Travelling With Steve

We had a long drive (5hrs) from Puerto Natales (Chile) up to El Calafate (Argentina) across the Steppe - high and dry grass country on the east side of the Andes. Everyone does this trip to link the two locations as there don't seem to be any flights. El Calafate is a 100% tourist town to mainly service one thing: the Perito Moreno Glacier. Other tourist options are available, but the draw is the glacier. It's a nice enough compact town, in a great setting with an excellent bird reserve adjacent. The Patagonian ice fields (across Chile and Argentina) are the third largest in the world (after Antarctica and Greenland). It isn't that high and not that polar, but what fuels it is the lack of other land masses around the earth at the same latitude - so moisture is collected over the oceans and rams into the Andes (which is the longest mountain chain on earth). There are 48 glaciers! The ice is up to 1.4km deep in the centre. Here are some pics....

Note: if on a laptop, you can click on one photo and scroll through them all at full size.

You can't do this on an iPhone.

This is the first view of the Perito Moreno Glacier. The face is about 60-70m tall! It continues below the water for another 170m - a combined ice face of 230-240m. Sheesh. It has retreated back a fair bit in the past year alone, compared to the previous 100 years or so. Oddly, in 1899 it was smaller. So, the upshot seems to be it comes and goes a bit, but they are watching it closely at the moment because it seems in rapid retreat...

There are plenty of icebergs (10% of volume showing above the water). The large ones come off the glacier underwater. The smaller ones are from the ice face, which are created by the ice face 'calving' - falling away in chunks. When we were there we regularly saw that happening - and you could hear it too with loud cracks...

We initially took a boat ride to see the scale of the glacier face from the water - a great experience. Note the blue colour is caused by blue light waves being stronger than other colours in the light spectrum, so they penetrate further (otherwise, the ice is clear)...

The boat is not allowed to get closer than 500m, but it was enough to experience the scale, which is very difficult to convey on a photo or video. Usefully, there were kayaks in the water when we first arrived, which provide scale - wow!...

The glacier crew....

Of course, you can never perfectly time a 'calving' event - this is the aftermath of one...

Up close the ice of the glacier has so many crevices and colours which change as the sun moves...

Back on land, there are several excellent boardwalks on the hillside overlooking the glacier. We had a packed lunch and enjoyed it with a view...

Another 'calving' event snapped after we heard it...

Further up the hill there are nice overviews of the glacier...

Here are some comparisons with my photos that I found as we walked down the main street - seeing photos in tourist agency windows from past years....

...compared to...

...and this one...

...compared to...

At the edge of El Calefate is a great bird reserve, we saw lots of critters including some nice ducks and Patagonian Flamingoes, which were pretty distant...

The wonderfully named Spectacled Tyrant...

A resourceful Rufus Collared Sparrow...

A Crested Caracara - a stocky and colourful bird of prey...

Patagonian Flamingoes...

The blue-billed Andean Duck...

A pair of Yellow-billed Teals...

A Chiloe Widgeon...

We did a very nice cycle this morning around part of Lake Argentino, on which El Calafate is situated....

In the afternoon we visited the Glacierium, a museum outside town which describes glaciers. It was very informative and had a great setting looking over Lake Argentino....

Other than the headline fun-facts I outlined earlier, I am constantly amazed that no two snow flakes are alike - they had a very nice graphic of actual snow flake examples side by side...

Finally, a note that Argentina might be a bit confronting for vegetarians...

Patagonia is the mountainous region toward the bottom of South America, centred on the Andes. It is not the very bottom tip - that is Tierra del Fuego - but it is relatively close. We flew down from Santiago to Puerto Natales (3.2hrs) to visit the Chilean side. It was spectacular. We visited the Torres del Paine National Park as well as the archipelago adjacent to the town, where we cruised to a few huge glaciers. Here are some pics...

On the flight down there some views of glaciers and Andes from the plane...

Torres del Paine National Park has many jagged peaks and a glaciers. We just did a day trip to see the views, but many people do the 'W' walk (4-5 days) or the 'O' walk (7-9 days) around the main massif. These are various views from the day....

On the way around we saw these Lesser Rhea, which are like a small Ostrich....

The icebergs on Lake Grey were great and the scale awesome. Check out the size of the people in the pictures for reference...

A female Magellanic Woodpecker on the way to Grey Lake...

The last stop was a cave where they found remains of a large sloth-like critter (4m tall), roaming around at the same time as the sabre toothed tiger...

This is the foreshore of Puerto Natales outside our hotel at sunrise...

These Black-Necked Swans were common in the waterways opposite town - I like the style of the young ones on Mum's back...

We had a day cruise through the waterways between the town and the Magellan Strait to see two glaciers. Incredible landscapes. On the way we saw waterfalls, a Cormorant colony and Sea Lions...