Sight seeing at Perito Moreno Glacier

After returning from the Torres del Paine hike, we headed over into Argentina. After a 5 hour bus trip, we were in El Calafate. From here, we decided my foot still needed more rest. So, we took a tour to Perito Moreno Glacier at the south end of Parque Nacional de los Glaciares.

After a 2 hour ride in a minibus, we hopped on a boat to get up close and personal with the glacier (about 300 m away from it). The visible face of the glacier is about 70 m high and truly an awesome sight.

Part of the south face of Perito Moreno glacier

After the boat tour, we were dropped off to the main visitor attraction area. Here there are extremely sturdily built walkways for observation of the glaciar from the east side so that both south and north faces can be seen.

Joe photo graphing the glacier from the walkway

Because we were there in low season, there were really not very many other people there. A poster in the gift shop enlightened us as to the necessity of robustly built walkways - it showed them at high season totally jammed with tourists. We were very glad to be there at low season - it was a beautiful day, too, with a high temperature in the upper teens.

The walkways provided us with a sense of just how massive the glacier really is.

Perito Moreno Glacier overview
Click to go to picasaweb and see the larger version.

It isn't the largest glacier in the park though. Viedma and Upsala are over three times its size. It is the main tourist attraction partly for historical reasons (see Francisco Moreno on wikipedia or google) but also because it happens to be easily accessible. The glacier is also special because it is still advancing, with a speed of about 1.5m/day. It doesn't really seem to more forward though because bits and pieces are continually falling off and crashing into the water making quite spectacular splashes.

Although we didn't join in, there is also surface trekking on the sides of the glacier. The edges are relatively smooth but the top surface is extremely jagged.

All in all, well worth a visit! (I recommend low season though - the poster made the walkways at high season seem somewhat daunting.)