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Day
4 (October 23, 2019) Glaciers National Park
Before
We plan to make the sailing tour around Lago
Argentino
between icebergs known as “Rivers of Ice Express”. The plan is to board
from the harbor in Puerto Bandera and sail all around the Northern side
of this lake observing the glaciers there, with Updala and Spegazzini
standing out among them.
The spots marked at map are:
0- El Calafate
1- Harbor in Punta Bandera
2- Glacier Upsala
3- Glacier Spegazzini
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After
We’re picked up around 7:30 AM in a van that is
already full and drives us to the quay after a 30 minutes ride. The
first thing we do once there is paying in a stand 400$ each for the
access to the National Park. Showing the ticket from yesterday is half
price. After this, there is only one way to go: the one to the boat
where we’re going to spend most part of the day. Inside, the seats are
big and comfortable with a table in the middle and with big windows so
we cannot miss the main protagonist for today: the landscape.
 
When it starts sailing is not long before we take
our coats and go out for some pictures of this combination of mountains
and milky water. It’s soon when the first icebergs appear coming down
from this branch of Lago Argentino. The first stop is by a waterfall.
The agenda for today points we’re sailing directly
to glacier Spegazzini. In the way landscapes are amazing and, as we’re
getting closer, icebergs appear more often.
The wall of this glacier is way shorter than the
one for Perito Moreno we could see yesterday, but it’s steeper and
above we can see how is feeding from three snow “rivers”, making a
different and fantastic view. Besides, being steeper makes ice falls
can be seen more frequently here.
 
The boat stops in front of the wall
waiting for precisely one of these ice falls. Everybody is quiet
looking at the wall. We can hear big cracks, but they’re always
followed by just some few snow falling to the lake. Somehow, I’m lucky
enough to record one of this snow falls followed by a big piece of ice.
 
We come back to our seats after such awesome
experience, but just to get ready to go to land, as we’re going to have
a walk. It is about the story of the wild cows that are living in this
National Park. When the people that was living in the park without
owning the place were forced to move, as lots of them had cows, some of
them were just abandoned from the ones that couldn’t take them with
them. These cows had descendants and made a wild living, generating a
problem for the park since, in winter, they eat the shoots of the
native trees and they’ve forced huemuls to move, a native deer that is
in danger of extinction.
We walk to the house of the guard who was
gathering these cows to be taken away and come back to the boat by the
beach.
 
We keep in our seats looking through the window
while the boat is sailing back to the main branch of the lake. We’re
going to the top North of the lake, where the glacier Upsala is. It is
the second biggest glacier of the park, just after Viedma.
We’re told we’re not going to go anywhere near the
glacier, which looks marvelous from far, but we sail close to the
icebergs coming from this glacier. These are bigger than the boat and
make a landscape that feels like from another world.
 
These huge blocks of ice are the cause we cannot go close to
that massively long wall of glacier Upsala, since the ice falls are so
big that makes dangerous for boats be nearby.
After this fantastic experience we’re back to our
seats, this team is for everybody, since is lunch time. We’re served
our pack with a sandwich of Patagonian lamb while we’re sailing back
where we started this morning and go beyond to the South, to Perito
Moreno. We’re served as dessert a mouse of berries and this Argentinian
caramel is everywhere called “dulce de leche”.
We’re reaching Perito Moreno through the big fiord
we could see yesterday from the platforms. The boat sails to the right
side of the wall and goes slowly all along it. It looks it has been a
big fall of ice in the place we were expecting it yesterday. Now the
wall is quiet. We cannot hear a single crack.
From here things go fast: we sail back to the
jetty where we embarked this morning and we get in a van that deliver
us by our hotel. We rest just for a few minutes because today is our
last chance to go to Laguna Nimez. We leave to there around 7 PM.
Once there we pay 500$ each for the admission
ticket and walk around the lagoon paying attention to all the birds
here. There are lots of different species. We could see the Flemings by
the end of the walk, in a smaller lagoon called “Laguna Escondida”. A
beautiful end for such a wonderful day.
 
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