So I passed by a glacier the other day…
The 5th of January 2008 was the day I became an environmental nut. No more plane rides or electricity for me!
We visited the Perito Moreno Glacier down in El Calafate, very southern Argentina. I had extremely high hopes for this because getting there wasn’t quite the highlight of my trip so far. First, we bade Christian farewell as he went off back to Nicaragua to do some more work. Then we headed to the bus station, stayed right where the bus was supposed to leave from but somehow missed it. Little bugger left from a different platform. Luckily the owner was a nice guy who packed 6 of us who were in the same boat into taxis to catch the bus. Got on to meet some angry heads. Seems they didn’t like waiting for the stupid tourists who missed the bus. After that 2 hour ride came the 23 hour one, 3 hours after that ended we jumped on another that lasted 10 hours, and almost directly after that was a 5 hour one. During that we were made watch the same terrible Argentinian movie twice! When it all ended we got out of the bus station and walked in the wrong direction for a long time. Some ladies put us straight and we found our hostel, only to be told the person I’d made the booking with was a daughter of someone and doesn’t actually work there, so we we were on the hunt again. So after all that, I was prepared to point my hairdryer at this glacier if it didn’t live up to expectations.
On the day, the big block of ice was looking wonderful so there was no need to point any hot objects at it. When the bus pulled around a corner in the cliff we got our first view of the massive iceberg, it was all very Titanic-esque. We were let out to do our touristy thing, get our distance shots and squeal a little bit; I straight away announced that this had made all the bus boredness worth it, then Ylva reminded me we hadn’t even reached the thing yet. I was getting very over excited.
And when we reached it, I became even more of a nature lover. The glacier is 60 feet tall, (let me think here….) 5 km wide and 30km long, I think. Either way it’s really really big. And there’s a nicely constructed viewing area right in front of it so us touristy types can sit in front of it and wait for the massive booming sounds of it calving (when a little bit breaks off and falls into the water – nothing too do with cows!).
It also has some optical illusions going on, but you’ll have to wait until Ylva decides to write a blog to hear about those. I was sleeping during the explanation (it was another long bus jouney). All I heard though my drowsiness was that the glacier looks blue, but it’s really not. And it’s true, it does look blue. It is also brown in parts, which makes it look dirty. I will never make it as a tour guide.
As absolutely amazing as the glacier was, we’d soon seen enough ice. And the tour had us scheduled to spend 3 hours looking it. So we retreated to the bus, I honestly didn’t think it would be so cold there, which looking back, was a little stupid. We heard from 2 girls we befriended that when a big calving finally did happen, everyone screamed so much that no one could hear the great booming sound.
We finished up our trip to Perito Moreno by taking a boat trip around it, just in case there were any angles we hadn’t yet seen it from. The boat was great and what I’d always imagined a boat full of celebrities and photographers to be like. Flashes and clicking were constantly going on through the entire hour-long boat ride. One can never have enough photos of oneself standing in front of ice, apparently.
If I was one of those weirdos who rate their trip, Sir Perito Moreno would get 10/10. I’m super happy that I can now tell my grandchildren what the earth was like when it still had ice (only kidding, lets save the earth now people!).
And now for the photographic evidence that we made it,
The first view that made us incredibly excited:
A little closer up. Here you can see the fake blueness and the dirtiness.
My Swedish sidekick reminds me where we are:
Me with my zoom, we didn’t actually get that close.
The view from the boat
Hate when random men ruin shots…
Tags: 10 - Argentina, Argentina, El Calafate, glacier, Travel
cybersusst
I’ve seen this glacier and I must say it was hard to take my eyes off it, even after 4 hours ow watching it was not enough. Definitely a must see attraction in Argentina.