El Calafate and the Perito Moreno Glacier

On Sunday 1st October we took an afternoon flight from Buenos Aires to El Calafate in Argentinian Patagonia. 

We were staying 3 nights at the America del Sur Hostel which was fantastic. It consistently gets rated as one of the top hostels in South America, and I can see why.  Nicola and I had a twin room with private ensuite, and there were awesome communal facilities with views looking out over Lago Argentino, the largest freshwater lake in Argentina.

The main reason for going to El Calafate was to visit the Perito Moreno Glacier, a place that had been on my bucket list for several years. A friend of mine who I used to play rugby with in the UK used to work as a tour guide in South America, and I had wanted to visit the glacier ever since she showed me pictures of it. It is one of the few glaciers in the world that is not retreating. Our initial plan was to have a relaxed day exploring the town on Monday, and head out to the glacier on Tuesday as the weather forecast was a bit better for then. However, we woke up on Monday morning and the sun was shining, so we made a spontaneous decision to do our glacier trip that day. We just had time for a quick breakfast (included, and pretty decent for a hostel!) before walking the 15 minutes or so down to the bus station. We could have spent hundreds of USD on 'proper' glacier tours, some of which included trekking on the glacier itself. Instead, we just took the relatively cheap local bus.

The glacier was amazing! There is always the worry that things like this won't live up to expectation when you are actually there, but this well and truly did. Perito Moreno is one of 48 glaciers fed by the Southern Patagonian Ice Field which is the third largest reservoir of fresh water in the world. It is hard to get an idea of the scale of the place through these photos, but the ice wall was up to 70 metres high, so pretty immense!

There are huge chunks of ice constantly calving off the glacier and crashing into the water which was an impressive sight, although unfortunately I didn't get any good pics of this happening.

The glacier is around 30km long and 5km wide at its terminus. The Los Glaciares National park is really well maintained with several kilometres of boardwalks that you walk along to view the glacier from all angles. The bus drops you off at one point, then picks you up again about 5 hours later, several kilometres away, giving plenty of time for viewing and photographs (of which I literally took hundreds!). You don't really get an appreciation for the sheer volume of ice until you walk some of the higher boardwalks that give a view looking down on the glacier.

I like the pic below because you get to see just how close to the glacier the viewing platforms have been built, plus the size of the people help give some perspective.

Not long into our visit we saw our first condor which was very cool. As the largest flying bird in the world, they were an impressive sight in the skies!

Here's a few pics that we are actually in...

To say I was a bit obsessed with this place is an understatement... As mentioned earlier, I literally took hundreds of photos, so trying to whittle it down to a manageable number for  this post was difficult. It was just so beautiful, and I loved how in some pics the ice appeared to be the most gorgeous iridescent blue. 

I also loved the patterns that the ice made in the water. Visiting Antarctica is also on the bucket list, and this place just whetted my appetite for it...

The piece of ice below was absolutely stunning and shimmered like a jewel. It was the only piece that wasn't white.

As we neared the end of the boardwalks we got some interesting views of the glacier terminus front-on.

We managed to make it back to the bus rendezvous point in plenty of time, and enjoyed the 2-hour or so ride back to El Calafate, buzzing after an amazing day out.

By now I (finally!) had my appetite back after my illness, so that night we indulged in the hostel's legendary asado (aka. BBQ). I was looking forward to trying some of the famed Argentinian beef, and it didn't disappoint! As you can see above, the piece of steak was humongous, and the meal also came with chicken, lamb, chorizo, bread, wine, and a help-yourself salad bar! It was some of the best beef I have ever had, and there was so much meat that we got a take-away box and had it for dinner the following night as well... It was the perfect end to an epic day.

On the Tuesday we had a nice wander around El Calafate town. It was very cute, albeit totally geared towards tourists. Neither Nic nor I were really in the market for knick-knacks and souvenirs... We also went for a nice long walk along the shores of Lago Argentino.

That night, back at the hostel, we were rewarded with the most magnificent sunset over the lake. A lovely way to end our time in El Calafate as on Wednesday morning we had an 8am bus booked to take us to El Chalten.