Iceberg

Day 34-36: El Calafate, Argentina. “That one. Over there”, Karen pointed excitedly. “You see to the left of that crooked bit, just above that huge crack. I bet you 5 pesos that bit falls in the next 30 minutes!”.

As a traveller, you find yourself betting on anything as a way to pass the time: The price of the next beer, the amount of time you'll spend at the next border crossing, the number of simultaneous football matches that will be playing in the next bar you pass; you get the kind of thing. But trying to guess which bit of the Perito Moreno glacier would spectacularly dislodge itself from this immense ice sheet and plunge headlong into the depths of Lago Argentino we were backing a loser. For the extent of this ice sheet was just far too great and the activity far too violent for us to have any chance on this random bet with mother nature. But so memorised were we by this incredible sight, that even knowing the odds were stacked against us, we spent the next 5 hours just watching and waiting...

Torres Del Paine National Park runs north easterly towards the border and practically merges with Parque Nacional Los Glaciares – Argentina's jewel of Southern Patagonia and so, keen to see what all the fuss was about, we traced the route of the parks eastern boundary via RN40 to the charming little town of El Calafate. Set on the shores Argentina's largest lake - the emerald, 600 square mile Lago Argentino (which by the way is such a dazzling colour, that even when you see it it real life you think it's been photo-shopped!), this quaint little town with its wooden style alpine dwellings made a relaxing place to stay for a couple of days. And it seemed the whole town had laid on a special welcoming party especially for us: Flags flying, the band playing, even the President of Argentina herself had turned out in the late summer sunshine! (although to be fair, these celebrations may have been planned before El Calafate knew that Karen and I were coming to stay!). Nice touch though. Thank you, Argentina!

But just as Puerto Natales is there to serve Torres Del Paine, El Calafate provides base-camp for Parque Nacional Los Glaciares and that's why we were here. The centrepiece of the southern section of this vast park is Glacier Moreno, 20 miles long and 3 miles wide, this is one of the world's few remaining advancing glaciers. And in the world of advancing glaciars, this one's the Usain Bolt - creeping forward at the rate of up to 6 feet per day, until it meets the lake where, with deafening cracks like the firing of a canon, building size ice-bergs calve from its 200 feet face into to the Canal de los Témpanos (ice-berg channel) below. And in the afternoon sunshine this wasn't a rare occurrence. Every fifteen minutes or so - another crack, another splosh and another tidal wave radiating across the lake indicated that another piece of this wall of ice had now become a part of Lago Argentino. A thrilling and captivating experience that hypnotises you for hour upon hour.

As the Patagonian sun began to set low behind the Fitzroy mountain rage we trudged our way back towards El Calafate with the occasional glance over our shoulders just to get one more look at this incredible sight. “Let's come back tomorrow”, Karen suggested. “I just know that piece is going to fall tomorrow!”.