Day 5 - Glacial Trekking
We came to Patagonia with a lot of high expectations, and nothing had been built up more than the Perito Moreno Glacier, a key tourist attraction in Argintenean Patagonia due West of El Calafate. Two of my cousins passed along the highlights of Patagonia consistently, and both of them singled out Perito Moreno Glacier as a high point, as a once in a lifetime experience. Few sites when built up so substantially, especially by people that have traveled as extensively as both of them have, live up to the billing, but the glacier if anything exceeded it.
The drive to the glacier is a great aperitif to the enjoyable tourism meal to come, as the scenery surrounding both El Calafate, with the idyllic Lago Argentina to the north, and the endless Patagonian steppes to the South, and the creeping Andes Mountains off in the distance, combines to form an effortlessly beautiful cocktail. There were so many moments during that drive we wanted to stop and pull over, but we had a further destination in mind that needed to be reached: the glacier.
The entrance to the glacier park is fairly understated, well aways away from the actual Perito Moreno Glacier. It costs $500 Argentinean Pesos (~$27 USD) to enter, an amount more than worth it. That isn't the end of the drive, however, as ~20km of twists and turns still lie ahead, but at least that stretch of road does have the great luxury of adding in small sites of the beautiful glacier to behold. The first glimpse was a photo opp lookout about halfway in, where you first see the giant glacier overflowing between two mountains, with a lustrous mix of white and blue. As you advance towards the actual glacier area, the views get more clear, and more staggering.
The complex itself is set up nicely. There is a lower parking lot, with a restaurant and dock for boat cruises past the 'Northern Face' of the glacier, and a constant series of shuttle buses back up to the upper lot, which has the entrance to the manicured walking trails that give increidble views of the glacier across the frozen river. It is really hard to explain, so instead, let's show:
These were all views from the walking trails, series of cantilevered walkways that traipsed up, down and around the cliff-face and woods across from the glaciers. The number of places during that trail that prompt audible gasps and delight are in the dozens. You can easily fill a few hours just talking pictures at each moment that fits your fancy. Given my family's proclivity for photos and trip documentation, we probably would have, but my sister, her boyfriend and I had a time limit, as we had to make it for a 4:15 PM mini-trek up the glacier itself.
The wooden staircase trail is eaisly the most accessible part of Perito Moreno Glacier park, and gives a complete glacier experience. There are a number of trails, all color coded with enough signs to never fear getting lost. The park describes each trail in a few ways, one of which being level of difficulty, but having cut across three of the five, the suggested level of difficulty seemed fo have no correlation with how difficult it was. Still, it was incredibly well set-up and gives a range of viewpoints of the glacier.
The best part of the trail is the moments where you get to see ice calving off of the glacier face into the lake below. We saw a couple of them (not as many as normal since it was a cloudy day). It starts with a loud gunshot, the crack of the ice. Then comes a brief period before it falls off where we all look around to see where it is coming from. Then it happens, the fall, the crumble, into the water. Then, maybe the most amazing part, is the long lasting reverberations in the water, the ripple out to the shoreline. It all takes 20-30 seconds, and it is mesmerizing.
Had the day ended there, it was a job well done. Instead, the best was yet to come with the glacier trek. I'm generally not one for trekking, but this was an opportunity I could not possibly pass up. We took a boat over the the mountainside bordering the glacier, then walked across to the edge of the glacier where it meets the mountain, and were form-fitted with crampons on our shoes to be able to spike into the ice-face and not slip. 120 minutes later, when we took them off after the tour ended. I kind of felt I wanted crampons on my shoes permanently.
It is really hard to describe both the feeling and the views while trekking the glacier. It was a circle route about 90 minutes, up and down through the peaks and valleys of a corner of the South face. Two guides led the way, both helping us all up and down, and leaping across the ice to carve out a more teneble path where there was build up. The whole experience was both surreal and everything I could have imagined.
The most amazing part was just looking around at mounds of ice, varying levels of blues, crevices that went on forever, little streams of fresh glacial water in all directions. The guides helped us spot the true beautiful sites to make sure we all got an adequate number of hundreds of pictures. From afar this area of the glacier looked plain and flat, but trekking up and down and you see how vurvy and jagged it can be.
Throughout the trek we were able to scoop up little pieces of ice to chomp on (by 'we' I say mostly 'me'), but at the very end the tour includes a little sustenance as well, as we are all invited to a little whiskey on the rocks - glacier ice being the 'rock'. Given the conditions, the setting, the surreal feeling of it all, it may have been the best whiskey of my life.
It was a real downer in a way when it ended as I'm sure I just experienced the highlight of the trip. We made it back to normal ground, and headed back to El Calafate around 9:00, just in time to shop a bit and head to our dinner at La Tablita, a classic Argentinean Parilla grill restaurant. Despite the late timing, the restaurant was buzzing - we had to wait about 15 minutes for our 10PM reservation. The food also took long to come, though it was worth the wait mostly.
Parilla grills are all about meat. You basically order different meats that are cued up over the spit or grilled and served alltogether. We ordered lamb, rump, pork tenderloin and a rib-eye for all of us to share. They're cooked simply, with no added flavor or anything. Just hte natural meat, and it was all really good. The lamb may have been slightly better in Chile, but the two beef cuts were divine. I could not recommend La Tablita enough.
After dinner, not yet ready to end our time in El Calafate, my sister, her boyfriend and I went to Borges y Alvarez Libro Bar, a beautiful little spot on the main road (90% of El Calafate business is on that road) that is modeled after a library. It wasn't nearly as packed as La Zorra Taproom but still quite crowded. I got a local beer (Eurek Negra - essentially a stout), which was quite good. Overall have found Argentina beer quite good. After I got a few more pints at La Zorra, still buzzing when I left around 2:30, and called it a night.
It was a short, action packed day in El Calafate, which is a true little jewel of a town and tourist destination. The glacier met all expectations, and the trek passed them easily. Few days on any vacation have ever gone so well, been so fun, and been worth so much as a memory.
We came to Patagonia with a lot of high expectations, and nothing had been built up more than the Perito Moreno Glacier, a key tourist attraction in Argintenean Patagonia due West of El Calafate. Two of my cousins passed along the highlights of Patagonia consistently, and both of them singled out Perito Moreno Glacier as a high point, as a once in a lifetime experience. Few sites when built up so substantially, especially by people that have traveled as extensively as both of them have, live up to the billing, but the glacier if anything exceeded it.
The drive to the glacier is a great aperitif to the enjoyable tourism meal to come, as the scenery surrounding both El Calafate, with the idyllic Lago Argentina to the north, and the endless Patagonian steppes to the South, and the creeping Andes Mountains off in the distance, combines to form an effortlessly beautiful cocktail. There were so many moments during that drive we wanted to stop and pull over, but we had a further destination in mind that needed to be reached: the glacier.
The entrance to the glacier park is fairly understated, well aways away from the actual Perito Moreno Glacier. It costs $500 Argentinean Pesos (~$27 USD) to enter, an amount more than worth it. That isn't the end of the drive, however, as ~20km of twists and turns still lie ahead, but at least that stretch of road does have the great luxury of adding in small sites of the beautiful glacier to behold. The first glimpse was a photo opp lookout about halfway in, where you first see the giant glacier overflowing between two mountains, with a lustrous mix of white and blue. As you advance towards the actual glacier area, the views get more clear, and more staggering.
The complex itself is set up nicely. There is a lower parking lot, with a restaurant and dock for boat cruises past the 'Northern Face' of the glacier, and a constant series of shuttle buses back up to the upper lot, which has the entrance to the manicured walking trails that give increidble views of the glacier across the frozen river. It is really hard to explain, so instead, let's show:
These were all views from the walking trails, series of cantilevered walkways that traipsed up, down and around the cliff-face and woods across from the glaciers. The number of places during that trail that prompt audible gasps and delight are in the dozens. You can easily fill a few hours just talking pictures at each moment that fits your fancy. Given my family's proclivity for photos and trip documentation, we probably would have, but my sister, her boyfriend and I had a time limit, as we had to make it for a 4:15 PM mini-trek up the glacier itself.
The wooden staircase trail is eaisly the most accessible part of Perito Moreno Glacier park, and gives a complete glacier experience. There are a number of trails, all color coded with enough signs to never fear getting lost. The park describes each trail in a few ways, one of which being level of difficulty, but having cut across three of the five, the suggested level of difficulty seemed fo have no correlation with how difficult it was. Still, it was incredibly well set-up and gives a range of viewpoints of the glacier.
The best part of the trail is the moments where you get to see ice calving off of the glacier face into the lake below. We saw a couple of them (not as many as normal since it was a cloudy day). It starts with a loud gunshot, the crack of the ice. Then comes a brief period before it falls off where we all look around to see where it is coming from. Then it happens, the fall, the crumble, into the water. Then, maybe the most amazing part, is the long lasting reverberations in the water, the ripple out to the shoreline. It all takes 20-30 seconds, and it is mesmerizing.
Had the day ended there, it was a job well done. Instead, the best was yet to come with the glacier trek. I'm generally not one for trekking, but this was an opportunity I could not possibly pass up. We took a boat over the the mountainside bordering the glacier, then walked across to the edge of the glacier where it meets the mountain, and were form-fitted with crampons on our shoes to be able to spike into the ice-face and not slip. 120 minutes later, when we took them off after the tour ended. I kind of felt I wanted crampons on my shoes permanently.
It is really hard to describe both the feeling and the views while trekking the glacier. It was a circle route about 90 minutes, up and down through the peaks and valleys of a corner of the South face. Two guides led the way, both helping us all up and down, and leaping across the ice to carve out a more teneble path where there was build up. The whole experience was both surreal and everything I could have imagined.
The most amazing part was just looking around at mounds of ice, varying levels of blues, crevices that went on forever, little streams of fresh glacial water in all directions. The guides helped us spot the true beautiful sites to make sure we all got an adequate number of hundreds of pictures. From afar this area of the glacier looked plain and flat, but trekking up and down and you see how vurvy and jagged it can be.
Throughout the trek we were able to scoop up little pieces of ice to chomp on (by 'we' I say mostly 'me'), but at the very end the tour includes a little sustenance as well, as we are all invited to a little whiskey on the rocks - glacier ice being the 'rock'. Given the conditions, the setting, the surreal feeling of it all, it may have been the best whiskey of my life.
It was a real downer in a way when it ended as I'm sure I just experienced the highlight of the trip. We made it back to normal ground, and headed back to El Calafate around 9:00, just in time to shop a bit and head to our dinner at La Tablita, a classic Argentinean Parilla grill restaurant. Despite the late timing, the restaurant was buzzing - we had to wait about 15 minutes for our 10PM reservation. The food also took long to come, though it was worth the wait mostly.
Parilla grills are all about meat. You basically order different meats that are cued up over the spit or grilled and served alltogether. We ordered lamb, rump, pork tenderloin and a rib-eye for all of us to share. They're cooked simply, with no added flavor or anything. Just hte natural meat, and it was all really good. The lamb may have been slightly better in Chile, but the two beef cuts were divine. I could not recommend La Tablita enough.
After dinner, not yet ready to end our time in El Calafate, my sister, her boyfriend and I went to Borges y Alvarez Libro Bar, a beautiful little spot on the main road (90% of El Calafate business is on that road) that is modeled after a library. It wasn't nearly as packed as La Zorra Taproom but still quite crowded. I got a local beer (Eurek Negra - essentially a stout), which was quite good. Overall have found Argentina beer quite good. After I got a few more pints at La Zorra, still buzzing when I left around 2:30, and called it a night.
It was a short, action packed day in El Calafate, which is a true little jewel of a town and tourist destination. The glacier met all expectations, and the trek passed them easily. Few days on any vacation have ever gone so well, been so fun, and been worth so much as a memory.
