On Sunday February 5 we took the bus out to Parque Nacional de los Glaciares again, this time the southern unit, to the Perito Moreno Glacier, not Argentina's largest, but certainly its most accessible. Watching something move at glacial pace may not sound all that exciting, but the Perito Moreno glacier is a sprinter, moving at up to 2m per day. It is not receding, like most of the world's great glaciers, and all this means the chief thing to watch is the calving, which is frequent and totally exhilarating, especially closer up. That and the enormity of the thing. Talk about
sublime.... I'll place links to videos on YouTube in the next post.
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| Extraterrestrial alien view from outer space |
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Closer up; Perito Moreno frequently dams the lake at the right; the dam
eventually breaks, spectacularly |
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En route to the Parque; the glacier is at the head of Lago Argentino, one of
Argentina's largest |
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At the Parque entrance, rangers come aboard the bus to collect
entrance fees |
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| First view of the Perito Moreno Glaciar |
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Dos and don'ts; the main thing is stay on the very extensive catwalk now in place;
more than 30 people died, getting too close to the ice, in the 20 years before it was
completed |
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| 5k across |
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| 70m high, from the lake; think: 20 story building |
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| Among the icebergs floating around the lake |
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Mount Perito Moreno on the left; an important figure in Argentine history;
naturalist, explorer, statesman; in addition to the glacier and mountain, there
are also a national park and a city named for him; and probably no village
so humble that it doesn't have a Perito Moreno street |
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Colors, crevasses, incredible sound; the catwalk takes you
within a few hundred feet |
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| Ample signage; and in English too |
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Rounding a corner, looking toward the smaller lake that gets dammed now and
then |
