Day 113: December 5, 2007: RG to El Calafate

  El Calafate, Argentina
Wednesday, December 5, 2007

Day 113: December 5, 2007: Río Gallegos to El Calafate

We got up around 7:00 and had a leisurely breakfast in the hotel comedor. The girls and I walked down to an internet place where I uploaded the latest group of journal entries. Upon returning to the hotel, we packed our bags and checked out. A cab took us to the bus terminal where we got a Taqusa bus to El Calafate. The windy ride across the desolate Patagonian pampas took longer than I remembered, almost four hours. We saw numerous guanacos but very few rheas. When the snow-covered Andes came into view in the distance, there was a crescendo of camera clicks. They got closer and closer over the last two hours of the trip. When we started the long descent into the Río Santa Cruz Valley, I knew we were getting close. I explained that Charles Darwin and some HMS Beagle crew members had dragged their boats up this river for 12 days before returning o the ship. They didn't make it this far upstream. In 2001, Brevard's Voice of the Rivers crew started their sea kayak adventure at the lake outlet on the east end of Lago Argentino and followed the Río Santa Cruz to the sea.

We arrived at the terminal and took a cab to our cabin at the Solares del Sur, about two kilometers west of town. The cabin was very nice with a set of twin beds and a double bed which Elena and Elise shared. The hotel arranged reservations for the Lago Argentino boat tour in the morning. They also contracted us a cab, driven by a young guy named Oscar. For U$S100, Oscar drove us the 90 km to the overlook at the Perito Moreno Glacier, where he waited and eventually took us back. It took about an hour to get there. The road is paved the whole way to the overlook ascent. When I first did this, in 1989, there was no pavement. It took us three hours to get to the overlook from El Calafate.

The Perito Moreno Glacier

Ice Running Up the East Side of the Channel

Fluctuating Shoreline on the South Arm of the Lake

A nice new restaurant had just opened two weeks earlier at the overlook parking lot. We were all very hungry so we grabbed a bite to eat at the sunny, outdoor café before going to look at the glacier. A new metal grate boardwalk is under construction so some of the usual trail was blocked off. Even so, there was plenty of glacier to see.

Argentine Flag

The Perito Moreno glacier is one of the few surging glaciers in the world. It advances meters per day causing the ice to constantly break and calve off icebergs. This is the first time I have seen the glacier completely across the channel and attempting to climb the eastern side. The south side of the lake is still about 30 m below its maximum, suggesting that the south arm is still not entirely dammed off from the north arm. Once the connection is completely dammed, the south arm of the lake will rise about 30 m. At that point it buoys up the glacier and catastrophically drains the excess water on the south side in a day, breaking up the glacier and flushing numerous icebergs out into the north arm of the lake. Then the process starts all over again. From 1927 until 1988 it was on a 3-year cycle but then things changed and there were no more dam breaks until 2005 or 2006.

Upglacier at Perito Moreno

Elise, Elena, and Shirley

The Iceberg Channel

Eventually, we started seeing ice calving from the 60 m high ice wall along the glacial front. Elena got a really good video of the largest event which was quite spectacular. In all, we spent about three hours watching the ice. It was mostly sunny and the wind was moderate. The clouds made for dramatic lighting over the blue ice. I will post fotos when I get the time.

The cab ride back was good and instructive. I checked out the exposure on the west and south sides of Will Lyons' thesis area and saw where the access to the Río Mitre is. Oscar told me that the park campgrounds are closed for renovation this year which means that we will have to camp in El Calafate.

Hills West of El Calafate

The Sky at Dusk

Elena and Elise

Oscar took us to an ATM in El Centro before dropping us off at the hotel. The hotel is run by a couple of guys from Buenos Aires who are really good people. Shirl and I took showers and had a drink while the girls did yoga on the lawn in front of the cabin with flamingos and geese or swans on Lago Argentino in the background. I had never seen the girls do yoga before. Daddy was most impressed.

We had dinner at the hotel restaurant, El Quidu; the wife of one of the owners served us. She was a lot of fun. We all had a good bife de chorizo and an excellent cabernet sauvignon from Neuquén province that I had never tried before.

We returned to the hotel a little after midnight and turned in for the night.