Just a day on the glacier

If it's not the first rule of backpacking, it should be: while the whole thing is being done on a budget, know when to spend your money.

Today Brian and I went to the attraction that makes El Calafate any sort of a destination, the Perito Moreno glacier. It's not the biggest glacier around, but it does have a couple of defining characteristics: It is accumulating at rougly the same rate as it's melting, it moves fast, and it's terminal face is right at land. So hop on a bus from town and in an hour, you are standing in front of a glacier, watching pieces fall off into the water in one astounding show of nature.

But we wanted to do it better. We did board a bus in town (with a posse of Japanese tourists, naturally), and went to the Glacier National Park. We did spend a couple of hours on the series of balconies they have there, watching the glacier drop pieces of itself into the lake. This particular glacier apparently has a history of advancing to the point of hitting the land on the other side, at which point the lake on one side builds up water, until eventually the water pressure is too much and the glacier ruptures in a mass of crashing ice. The glacier has currently dammed the lake up pretty well, and they are expecting a rupture again at the end of the summer. It's really impressive.

Anyhow, so when ice falls off the glacier, and it does every few minutes, honestly, it looks like tiny pieces tumbling off, but it makes a mighty crashing sound, and thunderous noise when it falls into the water. It may not have looked like a huge deal, because the pieces that fall are small in relation to the overall glacier. When you walk up, you expect the pieces to be like...this entire side or something, but they are ones that seem small from the balcony. But I am sure our scale was messed up and the pieces falling off were big enough to crush a Wicked Witch or something. But the sound it made, man. I would never get tired of it.

After that, our tour included an awesome boat ride, in the dammed side of the lake, right up to the face. It was insane, to just motor right on past these icebergs kicking it in the water. The ride itself was lovely, and gave a much better impression of scale. Note: we are very, very wee when it comes to a glacier, even a small one like Moreno.

We landed on a beach, and were able to leave off most of our stuff before they fitted us with crampons (which, because we are secretly 12, Brian and I of course joked about in a manner unbefitting our stature but very amusing nonetheless). And then...we get to climb on the glacier. We climbed on a freaking glacier! It was unlike anything else, but also a weird combination of things. The ice is super, super hard, but also easy to break into with the crampons (hee). It´s also really sparkly, and the chunks look like uncut diamonds. We were on the malting side of the glacier (as opposed to the accumulation side) so there were also streams and puddles and pools all over the place, yet the ice around them is essentially hard and unmoving enough to walk on.

I should mention at this point that my freakish luck with Patagonian weather is holding, and it is downright hot as we are loading out for the glacier walk. I am in a longsleeved shirt and jeans, and Brian is in the same, and we are roasting. On the glacier itself, iut is not as warm, but not cold either. We are only in gloves because it is required, and it gets a little warm wandering about. Fortunately, we can just hack off a piece of ice to eat when we get thirsty - it tastes wonderful, by the way.

At the end of the trek, there is a little table, where they have glasses, and they hack off some ice and pour you a scotch. It was kind of gnarly scotch, but a wonderful sentiment, and we drank like good kids.

The sun was bright enough on the glacier that we both have interesting sunburns where the wind and sunblock conspired against us, but all in all, it might be my favorite day here.