caves and rocks themselves were fascinating with lots of curves and hollows and cracks and holes. They looked like masses of carved boulders with the carvers trying to make each one more ornate. We were walking right along the lakeshore so it made for a very beautiful setting with the high snow-capped mountains on the other side of the lake. I could certainly see why they would want to live here, especially if there were fish in the lake to eat. The caves would certainly provide them with a bit of shelter from the wind, which would be a blessing in this area. The rock in some places looks very hard with layers and layers of different colours. In other places it looks almost like paper or sand with tiny holes and bubbles in it. That part didn’t look very secure to be living under as it looked like it could fall down or blow away at any time.
We then walked to the Lagoon and on the way stopped at the Centro de Interpretacion Historica. It claimed to explain Austral Patagonian identity. I finally had to look up the word austral as I had been hearing and seeing it so often and it simply means from the south. The museum was all in Spanish and there was lots of reading. However, they had English books to go with the readings so we could follow along wearing a head lamp that they supplied (since some of the rooms were rather dark). The museum started off millions of years ago and explained how South America and Patagonia was formed. It then got into the dinosaurs and they had several life size skeletons on display. Eventually it got to humans in the area and their development. And of course it went through the geology and information about glaciers. The final room was a video on the glaciers and mainly on the ruptures of the glaciers when they were touching the peninsula and the water had to work its way through. The museum was good and very informative but there was way too much static reading for my liking. Seeing the timelines though certainly helped to provide a perspective.
From the museum we went to the lagoon. It is in a very flat area and the wind was blowing fiercely the whole time we were there. We were supposed to see lots of birds around the lagoon and we did see many: ducks, geese, snipe, white swans, black necked swans, flamingoes, chimango caracara, coots, ibis, horses, etc. Okay, so horses don’t quite fit the category but they were there just running free on the one side of the lagoon. At the one end of the lagoon we were at the lake so stopped and took some pictures there. The whole trek only took about an hour but it was so incredibly cold and windy that I’m not sure any of my shots will turn out as I couldn’t hold the camera steady. We couldn’t go all the way around the lagoon because one section was washed out, or at least too soggy. That meant we had to return by the same route but at least it was a nice easy walk and all on level ground.
After the lagoon we walked back into town, had some lunch and then caught the bus to another museum. The Glaciarium was quite a ways out of town but had a bus service (for a fee). It is definitely out in the middle of nowhere but the building is very attractive. It’s a modern construction and all of white. I assume it is to represent the front edge of a glacier and it certainly has the vertical walls and striations to indicate that. The glaciers in Patagonia are some of the largest in the world and they are certainly bigger than anything we have in Canada. I thought our glaciers were big and impressive but these ones are in a totally different league. They are huge and that’s what I remember most from the museum. After the museum we came back into town and went back to the hotel where we had our introductory tour meeting and then went to dinner and bed.
Los Glaciares National Park is 50 km from town and covers almost 4,500 square kilometers with 40% of it covered by ice fields including 13 glaciers. The Perito Moreno Glacier is located at the west end of Lago Argentino 80 km from El Calafate. It is probably the only advancing glacier in the world. While others are shrinking in size, there is so much snow falling in the Andes and feeding this glacier that it has actually been maintaining its size since 1917 when they started keeping detailed records. The front of the glacier is five kilometers wide at a height of about 60 metres. In other words, it towers about 20 storeys above the lake that it empties into. The front of the glacier empties into the Brazo Rico arm of the lake and is very close to the peninsula that forms Brazo Rico. Some years the glacier actually touches the land and that creates problems as it stops the flow of water from Brazo Rico into Lago Argentino and creates flooding. Eventually, however, some water will find a way through the ice and leave a hole making an ice bridge. Eventually this will collapse and the channel will be free and the water will again flow freely. Today there was a small flowing channel in front of the glacier but there certainly wasn’t much of a distance between the land and the front of the glacier, and there was one huge chunk of ice still sitting on the peninsula.
We started the 11th, the first day of our tour, by driving the back roads, and yes they are dirt in Patagonia, to the glacier. We made several stops to take pictures of the scenery and to see animals that appeared such as buzzard eagles, hares, ostrich/emu like birds whose name I forget, etc. We saw several of the sheep stations and had a quick rest stop at one place with lots of sheep and a baby guanaco (another camelid). The place was small with just a couple of rooms and the baby animals roamed around inside. The hot chocolate was delicious but I can’t say the same for their cake which was hard as a rock on the outside. Later we wondered if they had any electric power in the place or if all of the cakes and goodies were cooked in the stone oven that filled a large part of the kitchen. That might explain the burned outer crust. We even stopped at one point just so we could all get off the bus and go taste the berries of the calafate bush. The town is named for the bush or berries. They are small and purple and turned your teeth and tongue very dark. We weren’t allowed to bring any back on the bus because they apparently stain everything they touch. They were tasty but really seedy so I didn’t enjoy them that much.
We started our tour of the glacier by taking a walk from the road down to the lakeshore. Yes, that was definitely the easy part! We wandered around the lakeshore and took pictures of the glacier. At that point we were still about eight kilometers away but it was still quite impressive. Then we had to walk back up to the road. That was only a ten minute walk according to our guide but I certainly took longer and others took even longer. The path was one shovel length in width and there really were no steps or anything. You just plowed your way up by stepping wherever you thought you needed to go. The branches of trees were crossing the path and hitting you at head level and at ankle level. It was definitely an uphill climb but I made so that’s what matters – at least for today. Our new tour group has been together for a while and yesterday they did a 16 km hike up and around the side of Fitz Roy. That I think would have done me in so I’m not sure how I’ll keep up with these guys. However, I’ll worry about that later.
From the walk we took the bus to the main lookout for the glacier and that is a serious of paths and stairs that wander around the front of the peninsula so that you can have a great view of the face of the glacier. There are many viewing platforms or balconies with seats so you can have your lunch and watch the glacier and hope to see it calving. We were lucky and heard a lot of cracking sounds and splashes into the water. We didn’t always see them in time but we certainly did hear them and then got to watch at least the final splash and the resulting waves and icebergs. It really was quite impressive. And the face of the glacier is really amazing with deep crevices and cracks and some streaks of darker colours. Overall the front of the glacier was a lovely shade of whitish blue with darker blue patches. It was a cloudy day and that apparently brings out the blue in the ice. The top of the glacier is very jagged and rough with thousands of pieces of ice jutting up above the main surface. The hard jagged landscape is fascinating.
The glacier flows from the mountains and seems to come from about five directions as it flows down the hillside. The mountains in the background were hidden from view most of the day due to low clouds but the size of the glacier is impressive enough. I don’t remember the exact dimensions but I do remember the guide saying the area of the glacier was larger than the area of Buenos Aires which is home to over six million people so that sort of puts it in perspective. We spent two hours wandering around the walkways, having our luncheon and sitting and watching the glacier.
The last part of our visit to the Perito Moreno glacier involved a boat trip on Brazo Rico to get a closer view. We of course couldn’t get really close but it was good enough to get a better perspective of the height of the glacier. On this cruise we were looking only at the south face of the glacier. From the terraces we were looking only at the middle or east face of the glacier. The north face of the glacier could not be seen from either location so we may only have seen half to two-thirds of the total glacier. The boat trip and closer view just emphasized how cracked and creviced the glacier really is. On the very left side of the glacier there were people walking on the ice as part of another tour. I guess we’ll have to save that experience for another time. From the boat we could also see the large rocks along the shoreline and they were certainly identifiable as having been scraped by a glacier moving over them as they had deep grooves and distinct layers of different colours. It was quite impressive to see. Also impressive were the marks indicating the flood levels when the glacier closed off the channel. It can certainly back up a lot of water when it’s blocked.
I shouldn’t really leave the Perito Moreno Glacier without saying a few words about Moreno the person. He seemed like quite an interesting person and certainly gave a lot of his time and money to the area. He supported numerous projects like schools and day care centres and was very well respected in the local, national and international communities. I’m not sure he was a politician but he certainly seemed to be involved in political endeavours. I don’t know a lot more than that about him but he certainly sounded interesting – perhaps someone to look up later.
We took the main highway home and were back at our hotel around 5 p.m. The whole tour group went out for dinner as a welcome to the new people who joined today (just two of us) and the people who are leaving tomorrow (just two of them). Then we came back and backed to get organized for our journey to Puerto Natales the next day. Okay, I’m now writing this after dinner and I can honestly say that my meal was the best lamb I have ever tasted. They grill the half lamb on a spit over a fire in the corner of a restaurant and then carve it as needed. It was incredibly tender. You could cut it with a fork and it literally melted in your mouth. I also had a Chilean wine which was very nice - a Latitude 33 Chardonnay. Some of the group went out to drinks but most of us came back to call it a night. Tomorrow we are off to Puerto Natales and Torres Del Paine for more adventures.
posted by Jayne Brooks @ 5:33 AM
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