Day 3 Fotos from Santa Cruz Province and Perito Moreno Glacier

After a long flight from Buenos Aires to Río Gallegos, we met Angel and Raúl Mansiila and climbed aboard his bus-truck-contraption and a rented van. We headed northwest across the Patagonian steppes in a howling headwind. It is surprising to many that most of Patagonia looks like this.

Our main vehicle was soon to be christened "The Green Machine". Here we are retying some luggage that blew off in the headwind.

Lago Argentino, the source of the Río Santa Cruz, is situated in a broad glacial valley. Our destination was the city of El Calafate on the southeastern end of the lake.

After a quick lunch at our campsite in town, we drove the 65 or so kilometers out to Perito Moreno glacier. This foto shows one of several horns around the glacier. The lake is the Brazo Sur of Lago Argentino. Note that the treeline is receded from the edge of the lake. This occurs because the glacier crosses the lake and dams the southern part from the northern part. Since the outlet is on the northern part, lake level in the southern part rises until it lifts the glacier slightly off of the lake floor. Once that happens, the south side drains catastrophically to the north, breaking up the ice and causing the cycle to start over again.

The Perito Moreno Glacier descends from the Southern Patagonian Ice Cap and crosses Lago Argentino at its narrowest point, periodically restricting the flow of water between the two sides.

Icebergs calve off this glacier and several others that enter the lake. They drift around until they beach themselves in the shallower depths. The ice wall of the glacier (background) is 60 m high.

Guto, Ari, and the others did a little beachcombing. It's not advisable to linger on the beach for too long. When large icebergs calve, waves up to 10 m high are possible.

The constant changing of the weather and lighting conditions insures that no two fotos will be the same.

As we stood watching, this smooth-sided iceberg did a 180º roll to expose its jagged underside.

This foto shows that the ice needs to advance about another 100 m before it prevents the south side of the lake from draining northward.

The balconies from which these fotos were taken provide safe, unimpeded vistas of the ice.

This view to the north shows the rest of the channel to the large northern part of the lake.