After a less than impressive 3.5 hour flight on Aerolineas Argentina from Buenos Aires (no leg room, candy for meals), I’ve found myself in the little southern Patagonian town of El Calafate for three days of tours around local glaciers, lakes, and mountains. It is a very southerly part of the world, below the 50th parallel, that seems to just be moving into winter right now. Being so far south, it is much colder than Buenos Aires and is also very dark this time of year. This place is really not all that far from parts of Antarctica (1000kms? I may be wrong) and the sun doesn’t rise until 9:30am and set around 6pm. Of course, during the summer the sun doesn’t set until as late as 10pm – which would probably make it quite nice.
So having my alarm going off at 6am so I can eat breakfast and be ready for my day’s tour pickup at 7:15 feels very early – like it’s 3 in the morning. There is a surprising snowfall of about 2-3 inches on the ground. The shuttle bus arrives about 45 minutes late but manages to speed us out to a ferry terminal on a lake about an hour and a half away. Still pitch black for most of the ride out there and a depressing forecast of heavy rain for the day, I was not really sure if this was the best time of year to be doing this. I was told the tourist season pretty much wraps up at the end of this month. But here I am so now is the only time I’ll have.
Well lo’ and behold, on the drive out the sky started to slowly glow bright red and orange and the ceiling above us began to reveal itself as perfectly clear and blue! That snowfall we received overnight was supposed to be the rainfall, I guess, dropping in a little earlier than scheduled. By the time we got to the boat it was obvious that it was going to be a perfect day! Cold, but visually perfect, anyway.
We were not the only bus to pull up to the ferry terminal. There were a good 10-15 other busloads of tourists all heading for the same ferry. By the time we all crammed on there the seats were full and we were all told to remain inside. I thought, oh no!, I want to be photographing from the deck! Fortunately, once the boat pulled out we were allowed free run of the vessel, so out on the deck I went.
It was absolutely freezing, but their were pockets you could squeeze into out of the wind that were a lot more comfortable. There was also great hot chocolate you could purchase from the galley. There were three main attractions on the lake that we headed for. All three were glaciers, but each was somewhat unique. The first glacier, feeding into the lake was absolutely huge and famous for creating countless icebergs. The color of the glaciers ranged from crystal clear (smaller ones) to deep blue (bigger ones). We couldn’t get very close to this first glacier due to the number of icebergs floating around and hiding the usual 9/10’s of their volumes, but the sight of so many in the blue musty waters was very beautiful.
All along the route the scenery was amazing, especially with the dusting of snow we had overnight. If I ever measured the beauty of a place by the number of pictures I took, this would certainly be the place! I took over 1000 on my big camera and others on my iPhone (which are easier to share only while I’m on the road).
The second glacier we visited was one we could get much closer to in the boat because there were not so many icebergs around. It was gorgeous with a distinct blue color descending from the mountains down to the lakefront. This particular glacier did us the favor of calving off an iceberg right in front of us with everyone’s cameras in overdrive. As the glaciers sit on the side of the lake, about 1/4 of each is viewable above the water line and 3/4 hidden below. Once they calve off an iceberg it sinks down to the usual 1/10th on top and 9/10th below. Because of this, a lot of displacement force is generated during a calving – causing huge waves to disperse from an episode that may have looked cool but a bit more subtle once the ice mostly disappeared below the water surface. Once the calving took place, our boat, which was tracking parallel to the front of the glaciers, had to take immediate action to turn into the big 5 meter swells that headed out our way. The boat rocked pretty well as we all surfed the incoming waves.
Our last glacier for the day was the biggest longest one we could get close to. On the whole, an absolutely amazing and lucky day with rare perfect visibility for this time of year!
