Southern Patagonia

Perito Moreno Glacier

El Calafate sits in southern end of the lake district in Patagonia, and serves almost exclusively as a jumping off point for tourists wanting to see the nearby Perito Moreno glacier.
Perito Moreno is an enormous glacier, at its front it rises 40-70m out of the water and a further 140m below the waters surface.

We had freakishly good weather on our visit, it was mild weather and blue sky. The site of that much ice is difficult to take in! From the viewing platforms at the front it looks like a huge field of milky coloured ice. There was occasional loud bangs like gunshot as cracks opened up

Lake Capri, Los glacieres national park

on the glacier surface because of the enormous pressures it is under as the glacier advances. As we watched the front there was also huge roars as ice at the front collapsed into the water. In the lake surrounding the front there were large lumps of ice that had broken off from the glacier previously.

We took a trek on the top of the glacier that was fascinating. I´ve never worn crampons before so they took a bit of effort getting used to (emma got used to them more quickly, evident as she tried to make me tango on the ice while i was still staggering around trying to walk

Torres del Paine park, Chile

properly!) but we trekked for a couple of hours and got a great tour of different features on the surface. There was deep cracks of a very unusual blue where the ice had opened up recently, very deep turquise lakes and sink holes, and streams running along the top. The end was perfect, we were given grants whiskey with ice from the glacier! Walking off the glacier turned out to be trickier than walking onto it.


The following day we took a 3 hour bus to the village of El Chalten, a small village that was built specifically for trekkers and climbers visiting

Glacial lake, Torres del Paine

the Los Glacieres national park. Not really sure how to describe it as i ran out of superlatives long ago! It was the most beautiful scenery i have ever seen. We did a couple of treks over 2 days, one was 2 hours to the Lake Capri and it was perfect. More lakes, mountains and pine forests but it was perfect. Huge granite peaks towered towered away in the distance alongside snow capped mountains, and the sky was cloudless. The park ranger said it was very unusal weather so we got very lucky again.

Penguins

Although we were running out of time a little. we wanted to see the Chilean side of Patagonia aswell, so we went over the border to the town of Puerto Natales.
The first day we visited a penguin colony a short distance out of the city, the Penguins were breeding and had made there way there from the falklands (ooops, i mean Las Malvinas......!) and Brazil. They were very funny, looking very undignified waddling around a few feet away from us. That night we managed to make a curry! Much to my surprise the local supermarket sold curry powder and loads of indian spices, so i made a half decent effort given the circumstances! They also sold a great range of vegetables, far more than were available in Argentina, so we had a good choice of ingredients aswell.

The second day we visited Torres del Paine National park on an all day trip, as we didn´t have time to do one of the recommended treks that take several days. It was similar scenery to the Argentinian side, although there were large amounts of Guanacos (similar to Llamas) and a sizable Puma population that are thankfully nocturnal so we weren´t in any danger from them. It was beautiful of course, but the highlight was a large glacial lake we visited at the end of the day - the glacier was 19km away in the distance, but huge icebergs had broken off and were sitting in the water at the far end of the lake where we were. A couple were 20 meters tall, and must have been enormous when they first broke away.

We crossed the border the final day as we headed back to Argentina for the final southern leg to Ushuaia. Emma did a great job smuggling the curry spices over the border, so we have more curry to look forward to at least in Argentina........!