South American Adventure: Day 11 - Perito Merino Glacier

We managed to fall asleep wearing our noise cancelling headphones last night so weren't disturbed by the loud music. When we woke at about 2ish it had stopped so we were able to settle down properly.

All too soon it was morning and we needed to be up and ready for 8 am, yawn. At least we didn't need to sort cases out, which was a bonus. The drive to the boat in order to view the glacier was 55 miles and the scenery en route was beautiful.

A carracarra

Flamingos having a morning dip

We got off the bus a couple of times to take photos and noticed the temperature getting lower with each stop. By the time we got to the boat it was pretty cold and we were very glad of our layers. We sailed as close as we could to the glacier and were amazed at its size. 50 metres high at the front and 700 metres at its deepest. 35kms long and 4 kms wide at the front. It's fair to say we were very impressed and probably took far too many photos.

First view of the glacier from the bus

Our boat

Whilst we were on the boat we saw a puff of white smoke on the hillside and watched it turn black and increase. When we got back to shore we were told that there was a kitchen fire in the cafeteria, which was going to be our next stop. After the cafe we were going to take a walkway and get up close to the glacier but we were told we had to turn back, shame. We did begin the drive back and the guide received a phone call to say that the walk had reopened so we turned around and drove back. We are so glad we did because that 3 mile walk was quite spectacular. We could see the beautiful blue colours in the ice, we could see over the top and it was just like lemon meringue. Best of all was the amount of calving going on. Unfortunately it's almost impossible to photograph because you hear a sound like thunder and within seconds a great chunk has dropped off. Just as well it does drop off as the glacier is moving at a rate of 1.7 metres a day.

The north face from the boat