The Perito Moreno Glacier made the 30 hours bus trip feel like it was WELL WORTH the trip. If only to just spend this one day down in El Calafate!
We started the day with a trip out to the Glacier. It’s about an hours drive or 78 km away with a couple of stops at scenic spots for photos. There’s some great bird life here. We saw eagles, small birds funny looking birds that I don’t know the name of, tiny finches and a Condor!! We saw him out in the distance… The stand 90cms tall and have a wing span of 3 metres, they’re the biggest bird in the world and only eat Carrion… This guy was standing in a field off in the distance and we spotted him out there… not hard to see when the ground is covered with Calafate bushes (they are small bushes that at the moment look dead because it’s Winter, but in Summer they have berries that are very sweet and have a purple flower on them).
Continue on and we reach the Los Glaciars National Parque. We drove in and jumped on a catamaran that took us up within 30 metres of the glacier. The lake water is milky in colour because of the ice and the Glacier is 40-60 metres tall above the water. It doesn’t float as it’s connected to the rock mass from the mountains so it goes 700 metres deep! It’s spans 5 km in width and 30kms in length. It grows from the mountains 1 metre a day and drops 1 metre a day from the front. You know what this means!!! We get to see glacier ice melting into the lake!
We saw a couple of tiny pieces drop into the lake. They made the loudest noises for what looked like tiny pieces (although if it hit you you’d probably die). So we stalked a couple of pieces of ice that looked pretty unstable from the viewing platforms setup and sure enough!!! The stalking was worth it and we captured a few pieces falling on video. It was spectacular!
First break we saw…
The second and bigger break!
Apparently from the 60s to the 80s, 32 people died from jumping the barriers and getting too close to the glacier ice when it fell because it sprays like crazy when it hits the water and other ice. Okay less writing… more pictures and video!
The awesomeness of the day didn’t end there! On driving back into town we saw that on a section of the lake that is in front of the town, a heap of people had started ice skating on the frozen ice. It looked spectacular with the sun setting in the background and people exploring the icey landscape on skates (and some with now skates).
Then off into the distance on the lake we see some pink shapes walking through the water! I couldn’t believe and didn’t expect to see it but they were flocks of Flamingos doing there thing waddling through the muddy water and eating and munching away with their grey babies! I never thought I’d see Flamingos in the wild so that was pretty fantastic!
We got the bus to drop us off right there and we got as close as we could to the Flamingos to get some good pictures. At one point one of the street dogs came running through and they all took off to fly to another spot which was spectacular too.
Timeframe: Monday 22nd July 2013
HAPPY ANNIVERSARY MAT AND ANDREA xxxx
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