1/15-The Perito Moreno Glacier Tour

We had a great day for the glacier tour! The bus picked us up at a hotel near our B&B at about 9:20. We made a couple more stops at other hotels, then headed to the glacier. Along the way our guide gave us the history of Calafate and the surrounding terrain. We stopped for a condor sighting, and also guanaco. We also saw some Rhea (I think that is really the birds we saw last time).

There’s an adult, and a bunch of juveniles. 

We made a short stop at the first viewpoint of the glacier. 

Puffy jacket and rain jacket…the wind was a little nippy. 

Then we proceeded on to the boat. 

It was a one hour boat ride to the terminus of the glacier. Here’s a few photos. 

Iceberg art. 



The striated rock formed by the glacier. 

At its tallest, it is 70m, about as tall as a 16 story building. 

A couple of Germans in their glacier coordinated jackets. 

Oh, and me. 

It’s not ice. It’s compressed snow. Apparently, there is a difference. 



People up on the glacier. I’m sure that’s another tour you can take. 

After the boat, we went 10 kilometers more to the “Balconies”. They are walkways that lead to viewpoints of the glacier. 

The various walkways you can do. There’s one that goes down for 1 kilometer of stairs which you then have to come back up. We didn’t do that part. 

This is the Primary Balcony. It is the most panoramic view of the glacier. Here we ate our lunch before proceeding down to the lower balcony. 



Notice the difference in the color of the water. The grayish has a lot of sediment in it. The green has less, and flows to the main part of Lago Argentina. As you can tell by all the icebergs, this is where a lot of calving happens. I got a video of a decent size chunk breaking off. There was a big crack sound, then the ice broke off into the water. 



This was what it looked like after the hunk broke off. 

A big chunk had broke off this iceberg. It made the iceberg rock and roll for quite awhile. 

Having seen a calving, I went back up to the top. We had to be back to the cafeteria place at 3:00.

We boarded the bus promptly at 3:00, and headed back. I had a nice conversation with a Brazilian woman who emigrated to Brazil fromTaiwan 50 years ago. Her English was pretty good, but with a strong Asian accent. She was heading home tomorrow. 

I was able to pick up my laundry (I stayed on the bus until the center of town), and grabbed a taxi back to the B&B. I did NOT use the same taxi service as the one who didn’t pick me up when he was supposed to. 

All in all, it was a spectacular day! I’m really glad we did the tour with the boat ride.