Patagonia: Perito Moreno Glacier

Posted by twoyangs on March 27, 2012 in Argentina, Blog | 2 comments

Welcome to Perito Moreno Glacier

A good hour bus ride outside of El Calafate (not to be confused with El Chalten) sits this rarity of a glacier, one of the extremely few glaciers in the world that is still advancing and currently large enough to hold the city of Buenos Aires. Walkways are built to bring visitors within 800 meters, close enough to appreciate its enormity. Every few years, the glacier will even touch land and form an ice dam when it meets up with Peninsula Magellanes. When that dam eventually collapses, it is simply spectacular. The real draw here though is the regularity of iceberg calving from the glacier face. When we visited, we saw at least eight substantial icebergs plummet into the water. Perhaps less dramatic but more amusing is the synchronized turning of heads each time the glacier creaks and groans like an old man.

Blue skies and blue ice

An audience gathers, eagerly anticipating the next show

Fireworks of splashing water

The south face of Perito Moreno Glacier

The north face - the total width is three miles wide

A catamaran at a cautious distance; that's a 300 person boat next to 240 ft walls

Staring right at the wall of ice

The remains of the 2012 ice dam; the dam/arch had collapsed in the middle of the night a few weeks before we arrived

A pool of shattered iceberg remains

An eighty foot chunk of ice splashes down