31st October - 1st November: El Calafate and trekking on Perito Moreno Glacier

31st October:

We arrived in El Calafate at around midday, after a three-hour hour journey from El Chalten through beautiful scenery, past lakes, mountains, and glaciers.  El Calafate sits on the shore of Lago Argentino, the third largest lake in South America, so-named for the grey-green colour typical of the glacial waters around here.

We checked into our very basic hostel and then went in search of the sole agency that is allowed to run ice-trekking trips on the Perito Moreno glacier.  Since we hadn't received a reply to our email a few days earlier and our schedule had very little flexibility, we were slightly nervous.  Our concern was not unmerited, it turned out; there was no space for "Big Ice" (the 4-hour ice-trek) for the 1st, only for the much shorter "Mini-trekking".  Persistence triumphed, however, and after I scowled and Clem asked politely, the lady phoned up someone else and managed to find space for us.

The entertainment for the rest of the afternoon revolved around the news that the whole town was without water, and apparently would be for around 48 hours.  No water for showering, cooking, drinking, or flushing.  By the time I had made it to the local supermarket looking for 5-litre bottles, all the water had already disappeared from the shelves; apparently others had found out before us.  Anyway, we did eventually manage to get hold of some, so we used bottled water to cook pasta that evening, to wash-up the dishes, and to wash ourselves. Just before we went to bed, someone told us that the water was back on.  Crisis averted, and I'd be able to have a much-needed shower in the morning (since a large Patagonian woman had shorn off my flowing locks earlier in the day, I was covered in chopped-up hair).

1st November:

We were picked up from our hostel at 7.30am (after we'd been told to be ready from 7) and taken by minibus to a larger bus, holding around 40 people.  We were then driven for around an hour, entered the national park, and were dropped off at the view point at the Canal de los Tempanos.  This mirador overlooks the north face of the glacier across a narrow channel of Lago Argentino.  We'd been lucky with the weather again, and the sun was shining through a clear sky.

Perito Moreno Glacier reflected in the grey waters of Lago Argentino

The glacier is breath-taking in both size and beauty.  The face rises 40-50 metres out of the water and runs for several kilometres; we were told that the glacier continues another 150 metres down to the bottom of the lake.  As the new ice pushes from behind and the sun beats down, sections of the face occasionally tumble down into the water.  We were exceptionally fortunate to see a huge collapse during the half-hour that we stood there.  The entire central section of the face, mostly a translucent blue in colour, crashed down into the iceberg-choked causeway, churning up the water.  The largest sections at the top, bereft of support from below, seemed to linger for one gravity-defying moment before plunging down into the lake with a parting roar.  We didn't manage to catch it on camera, but you can just about make out the huge ice-cloud in one photo.  This random youtube video gives a pretty good idea of what it was like.  Stunning.

Cloud of ice and snow just after the collapse

Centre of the north face after the collapse

We hadn't started the main event yet, and already we were in awe.

Led away reluctantly while we waited for another collapse, we were driven down to the shore of the lake, where we boarded a boat to take us over the glacier.  This chugged along the south face of the glacier, but alas we saw no more ice collapses.  After a twenty minute journey we landed at the foot of the moraine to the side of the glacier, and we were led up to a small refugio in the woods on the side of the mountain (where Clem spotted a fox).  There we were thankfully split up into smaller groups, twenty spanish-speakers and twenty anglophones.  We then walked for around an hour along the moraine, with condors circling up to our left, past waterfalls and over streams of melted snow making their way down to the glacier and the lake below.

South face of the glacier, as we motored by on the boat

Fox Glacier?

Walking past waterfalls on our way down to the glacier

Just before we reached the end of the moraine we were fitted for harnesses and picked up our crampons.  The harnesses are not preventative, apparently; they're just used to haul you out of crevasses.  With this reassuring explanation, we made our way down onto the ice.

Aboard the glacier

After we had strapped on our crampons and split up into two smaller groups (ditching the noisiest lot, thankfully), our elite team of eight set off across the glacier.  There was, of course, lots of ice.  What was surprising (but probably shouldn't have been) was how much definition there was to the surface.  The ice was carved throughout by streams of melted water, sometimes just lightly cutting the surface and sometimes plunging through giant sink-holes right down to the rock beneath the glacier.  This is what lubricates the glacier and keeps it moving on down towards the lake.  As well as the streams, crevasses shear through the ice, not carved by running water but torn by the tension between the fast-moving centre of the glacier and its slower-moving edges (where there is more friction).  The ice-field was so huge and ridged that we walked for hours without sight of the other groups.

Peering into a sink-hole while the guide holds on

Walking past glacial streams

An ice-bridge: we only saw how thin it seemed after we had crossed

The agency had emphasised how tough the trekking was (those over 45 aren't even allowed to do it, ludicrously), but actually the going was fairly easy.  The main obstacle to our progress was the frequency with which we stopped to photograph the stunning scenery.  When we started we were taking photos of every dark-blue stream and pool, but our guides assured us that this was nothing compared to what was to come.  They did not lie.  We stopped for lunch at a large lagoon of incredibly clear water, light blue where the pool was shallow and a beautifully dark blue where the waters were deeper.  A finer view for lunch I couldn't imagine.  We were even able to fill our water bottles with this incredibly pure water that had been travelling down with the glacier for the last four or five years, apparently.  Dipping in the bottle was a little chilly though.

Posing beside the glacial lagoon before lunch

Filling up a bottle with icy water

Delicious

An insect that lives on the glacier: Andiperla.  It stays alive because it can create natural anti-freeze (glycerin) inside its body.

After lunch we made our way to the very heart of the glacier.  There the ridges are higher, the streams wider, and the crevasses deeper.  After a pause to survey the incredible landscape, unlike anything we'd ever seen before, it was time to make our way back to the boat.  We thought that we'd just be retracing our steps, but this turned out to the most exciting part of an amazing trip: a short-cut through a field of crevasses.  Our guides weren't entirely sure of the way, and were evidently quite nervous.  They told us that the crevasses were in some places 30-40 metres deep, and gave us a thorough briefing on putting down our cameras and paying attention (we obeyed the latter but ignored the former, of course).  Every fifteen minutes or so one of the guides would scurry ahead to check that the route was ok, and more than a few times we were diverted.  The scenery was fantastic, even if peering down into the crevasses was slightly unnerving.

Right at the heart of the ice-field

Walking in single file alongside the crevasses

We made it safely back to the moraine to the south of the glacier, well ahead of the other groups who had neither made it to the heart of the glacier nor passed through the crevasse field.  We made our way back to the boat, and enjoyed -- or just about stomached -- a complementary glass of whiskey (on the rocks, of course).

Safely arrived back at the moraine

Even more ludicrous crevasses

Back down at the lake-shore in front of the south face

We were picked up and driven back to our hostel.  I took the opportunity to have a quick snooze; the photos of which, taken by Clem, I have suppressed.  Back at the hotel we summoned up just enough energy to shower, eat, and catch up a bit with the blog before heading to bed early, ready for our trip back into Chile, heading for Torres del Paine.