National Park Los Glaciers
Near El Calafate, Santa Cruz Province, you will find the Perito Moreno Glacier, a place governed by the eternal ice. Either walking or sailing to the bottom of the glacier, this is a show everybody ought to see at least once.
At 80 kilometers from El Calafate, taking Provincial Route 15, you will find the Perito Moreno Glacier. It forms, with 12 more glaciers, what is called the “Continental Ice”, a layer of ice and snow that covers the Southern Cordillera for almost 350 kilometers. The Perito Moreno reaches up to 5 kilometers in the front and 60 meters in height. On the right season, you will even be able to watch the breaking of big ice chunks.
National Park Los Glaciers
All this is inside the National Park Los Glaciers, created in 1937 to preserve the field of continental ice, its thirteen glaciers and various environments of the Subantartic Forest and the Patagonian Steppe. This park has a 30 percent of its surface made out of ice (2600 square kilometers). Among the glaciers you will find the Upsala (the biggest one), the Spegazzini and the Perito Moreno. The singular activity in this one is what made the par World Heritage in 1981. It is not only the whiteness of its surface and the blue tones of its walls, that will leave deep marks on the visitor’s memory, but also that it is one of the few glaciers in the World, and the only one in Patagonia, that keeps moving, almost 100 meters a year. This movement makes one of the most longed happening for the tourists: the breaking of the ice dike made by the glacier.
This natural wonder takes place on irregular periods. The last three happened in 1988, 2004 and 2006. There is no scientific conclusion over when is the next breaking. At least, during 2007, according to information given from National Parks, the glacier will keep moving forward without breaking. Besides this, we don’t know how long we will enjoy this amazing happening, because the Perito Moreno and all the other glaciers are suffering the consequences of global warming.
Even though a breaking is not possible during 2007, visiting Perito Moreno is, beyond any doubt, an obliged stop for who is in the area.
There is a cost to get in the park, and a special one for the glaciers Moreno and Upsala.
Everything that surrounds them
Even though when you think of Calafate you think of the glacier, everything around it is gorgeous too, balancing with the beauty of the ice.
Guarding the whiteness of the Perito Moreno there are to hills, Onelli and Bertrand, resides the Fitz Roy (3,375 meters) and the Torre (3,128 meters) visited by hikers from all over the Worlds, especially in season.
The perfect framing is given by the flora, mainly lengas, coihues y ñires, that give shelter to animals from the woods, like the Huemul and the Red Fox. Last but no least, it is possible to enjoy of the Black-Necked Swans, the Patagonian Woodpecker, the Eagles and the condor that flies high above us.