Patagonia: Whales, Dinosaurs and an Incredible Glacier
Our first taste of Patagonia was not of the windswept mountain and glacial scenery that has made the region famous, but of a coastal area as close to Buenos Aires as to Parque Nacional los Glaciares. After a long bus trip from Córdoba we arrived in Puerto Madryn on the Peninsula Valdés on Argentina’s east coast, roughly halfway down the length of the country. The highlight of our stay there was a whale-watching boat trip at Puerto Pirámides – we saw two sets of mother-and-child whales, and one swam right past our boat (easily within five metres). It was pretty thrilling to see what you could see, but I don’t think whale-watching is as great as I heard it described by others the day before, since you simply don’t see enough of the animal.
From Trelew a bit further south from Puerto Madryn, we considered a dolphin-spotting trip and an excursion to see penguins, but in the end we didn’t do either (the latter because we know we’re going to see penguins shortly in Antarctica). Instead we visited the excellent dinosaur museum in Trelew, which was very well presented and contained impressive fossils, and otherwise tried to stay out of the rain.
From the coast we took another overnight bus trip that took more than 24 hours all told, with a stopover in Rio Gallegos, past the never-ending emptiness of Patagonia to the heart of the region – or at least its tourist heart. (In the meantime, less than two months after being further north on the globe than we’d ever been before in Estonia, we’re now further south than we’ve ever been.) Around the Glaciers National Park are the two things we most wanted to see/do in Argentine Patagonia – visit the famous Perito Moreno Glacier, still advancing even as almost all other glaciers in the world are retreating due to climate change, and experience Patagonian trekking for the first time in the area around Mt. Fitz Roy. We started with the glacier, and were very lucky in this cold, windswept land to have a sunny day for our visit (especially as every day since has been overcast, very windy and a bit rainy).
There are barely enough superlatives in any language to describe the wondrous glacier. Imagine jagged glacial cliffs as tall as skyscrapers (60 metres high), sparkling white and a gorgeous light blue in the sunlight. Imagine the thunderous roar of the glacier as it creaks and groans and then imagine the sight of chunks of ice bigger than cars breaking from the main structure and plunging into Lake Argentina below with a deafening crash, now resigned to the life of a floating iceberg. And finally imagine that what you’re seeing is just – pardon the pun – the tip of the iceberg: the glacier stretches back 30 kilometres. We spent four-and-a-half hours looking at the glacier, mesmerised the entire time. I rate it not only as the biggest highlight of this second South American trip so far but also, along with the glacier and peak of Mt. Rakaposhi in Pakistan and the 8000m peak amphitheatre of the Annapurna Base Camp in Nepal, as one of the top three natural sights I’ve seen (with apologies to the Egyptian White Desert, Cappadocia in Turkey, Laguna Paron in Peru, Fairy Meadows in Pakistan, Zhangzhajie in China and many others).
Sunburned but happy, we left El Calafate a couple of days ago for El Chaltén, the base for trekking expeditions into the northern part of the same national park that contains Perito Moreno. Pending the weather (always an issue in Patagonia; we will not get the eternally blue skies of our Nepal or Kyrgyz treks here), we’re hoping to do a multi-day excursion into the national park for views of Cerro Torre and Mt. Fitz Roy, and several glacial lakes as well.
Tags: Argentina, dinosaurs, glacier, ice, Peninsula Valdés, Perito Moreno, South America, whales
Nick