Glacier Tours - Perito Moreno #2 - Argentina
 (click any picture to get enlargement)

This is picture page #2 in the glacier series ... it completes the Perito Moreno glacier tour.    
Picture page #3 in this series then shows the second day's tour of some other glaciers, like Upsala.

The last page left off after we drove to the glacial lake and walked around a bit; now for a boat tour...


We boarded a ferry boat that held about 50 people.  We headed out into the lake; it was a beautiful day and there was little wind. 
The boat then turned and we got to see the Perito Moreno glacier; remember that this is only the right half of the glacier face.

Is that guy really in shorts?
As we got closer to the glacier, we began to see small icebergs.  As we neared the face, the driver had to avoid the obstacles.  The glacier is 60 meters tall (almost 200 feet) and small tidal waves occur when chunks fall in the water.
The glacier moves very slowly, only a inches per day.  The bottom and sides scrape the earth, taking small amounts of dirt and rocks with it... if the glacier would melt, we would see a smooth surface. Just as we began to move away, we heard a real loud bang; this is all I saw of the falling ice chunk.
We backed up a bit and then traversed along the face of the glacier.  From far away you cannot see the jaggedness of the ice peaks or the cool blue color... which all was quite nice.
We then headed to the left side of this part of the glacier.  The land you see to the left is the isthmus which divides the lake into two parts.  We will hike on this piece of land in a little while; hopefully we will be able to see the entire glacier from that view point. This cave/tunnel was formed by water flowing from the other side of the lake into this side; ice dams sometime block the flow.
We left the boat and hiked on a trail that took us up a hill. From this vantage point we could see the body of the glacier. It's a slow-moving river of ice which began at the mtn. tops.
The top of the glacier wasn't as smooth as I would have thought... no hiking here!
To the left we could see the part of the glacier that we saw from the road as we drove in. The cave/tunnel allows water to flow from one side of the lake to the other. The viewpoints on the isthmus give us a view of the middle of the glacier face. 
 

We went down to get a 
closer view of the face... 

... but they wouldn't let us 
get too close though!
 

To the right we could see into the part of the lake that we had traveled in the boat.
These are some general glacier close-up pictures ...
... the size of the pieces were amazing and the blue coloring was awe-inspiring.
As we prepared to leave, a huge chunk of ice fell, making quite a noise.  The remnant looked like a big ice-blue diamond.

As we drove off we got to see our tour boat out on the lake; 
the size perspective was drastic. Perito Moreno was a great 
glacier to visit!

This concludes the views from Perito Moreno...  to view our tour of some other glaciers, click here.

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