South America Day 54

Nigel and I chose different activities today. Nigel went for another hike with Eoin in the National Park with views of both Fitzroy (3405m) and Cerro Torre (3128m) mountain ranges.  Vikki dropped them off in Amber about 15km out of El Chalten and they walked a linear route back to town. We thought we were in for an overcast day as it was cloudy early morning but by midday had cleared to a beautiful sunny day again.

I went on a boat trip with Katie, Haydee, Ken, Lorraine and Mike across Viedma Lake to Viedma Glacier, the largest glacier in Argentina.  On the way we passed a few small icebergs, remnants of the glacier, floating in the lake.  We sailed near to the glacier to get views of the glacier from the boat then disembarked onto a rocky ridge next to the glacier so we could go glacier ice trekking.  The boat passengers were split into two large groups, one English speaking, one Spanish.  We had a twenty minute walk over the polished glacial rock to reach the edge of the glacier.  Twenty years ago the glacier was at the foot of the rocks were we got off the boat and walked from. Our guide said it had receded about 50m since April, the end of the last season to now, October and the start of this years season.  We put on crampons then walked about a kilometre into the heart of the glacier.  Viedma glacier is huge, 35km long and 11km at its widest.  It was much more rugged than I expected, the rugged ice caused by the glacier reaching a bottle neck, about 5km wide, as it turns direction through the rocky mountains to the lake, all the ice gets compacted and pushed upwards, it's surface is much flatter further up on its wider part.  We had a fantastic two hours on the glacier it was fascinating, so beautiful with lots of deep blue crevasses.  We could have spent much longer there, the weather was just perfect again. We just missed seeing a huge wall of ice fall into the lake, we heard it fall but only got in view in time to see the water movement and the large broken off sections bobbing around in the water.  Our guides, we had three of them, gave us all a glass of glacier ice, we thought it was just to drink the glacial water but then they bought out a bottle of Tia Maria!  We rejoined the boat which took about an hour to get back, it was busy, full of the afternoon sightseer's (there was the option just to do the boat trip and not ice trek on the glacier).

I took so many photos again today, I deleted a lot but still there's loads.