We began our glacier tour by walking on the balcony overlooks which provided amazing views of the massive glacier. It was crazy to hear the thunderous sounds of ice cracking and even cooler to watch chunks fall off into the lake and create a small tidal wave shortly thereafter.
We walked around the balconies for almost 2 hours in awe of the monstrous mass of ice. The Perito Moreno Glacier is roughly 19 miles in length and covers 97 square miles! It's 3 miles wide and has an ice depth of around 560 ft. This glacier is 1 of 3 Patagonia glaciers that is not retreating. It actually advances/ grows at a rate of almost 7 ft. a day, but because it also loses roughly the same mass, the face of it stays fairly constant.
After our walk on the balconies and lunch, the sun actually started to come out! :-) We took a short boat ride over to the glacier to begin our trek on the ice for about an hour and a half.
The tour provided the cramp-ons in order to walk on the ice.
The glacier looks like a huge pile of snow, but it's actually a huge block of ice. The guide passed on to us 2 bits of interesting information, 1- that the temperature at the end of the glacier where we were never gets below freezing and 2- the glacier is only 100 meters above sea level.
The little dots in this picture are the people already climbing on the glacier.
As we walked along what felt like the North Pole landscape, similar to when Buddy the Elf floated away on an iceberg, it was an environment unlike any other. Rivers flowing, crystal clear lagoons, and really neat crevices. Walking on the glacier was such a cool experience.
They also ended it with a fabulous treat of whiskey at the end with ice straight from the glacier. Cheers.
We stayed at Nakel Yenu which had a cool vibe and mountain house feel. It was nice because it seemed like it was out of town, yet only about a 5 minute walk to the center. We paid $14 each for dorm beds.
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