Ice Trekking Argentina
El Calafate; A touristy who´s-wearing-the-latest-northface-waterproof-gortex-superabsorbent-jacket´ kinda place once again. This place exploded in the past ten years, creating a idealistic utopian wooden-cabin main street. Clean, expensive and full of Dutch, German (super efficient packed lunch for every trip), Chinese (the biggest camera lens) and Israelis (The Wolf Pack- sprawl in large formations) who are all here for one reason….
The Moreno Glacier. It is the worlds only remaining advancing glacier and the most photographed collapsing glacier in the world too as it is always rupturing due to the speed of its movement and so always appears in “The World in Peril!” documentaries… although
its far from suffering from the affects of global warming… its loving it and advances with much gusto year after year. Its a big fella, stretching to about 5km wide at its widest part
The bus journey from El Calafate takes an hour with a few stops along the way for photo ops for those who couldn´t wait. Our bus driver throws on the aul classical anthems like ´Time to say Goodbye´(Andrea Boceli) as we edged closer and closer to the mammoth glacier with every turn of corner, another stunning view. As you get off the bus you overlooking the MASSIVE lump of iceage as it makes its way to Lago Argentino at a rate of 2 meters per day.
The noise from the smallest chunks of ice (the size of a fridge freezer) would resound in thunderous booms as they fall about 50m to the water below. Magical. When it happens it was deafening. The only problem being you hear it after it actually happened. Thus its very funny watching the tourists go “WOW”…as they proceed to unzip their camera case, turn on their cameras and aim and point to where they heard the crash, only to witness nothing but the aftermath wave. Hahaha…silly Chinese woman. This is the place where you could film your “Melting Planet!” docu-soap and convince everyone we were going to drown… in a few years.
Next up it was time to get up close and personal. We hiked alongside the glacier for over an hour through a forest. To actually get onto the ice they give you these spiked shoe attachments called “crampons” (so you don’t fall on your a$$)
We hiked on the glacier for over an hour (you look like little ants on the Glacier from far away), learning about the history of the glacier, and in general the glaciers in Patagonia. The ice is packed so tightly over thousands of years that it forms in a way that reflects all light except blue (the bluest of all the blues!) in some parts…so there is this intense blue light that comes from the cracks and formations in the ice…….well see for yourself, but pictures don’t really capture it. All of the water in this part of the world is safe to drink, whether it is from a lake, glacier or stream. I got water from all of the above as there is just something special about being able to drink water that just a few minutes before was locked up in a glacier and actually may have last fallen as snow several thousand years ago. It was the first time I had ever ice-hiked, so I enjoyed the novelty of using an ice-pick and couldn’t help myself from posing for a few silly photos with my ice-pick in hand, raised in a psychopathic manner.After the trek we stop on the glacier for some whiskey on the rocks (literally ice from the glacier that we chipped off) and dulce leche (more on this later)…
Hands down one of the most fun things I´ve done thus far.
