South American Explorations

El Calafate is the Town in Argentine Patagonia where you base yourself to go and see the glacier on every traveller´s itinerary....the Moreno Glacier.

Some interesting facts: the glacier is 257 square kms in size, with a span of about 5km at the front and ranging from 55m to 70m in height above the water. It grows about 40cm each day on the edges and even more in the middle apparently.

We have taken some really cool photos of this glacier, and our other travels so far, which Jason is in the process of trying to upload to a new yahoo-linked website (we´ll provide details when it´s set up so you can see them).

The glacier is awesome, there are a series of boardwalks you take to get as close as is safe to the glacier....not too close though, you should see the size of the chunks of ice regularly cracking and falling off into the water! The sounds are amazing, really loud and the size of the waves in the water below is an indication of just how huge the ice chunks falling off really are. The first hour we were there was sunny, and the glacier looks pristine white. Unfortunately grey skies and showers set in after that, although the change in the colours of the glacier was impressive as it looked much bluer without the sun on it.

Not much else to write about El Calafate town itself, quite cute and touristy but fairly small and really just the base for glacier viewing.

Alli and Jason