HIGHLIGHT OF THE DAY: The beautiful Perito Mereno Glacier
BUMMER OF THE DAY:
WORD OF THE DAY: We need ….air….to live
DISTANCE TRAVELLED: 166KM
We had a full day tour booked today of the Perito Mereno Glacier. This is not to be confused with the town that we stayed in last night which was an 8 hour drive away. To be honest I was a little dubious on how great can this glacier be? After seeing the Athabasca Glacier in Canada and completing Antarctic Cruise 2 months ago, I thought, wrongly, that if you had seen one glacier, you’d seen them all, but this was to be proved very wrong indeed.
Our morning started at 8am with our pickup from the hostel in a coach. There were other people also on the tour and we had nearly a full bus. We were the last pick up and after we all got settled, we drove for 40 minutes for a scenic stop just before entering the national park. It was a MAGNIFICENT view of a lake and snowcapped mountains from a homestead. They had goats and their babies wandering around and there was also a Llama that waited for the door of the homestead to open and made himself at home by entering the small stead and walking around having a gander at everything. It was so funny, there was one point that he was looking outside the floor to ceiling glass windows at the tourists outside, it was quite comical and he finished off standing at the bar, looking to order a drink before heading back outside. I think he was a baby and super cute!
We only had to drive a further 30KM to get to the entrance of the national park where our guide had earlier collected our 100 pesos (20 AUD) and got off and paid for us all. What a smart man, rather than getting us all off individually, I like our guide and he is also easy on the eye which always is a bonus to have some eye candy. No-one said you can’t window shop when you are in a relationship right!?
Parque Nacional Los Glaciares is a national park in Argentine Patagonia. It comprises an area of 4459 km². In 1981 it was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO. The national park, created in 1937, is the second largest in Argentina. Its name refers to the giant ice cap in the Andes range that feeds 47 large glaciers, of which only 13 flow towards the Atlantic Ocean. The ice cap is the largest outside of Antarctica and Greenland. In other parts of the world, glaciers start at a height of at least 2,500 meters above mean sea level, but due to the size of the ice cap, these glaciers begin at only 1,500m, sliding down to 200m, eroding the surface of the mountains that support them. Los Glaciares, of which 30% is covered by ice, can be divided in two parts, each corresponding with one of the two elongated big lakes partially contained by the Park. Lake Argentino, 1,466 km² and the largest in Argentina, is in the south, while Lake Viedma, 1,100 km², is in the north. Both lakes feed the Santa Cruz River that flows down to Puerto Santa Cruz on the Atlantic. Between the two halves is a non-touristic zone without lakes called Zona Centro. Los Glaciares is a major attraction for international tourists, and has an annual budget of one million dollars (1994).
We drove for another 5KM to get is to the first view of the Perito Mereno Glacier and it was pretty amazing. We were dropped off at the top of the view point where we then jumped the national park fence, the only time we are actually allowed to jump one of the official fences and then we scaled our way down the hillside to get to the bottom of the lake, for another angle of the glacier before walking 30 minutes along the lakes edge to get us to the small marina where our boat was waiting to take us on an hour’s cruise along the south side of the glacier.
The Perito Moreno Glacier is a glacier located in the Los Glaciares National Park and it is one of the most important tourist attractions in the Argentine Patagonia. The 250 km2 ice formation, and 30 km in length, is one of 48 glaciers fed by the Southern Patagonian Ice Field located in the Andes system shared with Chile. This icefield is the world's third largest reserve of fresh water. The Perito Moreno Glacier is one of only three Patagonian glaciers that are growing. The reason remains debated by glaciologists. The terminus of the Perito Moreno Glacier is 5 kilometers wide, with an average height of 74 m above the surface of the water of Lake Argentino. It has a total ice depth of 170 meters.
Periodically the glacier advances over the L-shaped "Lago Argentino" ("Argentine Lake") forming a natural dam which separates the two halves of the lake when it reaches the opposite shore. With no escape route, the water-level on the Brazo Rico side of the lake can rise by up to 30 meters above the level of the main lake. The enormous pressure produced by the height of the dammed water finally breaks the ice barrier holding it back, in a spectacular rupture event. This dam/rupture cycle is not regular and it recurs naturally at any frequency between once a year to less than once a decade.
The glacier first ruptured in 1917, taking with it an ancient forest of arrayán (Luma apiculata) trees. The last rupture occurred in July 2008, and previously in 2006, 2004, 1988, 1984, 1980, 1977, 1975, 1972, 1970, 1966, 1963, 1960, 1956, 1953, 1952, 1947, 1940, 1934 and 1917. It ruptures, on average, about every four to five years.
As of December 2011, the glacier again dams the Brazo Rico. The water level there has risen 3 meters.
The Perito Moreno glacier, was named after the explorer Francisco Moreno, a pioneer who studied the region in the 19th century and played a major role in defending the territory of Argentina in the conflict surrounding the international border dispute with Chile. Due to its size and accessibility, Perito Moreno is one of the major tourist draw cards in southern Patagonia. It is less than two hours by bus from El Calafate which run daily to the national park and the glacier. In recent years, trekking tours on the ice have gained popularity. The two standard tours are a "mini-trekking" option, consisting of a short walk of about an hour and a half, and a "big ice" version, which is usually about five hours using crampons walk on the glacier.
It was a beautiful day to be on the water. The sun was high in the sky and we had secured seats on the outside of the boat sitting in the direct sun. It was nice as once the boat got moving it there was a little bit of nip in the air that was held at bay by the sun’s rays. We got the view of the glacier as we moved towards it, but then the boat turned to do a pass by on the right/starboard side, so we did have to leave our sunny seats to get the views as we passed it getting to within around 20m of the glacier getting some fantastic shots. Some of the blues of the ice, the whites and also the jagged looking tips of the top were awesome and in some of the angles there was a mountain backdrop to give the pictures some more depth. We could see some of the glacier walkers on the ice, and it was pretty surreal to see people standing on it. It would have been cool to do, but we only had one full day here, so time was of the essence.
After the cruise we boarded the bus again for the 10 minute drive to the large visitor center. It was quite busy here with a lot of buses and minivans dropping and picking up people. We were shown a large map of the visitor’s area that featured a walking circuit which allows both faces, and the surface of the glacier to be seen. The viewing points of the steel walk way looked great and we couldn’t wait to get some more shots of the glacier. It was almost like getting an aerial view of the entire glacier. Just stunning. We were given 3 hours here, to eat, walk and get all the photos we wanted before heading back to town. But our stomachs were grumbling, so we headed straight to the restaurant to get fed and watered, and then we would be ready to look at this amazing natural wonder. Apparently we are very lucky that we had such a good day. There are 3-4 days in the month that the glacier can be seen without any cloud cover and today was one of those days. We certainly cannot complain about the weather so far on the trip (touchwood).
So the afternoon was spent taking pictures of the glacier, enjoying the sun, even though the wind blowing off the glacier was a tad cold, but then I guess you would expect that and trying to capture the calving of the ice as it broke away from the glacier. You could hear the cracking noise before you could see the ice breaking off and falling into the lake. So then the race was on to see who could get a photo of the breaking ice or splash of it as it fell. There was some ice calving the whole time we were there, from small section to some large ones. But to even see the splash and the patterns made on the lake after ice has calved off is still pretty special. We had 10 minutes till departure time, so Kate and I made a toilet run before getting in the bus, and yes as Murphy’s Law would have predicted that the girls saw and captured 2 large pieces breaking off the glaciers. Damn it and they had the photos to prove it. I told Kate that they would tell us either way that they had seen it, and it would either be a joke or they actually did, and yes they actually did. We see it as taking one for the team by leaving. So I will be copying some of those pictures, as I think we deserve them!!!
The drive back took us 1.5 hours, and with the sun filtering through the windows, a lot of us caught a nana nap on the way home. Due to the sun belting through the windows it was getting a little toasty down the back of the bus, another reason we all probably all dropped off to sleep, so by the time we all woke up 10 minutes from town we were all a little hot and sweaty. Paul made a comment that we…need…air ….to….live and it just was so funny at the time. In the drivers defence, no-one probably let him know that we were dying back there, so we were more than relived to get off the sauna of a bus when we were dropped back at the hostel. It was after 5.30pm by this time, so Kate and I decided to nerd it up in the hostel and I got a blog and photos loaded before we had dinner at the restaurant.
It is daylight here at the moment to well after 10pm, so our body clocks are still trying to adjust to this fact, and it is weird that we are going to bed and it is still daylight outside but when you are dead tired it is enough done.
We have a 7am departure tomorrow and back in tents for the next 4 nights at Torres del Paine National Park and no internet. This won’t kill us I suppose, but there is also no phone network, so we really are now getting into the wilds of Chile and I’ll see you all in 4 day’s time with updated blogs.
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