Our tour van for the glacier arrived right on time just after 8am. We drove about town for half an hour picking up others. The very first stop was for three young Canadian travellers. One of them, a young woman from Peterborough Ontario has taken a year off work and is touring South America starting here in the south and then going north.
Our tour guide explained the various kinds of topography along the 80 km drive to Los Glaciares National Park. It was not long after the park gates that we saw the glacier.
I was very surprised. I had expected something much smaller. Instead this is a very impressive glacier. Of all the glaciers we’ve seen, this is second in size only to the tidewater glaciers in Alaska.
We took an hour long boat trip to the face of the glacier. During the tour so many people stood on the glacier side of the boat to take pictures that the boat had a definite list. It was a large catamaran, so in no danger of capsizing, but it was heeled over several degrees.
Next we stopped at the glacier viewpoint. After eating a couple of empanadas for lunch we walked along the catwalks that have been set up for visitors. These are very impressive, and cover almost 4 km of trail. We stopped at different spots to take pictures and to listen to the ice. Creaking and thunderous cracks were accompanied by large blocks of ice falling into the water. Huge wave surges followed along the edge of the glacier as these blocks calved from the face.
One of the most interesting aspects of viewing this glacier is that you see it from above. You can see the thousands of tremendous crevasses that cover the glacier for many kilometers back from the water’s edge. The clouds lifted a bit just before we left to return to our hotel. This gave us a much better view back to the ice field, almost thirty kilometers in the west, and gave us a much better perspective on just how large the glacier is.