Big Ice - Perito Moreno glacier

We take two flights and most of the day to travel south, to El Calafate in Patagonia.  At this point in the journey, I expected to break out the jumpers and long sleeve t-shirts lurking at the bottom of my bag.  But no.  At 6.30pm, it’s sunny and warm with not a breath of wind.  Could it be that I’ve over-packed?  Again!

El Calafate is the gateway to Los Glaciares national park and is named after the bushes that grow in abundance all over Patagonia.  Their berries both look and taste like a cross between blackcurrants and blueberries. If you eat them, it is said, you will return to Patagonia.  So we do, straight from the bush and in a scoop of delicious ice cream. The local tourist board is probably behind this saying as the town owes its existence to tourism and is growing fast to cope with increasing visitor numbers. But it is still tiny in comparison with the other cities we have visited, and has more in common with an attractive ski resort – though as it has the compulsory casino, it must be an Argentine city. 

We are up early the following morning to vist the Perito Moreno glacier, part of the southern Patagonian ice cap, the 4^th largest frozen  area in the world after both Polar regions and Greenland.  Surprisingly it is not high in the mountains.  This is a temperate glacier region, and the foot of the glacier is not far above sea level, surrounded by forests.  The reason there is so much ice here is down to geography. The moist air from the Pacific falls as snow over the Andes – as much as 800m a year – and compresses down into a dense mass of ice, which moves slowly down the mountain.  In Perito Moreno’s case, the movement is not so slow.  In summer, the inner part of the glacier can move by 3m a day, while the outer part moves more slowly at around 25cm a day.  The constant movement at different speeds, coupled with the melting of the glacier as it reaches lower levels causes the cracking and calving.

But while most glaciers are shrinking, Perito Moreno is growing.  It is actually classified as stable, as the ice calves off at one end in pretty much the same ratio that it renews itself at the other. And it is a truly breathtaking sight.

It measures 4,500m across and soars 50 or 60m above the turquoise blue lake it spreads into. It is HUGE, though it not the largest in the park, just the most accessible. At the moment it splits the lake in two, as the ice has reached land to form a dam.  This happens every few years and causes the depth of the lake to rise on one side of the glacier.  Eventually, the pressure of the water finds a path into ice in the narrow channel and sets of an explosive series of calving to open the channel, until the glacier advances once more.  I’m sure we saw the start of this happening, and will check over the coming weeks to see if the channel opens once more.

We spend over 2 hours on the viewing platforms taking photographs and videos, Within the first 10 minutes we see two huge chunks of ice – possibly the size of a bus - calve off the face of the glacier and fall spectacularly into the aptly named Iceberg Alley, with an explosion of sound.  You can hear the ice creaking and the sound of water running inside it, and find yourself staring at fissures in the face of the ice, convincing yourself that they are indeed getting wider and longer and that this section is the one to fall next.  Cameras set to video, we watch and wait.  And wait.  And watch.  And in anticipation of the next great fall, set the video running and overlay our very own David Attenborough commentary.  But do we capture the calving on film?  Of course not.  A watched glacier never calves.  Though we do see two more awesome falls on the other face of the glacier later in the day when my camera is stowed in my bag.

But the spectacle of calving is just part of the story.  There is the sheer scale of this vast expanse of glacial ice; the immense peaks and troughs of its surface; and its incredible blueness, an optical illusion due to the compactness of the ice so light takes longer to reflect.  To find out more, we put crampons on our feet and hike the ice for an hour and a half.  The ice has its own landscape of peaks and valleys, streams and gushing waterfalls, blue ice holes and caves.  It is a magical experience.  And as it draws to an end, our guide has a final surprise – a liquid picnic of scotch on the rocks, with freshly gathered glacial ice, naturally.