Perito Moreno Glacier

Perito Moreno Glacier is one of the largest in South America. It's in the southern section of Los Glaciares NP about 70km from El Calafate. It has a surface area of about 250 square km and is about 5km wide just above the terminus in Argentino Lake. It's very active with a lot of ice calving off the glacier into the lake every day.

The north (or north east) face. It's about 70 meters high (above the water).

The glacier meets the lake side on and has two separate faces. After driving from El Calafate we started by taking a boat trip to the southern face. We were lucky that the boat was almost empty which meant we could move around and get the best views for the whole trip. It was a perfect day, very warm with lots of sun which probably helped make the glacier even more active than usual. While in the boat we saw one massive berg explode off the face and crash into the lake.

Some of the interesting spires on the south face

Samuel chillin

After the boat trip we headed for the shoreline overlooking the glacier. We sat down for lunch and then walked around the various trails seeing another two big calving events - again I think we were very fortunate to be visiting on such an active day.

The disturbance in the water (middle of the pic) was caused by a big calving event we saw a few minutes earlier when a semi trailer sized chunk of ice was dislodged (and disintegrated).

Local avian

If you visit Argentina this is one of those must see locations. It's very accessible (for a glacier) and the facilities are excellent. The trails are all metal boardwalks (km's of them), they have an elevator for the mobility impaired to get to the best vantage points, free shuttle busses from the carpark and good information displays. Yet the impact of some many visitors is not really noticed. When you combine this with the weather it was simply the best nature experience you could ever imagine.

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