Watching A Glacier

Saturday 17 February

Mike had kindly delayed the start of our tour to the Perita Moreno glacier today until 11.00 – not only so we could rest a little longer, but to let the early morning crowds disperse a little, so it wouldn’t be so crowded. Breakfast was another light affair, with no cooked foods for Colin. We had a short trip around the town, to try and change our money again, but it found the exchange shop was closed until 18.00 tonight. We had to buy some items for packed lunch – which ended up being very thin white bread, cheese and ham sandwiches and some crisps – they don’t seem to sell any form of chocolate bars here in the supermarkets and have definitely never heard of “snickers” or “mars” bars.

The coach, with our guide Luis, collected us on time and we sped along the side of Lake Argentina – the largest lake in this country, about 30+ kilometres in length - where we saw a small flock of pink flamingos feeding at the waters edge and a few ducks. The water of all the lakes in this region is bright turquoise in colour, due to the sediment from the glaciers that is suspended in the water – it really makes them look like beautiful jewels in an otherwise barren landscape. We were in the “steppes” region of Patagonia, where the grass was yellowy and scrubby, and only small stunted bushes relieved the landscape. This area is very arid because the dominant clouds from the Pacific drop all their moisture over the Andes to the west – so the Chilean side is very wet – receiving over 4,000 mm of rain each year in some places - while the Argentinean side receives only a few millimeters. Large round-topped mountains were actually the moraine deposited by the glaciers as they retreated. During the winter months sheep graze on these plains, but now, in summer, they have been taken up to the higher plateaus, so we saw no animals, and even the bird life seem to have deserted the area. All the time we were nearing the higher peaks of the Andes and the Southern Ice Plain.

Argentina, like Chile, is developing the roads leading to their National Parks and like the road near Peurta Natales, the road leading to Perita Moreno, was being concreted and traffic was only allowed in single file along some sections. We got to the first “sentry” operating the “stop / go” boards, with just one car in front. We stopped and sat, and we sat, and after about a quarter of an hour Luis went to find out what was happening. Apparently, we had to cross a bridge further along the road, but the concrete laying machine was on the bridge disgorging its load at that time, and there was not enough room for a vehicle to pass – sounds like a sensible idea for a Saturday morning when the road is probably at its busiest, but its good to know its not just the UK that makes those kind of decisions – and it would be about 50 minutes before we could resume our journey. It was quite amusing to watch people from the vehicles behind us, all coming to speak to the sentry and returning in disbelief. We all chatted and the time passed quite quickly.

We arrived at the first viewing point of the glacier, and we all went “Oohh! and Aahh! – Mike said all visitors have this reaction at their first sight of this huge blue glacier rising from the aquamarine waters of the lake, where a fjord from the lake makes a right-angled turn around what is known as “The Peninsula” – in fact, it is three-quarters of the way to becoming an island. The Perita Moreno glacier flows from the Southern Ice Field (which is 350 kms long and stretches almost the entire length of Argentina in the Andes) in a long icy finger - it is 14 metres long and between around 55 metres high, and 7 kms wide. The top looks like rough Christmas cake icing – lots of peaks. It was very hard to appreciate just how large the glacier was – it was a another beautiful sunny day, with clear skies, but I didn’t realize that the horizon could be so far away – we could see the ice field far in the distance – yet it looked only a short stroll away – very wierd. The compacted ice was really blue – due to its density – and in places, through the crevices it appeared a deep ultra-marine colour – almost iridescent. We continued on to the tourist centre beside the lake, where, by a series of deck-walks and balconies we were able to watch the glacier for the next few hours – some of our group went on a boat trip to get close to the face of the glacier snout, but we are also going to see the Upsala Glacier on Monday by boat, so we decided to just stand and watch. We ate our lunch whilst listening to the loud “cracking” noises and even louder “crashing” sounds as chunks of ice broke off from the glacier and landed in the lake. At one point a large slab of ice from the front face of the glacier just slid down into the water with a “rushing” noise, while another time a huge block of ice rose up from the lake with a lot of bubbling and rippling of the water around – just like a witches’ cauldron - and just floated, slowly, away from the glacier – it was not just at the top that the ice was shattering. Near the port where the boats leave from, several massive icebergs were ‘resting’ near the shore, the result of breakings of the glacier in the last week – large icebergs take about a week to melt in the lake. Surprisingly this glacier is still progressing – at a rate of two metres a day – a huge amount since almost all other glaciers are receding – but it is continually fed from the ice field, where the heavy snow is forever compacting and pushing forward.

Saying we watched the glacier for about three hours, sounds like watching paint dry, but there was always something happening – we could hear the giant cracking from other areas of the glacier, ice blobs were flowing under an arch in the ice from the south face of the glacier and making a small ice flow of white chips in front of the huge wall, and continually eddying around as more ice joined it, and small portions of ice regularly fell from the main ice wall. It was absolutely fascinating, and strangely the smaller the block of ice that fell, the more the noise echoed as it entered the water. The boats – catamarans that held over 200 people looked like ants as they neared the front of the huge ice tongue – and even then it was still difficult to gauge the total height. It was possible to walk right down to the base of the glacier to appreciate the enormity of the ice, but this morning I had bent over to get something from my suitcase and my back had …. “spasmed” is probably the best way of describing it – and it had been very painful all day. So we decided just to walk halfway down today, and not overdo it – hopefully we would get the full picture at the other glacier on Monday.

We went to collect those on the boat, and sat on the warm rocks surrounding the lake. Mike went down to the lake and came back with a huge wedge of ice – perfectly clear, made up of scalloped atoms frozen together like large crystals. This ice contains lots of minerals collected as the glacier moves down the valley, so we all rubbed our hands over the freezing mass – when they dried, our skin felt very soft and smooth. A lady told us the ice was good for wrinkles – perhaps we should have collected some in a bottle.

It was then time to make our way back to El Calafate – with the roadworks the journey could take more than two hours and it was already after 17.00. We arrived back at the hotel and more than half the group made their way round the corner to the money exchange, where we found a queue stretching at least 50 metres around the small square and out into the road – the only money exchange open in the town today. It took about 20 minutes to reach the desk, where luckily three people were working hard to meet everyone’s demands for Argentinean pesos – about 3 to the US $ and 6 to the GBP - as with travelers cheques, they had to make a phone call – so delaying the line a while!

We changed for dinner, before all meeting in the lobby to visit another of Mike’s recommended restaurants – this one owned by the former head chef of one of the local hotels, who had taken many of his staff with him. The menu was quite extensive, but we ended up choosing lamb for Colin and steak for me, both of which were cooked divinely. As the portions continue to be large, we skipped entrees, but Colin still had room for a Patagonian apple – burnt in brandy – crepe, with ice cream! While eating, we had a phone call from Juz, to let us know she was safely back from Las Vegas – its surprising how good it is to hear a familiar voice – and we promised to email later – which we did – so it was quite late by the time we went to bed – me swallowing the last of the paracetamol – so we will be on a mission to find a chemist in the morning.