Crashing Icebergs and Huge Glaciers

From El Calafate, there are lots of excursions as you´ve probably guessed. Our final ´must do´ tour was to the Perito Moreno Glacier in Los Glaciers National Park. The glacier is part of the southern Patagonia ice field which is where we´ve seen all the various glaciers, however this glacier is different. It´s the largest, most active and most impressive glacier in the ice field and the good thing is you can get right up close, allowing you to see how truely awesome a glacier is.

I´m hoping you´ve read Stu´s glacier facts from his ice-climbing trip, so you´ll know a little about them. Well, this glacier is stories high and as I said, this one is active, which means huge chunks fall off and drop into the lake frequently. You can hear the glacier groaning and cracking as it´s slowly moving, and then when a section splits off, the sound is like thunder. Unfortunately, by the time you´ve heard it, the section of ice is already in the water creating a small tidal wave across the lake!

It´s possible to take a boat trip near the glacier, but you don´t actually get that close, mainly because it´s so dangerous! To give you some scale, here´s a picture of the glacier with a boat. You can just about see the boat - it´s the little black dot on the right!

We spent around two hours here, simply gazing in awe at the mass of ice, waiting for the next chunk of ice to drop off. Quite incredible.

Searching for the Towers at the Torres del Paine

After ice climbing and generally freezing our arses off down in El Chalten and Fitz Roy, we returned to El Calafate to sort out the next big tour - Torres del Paine. This is another incredible national park with stunning mountain ranges, except this time just over the border in Chile. It´s possible to do an 8 day trek around the mountain range, but we opted for the slightly easier 4 day ´W´ trek (as it resembles the letter W). We also decided to take our time and do it in 5 days, particularly since we were camping and it was likely that our sleep would be disrupted by the gale force winds, with which we became very familar!

The walk itself is stunning. On the first day we saw glacial lakes and stayed in a campsite at the foot of a glacier. We spent the evening staring out of the refugio window as icebergs floated by and sipping cheap red wine. The second we returned to our starting point and that evening we stared out of another refugio window at an incredible mountain. Again we sipped cheap red wine and chatted the night away. The third day we crossed moors and marshes to reach a valley between the mountains and a fabulous look out point. Unfortunately at this point the weather turned a bit nasty and snow and ice-rain whipped our faces - so no great views today. The fourth day we walked to our final campsite and settled in as tomorrow we were to climb to a high look out point for a close up view of the Towers. In the morning, Stu went alone to the look out as one of my tendons had been acting up and so I rested. It had been cloudy and the Towers hadn´t been visible for a day or so, but Stu was blessed that morning. Just as he reached the look out, the clouds parted and rewarded him with perfect views.

We were quite surprised how easily we found it. The walks are easy to moderate, but there are some steep hills and hard climbs, particularly when you´ve been walking for a few days. At first I was surprised how many people had walking poles, but by the third day I was so envious - I really could have done with some!

The views are stunning to say the least and we were blessed with good weather (well, good for Torres del Paine), so most of our views were clear. Camping was hard. It was cold and very windy, but spending the evenings in the refugios was great. Warmth and red wine - what more can a girl ask for!

On our return to Puerto Natales, we made a beeline for El Living , a small cafe with fabulous food, so we could stock up on fruit and veg after camping for 5 days. The food was delicious, my favourite so far. Yum.