One of the most important tourist attractions in Argentinian Patagonia is the Perito Moreno Glacier. Although the two of us don’t really kick on tourist traps, we decided to visit the glacier, as it’s connecting ice field is the third-largest reservoir of fresh water on Earth. So after reaching El Calafate, we jumped on a bus for a nice day of sight-seeing! The road to Perito Moreno goes through the Argentinian pampas and is surrounded by 2.000+ meter mountains with snowy summits, and lakes filled with pieces of ice that broke of one of the many glaciers in the area.

Somehow, it reminds me of the days we spent in Death Valley with its incredible scenery and dramatic cloud formations. Paul Shepard describes it perfectly in his Man in the Landscape: A historic view of the Esthetics of Nature:

“The desert sky is encircling, majestic, terrible. In other habitats, the rim of the sky above the horizontal is broken or obscured; here, together with the overhead portion, it is infinitely vaster than that of rolling countryside and forest lands… In an unobscured sky the clouds seem more massive, sometimes grandly reflecting the earth’s curvation on their concave undersides. The angularity of desert landforms imparts a monumental architecture to the clouds as well as to the land…”

After the a two hour ride, we arrived at Perito Moreno. To say the glacier is impressive is an understatement. Best is to show the pictures:

With the world accepting more and more the influence of climate change on the environment, it is interesting to see that the Perito Moreno glacier is one of only three Patagonian glaciers that is still growing. Glaciologists don’t exactly know why.

The glacier itself is huge. The 250 square kilometer ice formation is one of 48 glaciers fed by the Southern Patagonian Ice Field. It is named after Argentinian explorer and academic Francisco ‘Perito’ Moreno (1851-1919). Moreno has been credited as one of the most influential figures in the Argentine incorporation of large parts of Patagonia. He went on many expeditions in this area, discovering new lakes and rivers as well as ‘El Chalten mountain’, which he renamed Fitz Roy. (see our previous blog that has a picture of the impressive mountain).

His travels were not without danger. In 1880 he embarked on a second expedition to the territory of Patagonia, where he was taken prisoner by a Tehuelche aboriginal tribe and condemned to death, but escaped on March 11, one day before the appointed execution.

Francisco ‘Perito’ Moreno is considered a national hero in Argentina.

As you can see on the pictures, the glacier is not a smooth body of ice. It consists of many crevasses (a deep crack in the ice sheet) and seracs (a block or column of ice). Every five minutes or so, you will hear a loud roar and thunder as one of these crevasses or seracs collapses under its own weight. If you are really lucky, this happens at the edge of the glacier, where it leads into the lake. A chip breaking of the ice field can cause huge waves of water spraying into the air. You have to be ready with your camera, because it happens in seconds. We were lucky to catch one of these chips as it fell in the lake.

All in all, it was quite an expensive side trip. But if you’re in the area and have the opportunity to visit the Perito Moreno glacier, we recommend it!