The town of El Calafate, gateway to the glacier, formed another "reentry" step on our trip back home. We'd spent 11 days in outback mode (Torres del Paine park), then returned to frontier life (Puerto Natales, gateway to TDP park). Now we moved to the tourist town (El Calafate), with the further return to "large foreign city" (Buenos Aires), before flying back to the familiar (Los Angeles Orange County, & home).
El Calafate is still 2.5 hours drive from the glacier. The trip passes over plateaus and foothills leading up to the Andes, whereas on the Chilean side, this mountain chain seems to fall off to the Pacific much more steeply.
In North American terms, this would be South America's answer to the Mendenhall Glacier, Alaska's "drive in" glacier near Juneau. Both Perito Moreno and its supporting ice sheet handily trump Alaska's. Perito Moreno is larger and flows down from the world's 3rd largest ice sheet, which trails only those of Antarctica and Greenland.
A brief pause for the required photographic proof of visit.
(Jolene says this looks "Photoshopped". As with many of our photos, this is true to the extent of adjusting colors and lighting, but not to the extent of cutting and pasting ourselves into these unusual locations. That wouldn't be near as much fun!)
The guides suited us up for the purpose by lacing crampons onto our shoes.
With crampons on, Jolene felt secure scampering around the glacier, tasting 1000-year-old ice...
... and generally looking very stylish!
I mostly ambled along and snapped photos, but we did get one of both of us.
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