Perito Moreno glacier

We approached the National Park with much anticipation, we had been hearing tales of this glacier from as far back in our travels as Poland.

Not knowing what to expect, and having never even seen an iceberg before, we were so excited when we spotted a lone one on the way that we had a picnic in front of it! This chunk of ice had floated about 50km from the face of the glacier.

Nothing could have prepared us for seeing the glacier. We entered the Park at about 8pm, just as everyone else was leaving. After an amazing ride through arctic forests and alongside iceblue lakes, we rounded another corner and saw it for ourselves.

The glacier decends from the vast Patagonian icefield and marches inexorably into the lake, along a 5km front. The mountains in the background of these photos are around 14km away, though it is impossible to glean the size from the photos. At the face, the ice reaches about 60m and 120m below the surface of the lake.

The glacier advances as much as 2m per day. We spent the evening with a few others who were staying the night right in front, watching (sometimes huge) slabs of ice calve off the front into the lake. The glacier creaks and sometimes bellows violently as it shifts forward and pressure in the ice is released. It is not silent for a moment.




For an idea of scale, check out the top photo again. That's a boat built for about 70 passengers on the right hand side! Many of these icebergs in the foreground are as big as houses.


We found ourselves a campsite shortly before sunset (shortly before midnight) -

a place to ourselves on the headland, and all night we listened to the glacier creak and groan. It was an incredible night.

We woke shortly before the sun, and were treated to a stunning sunrise

from our magnificent campsite.

Later, we headed around the point to find yet another track and wandered along it for a different perspective

and for a cliff-side picnic.

After a siesta, we had a chat with the ranger who asked us go back to the main road, and as we walked out together, we were treated to another huge chunk of ice sliding into the lake, and the aftershocks as the waves heaved and crashed into other parts of the ice. The calving icebergs cause small but strong tsunamis throughout the lake.

We left the park feeling somehow fuller. This little glacier - as it is compared to other ones - had given us a lesson in the power of the planet we live on. We had also had an insight into the timeframes that geology moves in.

Glaciers move a lot of rock relatively quickly, grinding it to powder along the way, though the little human being barely lives long enough to realise this. And glaciers are made up of snowflakes.

Robbed!

Back in Puerto Natales ... a pleasant enough town.

Not much to report, except that our gear was stolen.

We lost our tent, our sleeping bags, Andy's goretex jacket, our camelback backpack and another waterproof drybag, and the drybag and lock we used to keep it all in on the back of the bike

Needless to say, we loved and needed all these items. The tent was awesome, Andy has spent a thousand dry nights in it, and me a couple of hundred. The down sleeping bags zipped together (one extra long, one medium), the jacket was a beauty from Canada, and again, it had kept Andy dry on many a day.

Here's a photo (given to the Police, who were very attentive, but didn't help us recover our gear) of the fence the bastard climbed over

and our bike without our gear.

We were stuck. We were in a small town in the middle of nowhere, minus our home.

We spent the next two days scouring the place for some replacements. They don't go in for good quality gear in this part of the world, and we soon found there was only one decent tent for sale in the whole town.

Insult was added to injury by the fact that the owner demanded a price well over what it was worth. He knew he had us over a barrel, and after some soul-searching, we took it along with two (very very ordinary) sleeping bags, and left feeling like we had been robbed two days in a row.

I would love to see his photos - you should have seen the scowl on Andy's face when he pulled out his camera to get a snap of us as we drove off!

We completed the kit with a canvas bag around a couple of garbage bags (it never rains here anyway) and a $7 plastic raincoat for Andy.

And we headed back out on the road ...

I can't believe it!!! While I've been sitting writing this, somebody stole my bag!!!!!!!!! It has my passport, my credit cards, my diary (my diary!!), my keys, my spanish study books ... probably more. I'm in shock.

Thank thank thank goodness it didn't have the photos (safely in the computer being uploaded at the time).

So it looks like we'll be in Argentina for a bit longer yet ....

Parque Nacional Torres del Paine

We had planned to leave Punta Arenas (a pleasant southern-Chilean town) early, however we bumped into a couple of fellow Aussie bike-travellers who we had heard about on the road, Ken and Carol Duval.

Instead, we spent a few hours swapping stories with them over seafood soup and wine, and while we could have stayed all afternoon, we had to leave, as we were itching to get out to the nearby Torres.

The sun sets late there, and after arriving in the evening, we were able to set out for our camp (about 3 hours hike away) at 6.30, in light drizzle. It was a lovely evening - the path wound along the moraine, and as it got later and the weather stared to set in, we were glad for the intermittent protection of gullies and forests.

Just on sunset, we came to to our campsite nestled at the base of the Torres, and pitched our tent in a forest beside a small stream.

We woke just early enough to catch the sunrise on the peaks

but not early enough to be there as it happnend, and by the time we had made the hour-scrabble up the steep slope

the Torres were again shrouded in mist.

This did not take away from their magic though, made more so by the fact that we had them to ourselves. After some time there, we made our way slowly back down for brekkie.

Back to our camp for brekkie (cereal and tea)

and a couple of quick photos (little did we know these were the last photos we would take of our lovely tent).

After a quick snooze (on my part) and a chat with the local rangers (on Andy's), we headed back down the mountain, asking the gauchos we met on the way for a photo.

We arrived back at the bike in the late afternoon, and after a couple of days without it, I was so glad to again have the luxuries it offered! (heh, my sarong for a pillow and my spice box for cooking ...). How things have changed! We made a great camp at the base of the snow-covered mountain and bumped into another of our biker mates, Tobias, from Germany, and spent a pleasant evening eating and drinking beer around the fire with him.

The next day we made a leisurely tour of the rest of the park

stopping on the side of the lake for lunch and a siesta

and later near a herd of guanacos.

What a beautiful place!