ushuaia/el calafate

(note: the more interesting part of this post is the second half, "el calafate", if you don't feel like reading the blow-by-blow)

04.12.2009 ushuaia

at the "museo del presidio", all about the history of the penal colony that was started at ushuaia, we got our passports stamped again with dorky stamps. there was also a lot about the naval history of ushuaia, and lots of model boats. it was one of the more informative museums we have been to. then again, it was in argentina, who knows, maybe museums are better there...

the whole time i had been trying to figure out a way to get to the legendary cape horn, but the only way is a cruise ship that costs a few thousand dollars. we discovered that the glaciar trip we wanted to do in El Calafate did not include actually walking on the glaciar, just around it to the scenic outlooks, so we decided to spring for the more expensive "mini-trekking" instead. we booked our 5 am bus to el calafate and got an unpleasant surprise, it turned out that we would not arrive around 9 pm, as expected and discussed on the previous day, but not until 24:00. however, we had already booked and paid for the glaciar trekking for 7:45 the next morning, so we didn't have a choice, meaning we would be very tired on our glaciar walk.

after getting up at 4, we went to the bus station. the weather was really bad, very windy, cold and rainy. i tried to sleep in the bus as much as i could but that didn't really work. once again we took the ferry across the magellan strait, this time we were even luckier with seeing dolphins. we had to cross the argentine-chilean border twice, because there is no road out of argentine tierra del fuego without crossing the chilean part. we changed busses in Rio Grande, and had to catch a connecting bus in Rio Gallegos. i guess we were fast at the borders, because we were two hours early, meaning we spent 4 hours waiting in the bus station in rio gallegos. we didn't arrive in El Calafate until 1:00 am. of course there were no taxis at that hour, so we walked to our hostel and crashed.

06. 12. el calafate

we got up at 7, breakfast was a banana and a yoghurt drink. then we went to get our bus to the glaciar. first we drove around in the bus picking up people from their fancy hotels. i dozed through most of that. driving into the national park los glaciares offered some spectacular views, but i was too tired to keep my eyes open.

we had great luck with the weather, it was warm and sunny, during lunch we lay around in tank tops soaking up sun while the glaciar was a just a few hundred meters away.

according to what they told us, the glaciar is formed in the "campo de hielo sur" the third-largest expanse of ice in the world, after antarctica and the arctic. there are still parts of the campo de hielo sur which have never been seen by human eyes. there are strong winds travelling from west to east around the lower south part of the globe, where there is not much land, except patagonia, picking up moisture over the oceans. however, the wind gets stuck on the andean mountain chain, where it has to rise up in order to cross the mountains. all the precipitation is left in the campo de hielo sur, which has one of the highest rates of precipitation in the world. therefore the eastern side of the andes, the patagonian steppe, is very windy but quite dry as there is no precipitation left.

so the campo de hielo is like a giant bowl filling up with precipitation in the form of snow, which gets compacted and compacted until it is ice. when the bowl cannot hold anymore it spills out in the form of rivers of ice, glaciars. there are dozens of glaciars in the area. several of them end in lakes.

the perito moreno is one of the few glaciars that are not retreating, in fact it advances up to 60 meters a year. the glaciars can be quite fast, not like the ones in europe, which are essentially frozen in place. the glaciar here enters a warmer climate, the lake or the rock underneath is warmer than the glaciar, so it sort of slides on a film of water. we walked on the side part of the glaciar, where it is stuck up against the rock, and more stable due to the friction. the middle part, in the middle of the lake, is the faster-moving part.

the front face ends in the lake argentino, where it melts or breaks off, occasionally damming the two arms of the lake until the pressure gets too great and the damming part of the glaciar basically explodes. the ice wall rises about 80 meters above the lake, but of course, two-thirds of its mass is actually underwater!

every once in a while, pieces of the glaciar face break off with this awesome loud crunching sound and fall into the water, then bob back as icebergs.

here are the photos from the perito moreno glaciar:
http://chile.marahtyler.com/#37