Perito Moreno Glacier

We make it across the border from Chile to Argentina with no problems, even managing to hop onto the border office wi-fi to download some content for the road. Surprisingly, there are no flags or big “welcome to Argentina” signs, so our entry to our fourth country feels somewhat anti-climactic.

We walk to our next accommodation, a lovely Airbnb James found, that is invitingly warm after the freezing cold wind that has buffeted us all the way here. We wish we were resting up here longer, but unfortunately we have places to be, so it’s just two nights here. Still, it’s nice to have our own space again and not be in an overpriced shoebox. After a quick trip to a shop and testing my mental maths with the prices yet again, I enjoy my first jacket potatoes since England, and James enjoys a freshly made sandwich for 90p.

He’s feeling rather worse for wear from some cold he’s picked up, so it’s bed and rest for him, whilst I do some washing, research, and try and make sure everything is set for tomorrow, our glacier trek on Perito Moreno!

Thankfully the agency is responsive and confirms our booking, but says we need $24,000 in cash to pay for the park entrance. This is new to us and, once again, we’re in a new country on a Sunday, and of course, everything is shut. We don’t have a single Argentine peso to our name. Western Union is shut. Reviews of the one cashpoint 20 min walk into town say it charges $10 US per withdrawal, and it charges the official exchange rate (350 pesos to 1 GBP), compared to the ‘blue dollar rate (900 pesos to 1 GBP). Getting the latest currency in a country is probably one of the biggest pains with travelling, but in Argentina, it’s a whole different ball-game. I find out that we can pay for our entry online instead. Except neither Monzo card works, I just get an “error” message. I briefly wonder if it’s because I have to declare that we’re British and consider putting a different nationality. Flashbacks to money woes of Santiago and Copacabana. We’ve paid a lot for this trip to be thwarted by a £24 entry fee. My last ditch attempt is to use my emergency Visa card (all our other cards are Mastercard), and it goes through. We can get in the park, phew!

Our first evening in El Calafate involves a late evening dinner at a restaurant called Morrison (!) where James has a pumpkin soup and pasta with lamb stew to help warm away his cold, and I have a lamb roulade with potatoes. Both are really tasty and the servers are clearly loving their jobs and life.

We get packed up and head to bed for our next early start. Unfortunately, I have an even earlier start as I wake up with my stomach angry and feeling nauseated. This is our most expensive day trip we’ve booked, and it’s sold out all week, so we’re going “sí o sí”, as they say here. Thankfully, we still have some of the pills we got from Valparaiso when James was still suffering, and I take that and we head out into the rain to our pick-up point.

We’re first on the bus so get prime seats to help avoid travel-sickness on top of my latest bug, and the pill is already doing the trick. After going around the houses to pick up the rest of our 52-strong group, we’re off to the national park, and our guide tells us some facts about the area. Firstly, we’re driving through a lot of ranches around here, and the cows have 4/5 hectares per animal. No factory farming here!

We also spot a couple of condor gliding around on the hunt. Our guide tells us about Lago Argentina, the largest lake in the country. Its source is the glaciers, and so it’s pretty darn cold, but people bathe in it in summer just like any beach resort. The glaciers also give it its amazing blue-green colour. We’re told the weather in Patagonia is often described as providing all four seasons in one day, having experienced the grey rain of the morning, we’re hoping our next season will be Summer…

It’s a 1.5 hour ride to our first stop, to get park entry tickets. Our guide now tells us that we can pay on card at the office. Absolute face-palm. Even though we have ours already, I need to convert our digital ticket to a real one, and in the process find out the issue I was having yesterday… they don’t take Mastercard, nor Maestro or two other card types. I guess they didn’t want to pay the developers to update the website error message. We usually only travel with our Mastercard, so I thank the stars I gave Visa a go and it worked out, otherwise I wouldn’t have had it with me and we would have been stuck.

We drive on to the National Park walkways. These are some raised platforms that wind around the land facing the Perito Moreno glacier, providing amazing views. We’re given 2.5 hours to explore and eat lunch. We’re firmly told that we should only do the yellow route, maaaaybe the first two balconies of the blue route, but no further. Challenge accepted.

We hop off the bus and make our way to blue first. The walkways and balconies provide absolutely stunning scenes of the glacier. It’s humongous.

As with Glacier Grey, Perito Moreno disappears into the mist of the background, we’re back at the end of the world. The wind is strong and (unsurprisingly) freezing, we think we might lose our noses if we stay here too long! A boat cruise comes up from the side and looks like a tiny micro machine next to it, really showing the scale.

A sign tells us the height of the visible part of the glacier goes from 40m to up to 70m in some sections. It’s brilliant to get a closer look after the teasing we got of Glacier Grey on the W. You can really see the cuts, lines, lumps, chunks and gradients of the glacier edge here. As much as we would love to keep staring into the vibrant blue of the deepest cuts, we think of our noses and the challenge we’ve given ourselves with our 2.5 hour limit.

We head back to do the yellow route as instructed, enjoying some views slightly more sheltered from the wind, and find it takes no time at all! We still have an hour and a half to go. Looking at the map, and the relative times it will take us to do the other “difficult” red route, we can’t resist trying for an actual challenge, and decide to go for it, we can always turn back. We really are glutons for punishment eh. The weather is clearing up and it seems like Summer may be gracing us with her presence.

As expected, the route is not in any way difficult, and again we’re still done with an hour to go. We really wonder who comes up with these maps, but it’s nice to feel like gazelles again after feeling like snails on the W. We find a sheltered seat to have our lunch, and then head inside for a yummy hot chocolate, before heading back on the bus to our next stop, the boat.

The boat is going to not just take us near the glacier, but will take us to the spot where we will get our equipment to do our hike. On the boat we get, what seems like, pretty close, although we’ve learnt just how huge the walls are and what seems near is actually still quite far away.

Back on land, we’re introduced to our new guide who gives us a bit of a history/geography lesson. The Perito Moreno glacier is 250sq km, the same size as Buenos Aires, 120m deep under the water, and almost 5km across. It is one of 2400 glaciers, but we spot it’s actually a neighbour to Glacier Grey that we saw at the end of the W.

The glaciers form from the humid air blowing in from the Pacific, rising up the mountains of the Andes where they cool and freeze. In fact, up in the mountains, they have 10,000mm of rain/snow a year, and just 35km east in El Calafate, they get only 300mm. It’s actually incredibly dry in El Calafate. Joaquin points out that the sky above the glacier is thick and white, but behind us now it is clear. This is how it always is, because the weather mostly dumps in the mountains before ever reaching the lakes of El Calafate. The face of the glacier is the oldest part, as newer ice forms up in the mountains and pushes down from the top. What we can see and are about to walk on is around 400 years old.

In Antartica, the glaciers move 1m in a year, but Perito Moreno moves 2m every day. It’s “fast” by glacier terms. Unfortunately, as with all glaciers now, Perito Moreno is receding faster than ever. Back in the last ice age, the glacier went out 200km and has been retreating ever since, as it should. But sadly in the last two decades, that retreat has sped up.

With that reminder of how privileged we are in multiple ways in this moment, we are given over to another couple of guides Santiago (Santi) and Ezequiel, and kitted out with helmets and crampons. Winter has arrived and the snow really starts coming down in a blizzard.

The crampons are really heavy, and it’s a weird sensation to walk with heavy feet. Ezequiel teaches us how to walk with them and not break our ankles, fall over or impale ourselves, much appreciated as I’ve already had a few stumbles lol. To walk uphill, we should walk like penguins or ducks. To descend, we should walk with our feet parallel, knees bent to lower our centre of gravity, and leaning back. It’s time to get on the ice, and show our guides if we’ve been listening. Ezequiel praises our form and himself “good teacher!”.

Santi and especially Ezequiel clearly love life and their time on the ice, with the latter throwing snow balls at the other tour guides and hopping about the ice like a playground. He tells us that they get to explore the ice in their free time, it’s the best part of the job, I can imagine. I’m in awe from the off. It’s just like nothing else being on the glacier, seeing the shapes and formations up close, the meandering blue trails carved by icey water that are naturally the same colour as blue powerade/gatorade, I’m so happy just taking it all in.

Our route takes us up, down and around some peaks and troughs of the formations. We refill our water bottle with Glacier water and it’s like nothing else, so crisp, cold and pure.

Thankfully, the blizzard and ice-cold wind of Winter have subsided so we won’t lose our noses just yet.

Under the surface you can see the icey forms in the water, murkeying the vibrant blue channels.

The deeper into the glacier you can see, the deeper the blue. It’s unreal and I can’t express how happy it makes me.

We turn the final corner and see a tray table with glasses and a whisky bottle, as Santi hops over to a glacier wall to chip off some ice. The day is topped off by some whisky over glacier ice (that even I can stomach and enjoy) and a chocolate.

Sadly, it’s time to get our boat back and say goodbye to the glacier that has given huge joy to my soul.

Winter is returning again with another dump of snow (we’re getting four seasons in two hours, let alone four seasons in one day!) as we huddle by the fire waiting for our ride back.

This was a hugely expensive day, and we’re just so grateful to have the means, opportunity and enough health to do it.

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Adventure – completing most loops of the walkways, walking like an Egyptian/penguin, clambering about a glacier!!!

Excitement – whisky on glacier rocks with chocolate, the sky clearing, the snow falling, the whole thing

Trauma – “computer says no” Internet payments, more tales of fires caused by idiot tourists, the bitterest winds