After spending the night in Hostal Albergue whose cinder-block 8x8 foot rooms for 2-3 people made one feel more like a jailbird than a paying guest, we boarded the first a.m. bus to Parque Nacional Los Glaciares. The bus wound along the pancake flat valley and an electric blue lake, small mountains jetting vertically on either side. It had rained the night before, and as the sun had not peeped from behind the clouds, the bus tires picked up a steady spray while the fields still smelled of fresh rain.
The glacier was enormous, nothing I expected, but then again I had never seen a glacier before so I didn't know what to expect. 30 kilometers long and three kilometers wide, it stretches far out of sight. It calved car sized chunks of ice, occasionally losing an entire sheet from its broad face and sending a series of 5 foot waves in its wake. Each calving was preceded by a deep rumble, the same sound as a thunderstorm less than a mile away. Splashes sounding like loons plopping into the water were actually car sized chunks of ice. Even a bushy tailed fox darted devilishly between the erratic boulders and occasionally tumbling blocks of ice.
Ever so blue... The colors were unbelievable!
I really want to see a glacier... It's one of my dreams
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