Mar 5-8: El Calafate and Lago Roca, Glaciers National Park

WARNING: As happened at El Chalten, here too, I have too many cool photos to include all the worthy ones in this post. SO, as before, I am including several appetizers here and putting the full monty into a slideshow.

We departed El Chalten after a few days of trekking in the northern part of Glaciers National Park and headed to the southern part of the Park near El Calafate for several more days of trekking.

Actually, we simply passed through El Calafate, the largest town in the area, en route to our campsite at Lago Roca located 1 hour farther west and within the Park. This campsite was a gem! Beautifully situated on a hill overlooking Lago Roca, with a short grassy lawn-like substrate and lots of shade trees, picnic tables, trash cans, fireplaces, immaculate bathrooms and hot showers, great WiFi, and best of all, we were almost the only campers and pretty much had the entire 5 star campground to ourselves. Oh, and did I mention the views? Here’s a couple of pics:

For you birders, this campsite also blessed us with Lesser Horned Owl and Austral Pygmy Owl hootings at night – fun – and very bold Crested Caracara, who also entertained us with mating displays and the immodest culmination of those displays, if you get my meaning!

And for the rest of you, we had really cute Patagonian Foxes visit our campsite regularly AND some very, very friendly Skunks – yes, that’s right skunks (formally, Humbolt’s hog-nose skunks)! These little guys paid us almost no attention as they went about their business scrounging for food scraps. Of course, we didn’t know how friendly they were at first. It’s like the bull elephant in our Savuti camp in Botswana a couple years back (some of you may recall), at some point you simply have to hold your ground and not move, because trying to escape risks startling the creature and suffering their wrath. The same was true with our little skunk friends. As they approach, you reach a point where it’s best to hold still and hope for the best. That’s what I was doing/hoping for in this picture when I was approached while playing my flute and not paying attention to the ground around me (see video below for the live action version):

Whereas the northern section of the Park near El Chalten is all about mountaineering and trekking, this section of the Park is all about glaciers. We spent 3 full days in the Park and we were never out of sight of one or more glaciers.

Day one in the Park was 100% sunshine, warm temps and no wind, and thus was the perfect day for an all-day boat ride on Lago Argentina to see some of the Park’s most famous glaciers up close. Lake Argentina, by the way, is purported to be the largest freshwater lake in Patagonian Argentina (or in the entire county according so some sources). It is 62 miles long, east to west, and averages 500 feet deep and over 2,200 feet at its deepest. That’s a pretty big lake! We cruised on a tour boat 125 miles total in and out of several arms of the lake, each of which had hanging glaciers dumping water into the lake from above and a large valley glacier calving directly into the lake (including the most famous, Perito Moreno Glacier), not to mention cool icebergs of varous sizes and shapes in the fjords. Here’s a few pics to wet your appetite:

Day two involved, you guessed it, a strenuous all-day hike to high elevation, this time to see the Perito Moreno Glacier from high above. Fortunately, we were blessed with superb weather! It was great to see the glaciers up close from the boat (day 1) and then from above for a completely different perspecitve. From above, we could really get a sense of the glacier as a slowly flowing river of ice – even when its receding (as it is now). Here’s a few pics from this hike:

Day three was intended to be another steep mountain climb for panoramic views, but we were finally thwarted by the clouds and threat of precipitation. So, instead, we stayed close to camp and simply hiked along the shore of Lago Roca – and the weather held out for us. While not quite as awe-inspiring as the previous hikes, it produced 3 new bird species for me: Least Seedsnipe, Magellanic Snipe, and a yet to be identified with confidence species of Ground Tyrant (I think). I will be sending photos to Phil to sleuth it and return an ID for me. Here’s a few of pics from this hike:

Here’s a short composite video for fun (and especially for Yaron, who only watches my blog videos), including footage of a glacier from the boat and from high above, a fun episode with a horse running through the field along side our vehicle with the moutains in the background (Sherry, we thought you might especially like the horse video), and my encounter with a skunk while playing my flute:

Patagonia – El Calafate video (6 minutes)

Here’s a slideshow with the full monty of pictures, including too many glacier shots:

Patagonia – El Calafate slideshow (5 minutes)

OK, that does it for Glaciers National Park. We are off to Torres del Paine National Park in Chile for our final serious destination. See you there!