Perito Moreno

One of our last days in Patagonia we decided to drive to PN Los Glaciares in Argentina to see Perito Moreno, one of the few remaining advancing glaciars in the world. It advances something like a meter a day, and its absolutely immense. When you get close to it you can hear this amazing crunching cracking sound which is the ice moving. Anyways, the guy from our tourism place, Turismo Cabo de Hornos, drove us there, which was a good 5 hours through the Argentinian pampa. After having spent hours upon hours on the unpleasant parts of travelling (buses, airplanes, more buses, transfers, bus terminals), we expected to not enjoy the long ride there. It turned out to be beautiful though, kind of similar to the American west, with big open spaces, empty roads streching ahead of you, and livestock grazing. We also saw a lot of birds, like condors, which my mom loved. We had lunch in the little tourist town of Calafate and enjoyed some of the perks of Argentina...the great exchange rate, cheap, delicious italian food, and chocolate shops.


The Perito Moreno glaciar. At first I thought it was called "Perrito Moreno" which means little brown dog. I thought it was marvelously cute that someone had named one of the world's biggest glaciars after their little brown dog. But then I realized it was "Perito Moreno" which apparently just means "Explorer Moreno"...Moreno was a famous Argentinian explorer. Anyways, this was disappointing. As was the death of my digital camera while visiting the glaciar. But the glaciar itself was great. It was beautiful, as you can see for yourself, and the sounds the ice made while advancing were remarkable.





After a good 10 hours in the car we had an adventure trying to get back into Chile. It turns out that at our border crossing, the Argentine side closes at 10:30, while the Chilean side closes at 10:00. Since we were going from Argentina to Chile, we easily got through the Argentine crossing at about 10:15 and got on the road to the Chilean border office. But between the two offices is a about a 10 minute stretch of no-mans-land. We got to the Chilean office at 10:30 to find it dark and closed up, and by that time the Argentine side was closed as well, so there was no turning back. We had to go wander around the crossing knocking on all the doors and praying that we could find someone to quickly let us through, since it was freezing out.Eventually we had to roust a Chilean border gaurd out of bed...he looked like he wanted to kill us. But really, its ridiculous for the two border sides to have different hours!