Perito Moreno Glacier - 13th Nov

Pick up was at 9am and so we got up around 7.30am and headed for breakfast. We had been warned via reading tripadvisor that there was not enough room for all of the hotel guests to have breakfast at the same time and so we attempted to get in before the rush... no rush materialised whilst we were there, maybe everyone had decided to eat out instead of go for the super sweet semi stale croissants or the no orange orange juice?

The trip was pretty costly as on top of the 500 Arg Pesos we had to pay entry to the national park and bring our own lunch, however it was very well organised and we loved every minute of it.

The Glacier is around 30km in length, 5km wide and is one of 48 fed by the Southern Patagonian Ice Field located in the Andes mountain system shared with Chile.

A group on the ice

We have seen and walked on Glaciers before in Canada and NZ but this was probably the best experience. You got so close to the face of it and the time spent on the ice was a good couple of hours and felt that you experienced much more than just the edge of the glacier – Garmin however puts it in perspective - http://connect.garmin.com/activity/56581280 – within the map click on the Aerial view. There was a bonus also as the walk culminating in a drink chilled with fresh glacier ice.

Depending who you believe this is one of the few glaciers in the world that is currently not receding - it is in equilibrium at the present time. A Chilean later told us that whilst this is strictly true the average depth of the glacier continues to reduce over time – a fact that the Argentinians neglect to publicise apparently.

Sporadically during the time at the glacier you are subjected to loud thunderous noise that often signals the departure of a vast block of ice off the glacier into the lake in front, if you are very lucky you can see this occur or at least see these frozen depth charges come surging back to the surface as icebergs. These icebergs then slowly float down the lake often melting into recognisable shapes.

Tank or duck?

We got home about 7pm, showered and headed out for dinner – our last steak in Argentina. We went to a restaurant a couple of blocks off the high street that appeared to be frequented by a good number of locals and enjoyed probably the best steak of the journey to date.

We went to bed slightly apprehensive as tomorrow we started a trip to Chile and the Torres Del Paine National Park but unlike as promised we had no details dropped into the hotel about timings of pick up etc. We had however put some calls in and deduced via a very bad phone line and a language differential challenge that our pick up would be at 7am...