El calafate: The Perito Moreno glaciar

Today at 9.00 am we were ready at the hostel hall, waiting for the minibus that would take us to the National Park of the glaciers to watch the Perito Moreno, one of the most famous glaciers of the world because it´s one of the few that it´s not dissapearing despite the global change.

The bus drove us to the park, and we saw a beautifull sunrise (at 9.30!!) over the Argentino lake, the largest of Argentina. We were enjoying the snowed patagoninan landscape when suddenly, after a curve, we saw it: The Perito Moreno, a 60m high, 5 km wide and 30 km deep glacier that ends in the "Argentino" lake. Its total surface is approximate 250 km2 (larger than Buenos Aires Capital city!!)

We drove closer and took the boat that for one hour would navigate from the peninsula de magallanes, situated in the opposite shore of the Argentino lake than the glacier to the glacier wall. It was soooo cold, but still amazing. The glacier is famous too because it advances every day an average of 1-2 meters towards the peninsula of magallanes till the point it touches the shore creating a natural dam that breaks the lake in two parts. Two days ago that dam collapsed due to the force of the water(this happens very often every 2,4 6 years...)so today we could see the channel that comunicates both parts of the lake.

We were freezing on the boat when we heard a huge noise, like a thunder and we saw it: an enormous pice of ice had fallen from the glaciar wall to the lake creating a wave that shaked the boat. Uauuuu!!! Amazing but too fast to take a picture :( ... next time we would be ready. After a while we heard it again, we looked at the wall but nothing was falling, Instead of it a huge iceberg came up from the bottom of the lake. It was an underwater rupture!!!!!! It was great!

We turned back to land and started the tour on the paths in the peninsula de Magallanes, right in front of the glacier. The good thing of this season is that,despite the cold, there are very few turist. So we could walk all over the paths as if we were alone with the glacier. Definitively it was worthy to come here, despite all the mess with aerolineas!!

Tomorrow we are going in the "All Glaciers Tour", a day long boat trip in the north part of the Argentino Lake where we will see some more glaciars. I hope we don´t freeze!!!!!