Glaciar Perito Moreno – full frontal
Pictures: Anna | Words: Ed
Our destination, El Calafate, is known for one thing only – Glaciar Perito Moreno, in Parque Nacional Los Glaciares.
The glacier, tumbling down Cerro Moreno at the crossing point between two lakes, is one of Patagonia’s biggest attractions.
One of the world’s few advancing glaciers, Moreno makes its two metres-per-day progress towards a low hillside.
That’s where the tourists stand, and watch the ice encroach on the land, waiting for those moments when the five kilometre façade sheds caravan-sized blocks and 50-metre tall shards into the lake below. We were here to see that.
The flight from Ushuaia had started in some style over the jagged white canopies of the southern Andes. It ended beautifully too, with a bright blue river streaking through the tan of Argentina’s Patagonian steppe.
Make no mistake, El Calafate is a one-horse town. So we booked a so-called ‘alternative’ tour, and a bus to El Chaltén for the same day. We exchanged more blue dollars in the dodgy back office of a car hire shop, and bedded down.
In the morning we were joined for the ‘alternative’ tour by a chap named Jerry who we’d met all the way back in Santa Marta, and about 60 other tourists of all shapes and sizes.
We’d paid more for the alternative vibes. The vibes were as follows: a 15-minute stop at an estancia (ranch) to buy overpriced coffee and pet some sheep; bottle-feeding a baby guanaco; driving along a different road to the park from other buses; a half-hour walk around a lake; eating a berry.
Pleasant – not alternative.
But we couldn’t complain at the new landscape on the Argentinian side of the border – leathery steppe and grizzled scrubland, scanned by eagles and condors.
Glaciar Perito Moreno – an ‘alternative’ angle
Soon we got in line with everyone else and joined the throngs pacing the walkways along the face of Glaciar Perito Moreno. The ice wall, with its torn ranks shunting up behind, was immense. We spent three sedate hours watching and waiting for the power of those ice avalanches to be unleashed, fall 60 metres and slam into the water.
When they did, the roar that followed the explosive visuals just ripped through the earth. The crowd would lean back and yell, and train their cameras hoping to catch the next one.
These moments came infrequently. Anna and I had an extraordinary talent for walking behind trees at the exact moment when ear-shattering bursts of ice cascades and crowd noise came rolling up the hillside.
But still, a ‘cool’ sight (lolz).
Strained smiles as we wait for the glacier to do something
Tough to capture, but we got one shot of the ice blasting into the water
Our next stop, El Chaltén, was a mountaineers’ base town for scaling Mt. Fitz Roy, the near-vertical 3,441 metre stab of granite looming in the west. For casual hikers (us), the draw was beautiful treks and free camping by the footslopes and lagoons of the Fitz Roy range.
It was also another completely full Patagonian town. Had we learned our lesson from Ushuaia? No. We arrived again without a reservation, and spent another hour tracking down a bed.
Our patience was wearing a little thin, and we kept bumping awkwardly into Jerry who was quite clearly trying to avoid us.
But when we sat down to a strange dinner of one empanada, one brownie and red wine – waitress: “…all together?” – we had all our ducks in a row for a magical three nights camping in the wilderness.
The only key stone was tent hire. But in a town entirely catering for hikers and campers, picking up a tent would pose not the slightest whiff of a hint of an issue.
Except – there was not one single tent left in El Chaltén. Nope. Nada, soz.
We spent three hair-tearing hours visiting every hire shop in town, bumping into Jerry some more, and then following rumours of tents, and then calling the friends of tour operators for favours of tents. No luck, at all.
The perpetual backdrop of the Fitz Roy range
These moments frazzled our patience once and for all.
Patagonia was infuriatingly busy. We couldn’t run our own trip; we’d been chasing down cancellations all week and now were facing more; we couldn’t afford to stay put, we couldn’t get tickets to move on; the mountain range we’d travelled to see was unattainable.
I literally threw a pen into a wall. Anna pressed the red ‘end call’ button on a phone with gratuitous force. Rag? Lost. Toys and pram? Distant strangers.
At some point, we made a collective effort to pull ourselves together. We conceded that the perfect blue sky illuminating a shining backdrop of dramatic mountain peaks was not…that bad.
And so we took a walk to Laguna Torre. We wound for three hours through a parched trail of hardy grasses and pinch-leafed hoary shrubs crossing back and forth over a rushing glacial river.
On the trail to Laguna Torre
Cerro Torre – pointy
Cerro Torre pulled us west through the shredded valley, and dog-sized flies bounced dozily off our faces. I became so cross with these flies I was put on time-out by Anna, who didn’t let me swat or swear at them for 10 minutes.
In time we reached the lagoon, and dropped down for half an hour whilst buzzards fought for food around us. It was beautiful, and we were happy. We bounced back down the trail to reach El Chaltén by evening and found…a tent!
Result! We were on for our camping after all, and with the day’s hiking under our belts had barely missed out.
We camped at the north end of town, and in the morning set off to better explore the park. The trail toward Laguna de los Tres was even more beautiful than yesterday’s, with blossomed hillsides giving way to wetland, and mood-lit canopies of twisted trees. There again were Fitz Roy and friends, a fantasy view.
Wobbly windy wetland walkway
The lads pause for a shot of Fitz Roy
The comedy wind blew our hats off. A young family watched and giggled as I chased mine down the hill. Anna’s blew away when she was going to the toilet, which sounded complicated to sort out.
We shared our campsite with eagles at Poincenot, and set out for our final march to Laguna de los Tres. It was a steep uphill scramble, wind-chilled rainy and slightly unpleasant.
We didn’t dally long at Laguna de los Tres, but for a few minutes we stood above a complete, panoramic rainbow arching over the valley below. In an instant, it was gone again, and we felt very lucky.
Pasta with merquén and warm red wine accompanied an incredible sunset in the shadow of Fitz Roy. The raging wind at the top catapulted thick cloud up and over the mountaintops, where they were ripped apart to scraps, before flying on and reforming again. It was spectacular, like watching time-lapsed film in real time; we feared for any climbers that might be up there.
Sick of the glaciers? Check out the rainbows.
Fitz Roy rips up the cloud
The next morning we were scrambling over rocks again along Rio Blanco, to Glaciar Piedras Blancas where we found another lagoon in the shadow of a stunning mountain glacier (snore), but this time we had the turf entirely to ourselves. This glacier was doing its own take on Perito Moreno’s party trick, throwing showers of enormous ice cubes and switching waterfalls on and off.
We dipped our heads and bottles in the river for just the best, freshest drink of ice cold water. So special, and so missed since we left Patagonia – we hope the tourism can keep the water that way forever.
In our final afternoon in the park, I took a solo walk to sit in a tree alongside glittering Lagunas Madre y Hijo, and Anna read her book by a mountain stream in the sunshine. Really, this was all ideal.
A shift to a lakeside campsite later, we were preparing more pasta and I was back to the highly relaxing pastime of decimating swarms of flies. Team tent skills were so sharp we could erect in six minutes and disassemble in 10.
Anna makes the tea in Poincenot
The night ended early and quietly, and in the morning we pounded back to El Chaltén with the paths to ourselves.
We jumped on a bus to Rio Gallegos, a dull transit town with an unpronounceable name in the southeast of Argentina. We checked into the optimistically-named Hotel Paris and did more shady blue-dollar dealings with the owner.
That evening we toasted our Patagonian adventure with another superb steak and wine, and watched River vs. Boca in the local pool hall.
The town was utterly dead and empty, apart from the enormous gangs of stray dogs chasing startled cyclists down the street. So we sat inside and organised our brains for what was looming larger in our minds – home, just four weeks away.
We caught a flight to Buenos Aires in the evening, swapping Patagonian wilderness for the biggest city of the trip so far.
We refill at the water’s edge – our favourite
Ednaventures 