For our first full day in Patagonia, I did not want to schedule anything too strenous. I figured we would be jet-lagged after our 24 hours of travel from Seattle. Plus there was the timezone adjustment - Argentina is 5 hours ahead of Seattle. Also, there was a chance we might be delayed during our flights and arrive a day late, so whatever we did on this day had to be something we could afford to miss.

Taking the Rios de Hielo (Rivers of Ice) boat tour was a perfect solution for a first day activity. The Rios de Hielo is an all day boat trip (so we wouldn't be hiking) that starts from El Calafate and takes you out to see the Upsala and Spegazzini glaciers. Although the Perito Moreno glacier is the most famous, the Upsala glacier is impressive in its own right. (The Upsala glacier is named after Uppsala University, in Sweden, which first studied the glacier. Somehow the second 'p' of Uppsala got dropped when the glacier was named.)

The shuttle picked us and took us to a bus loaded with tourists. The dock for the boat tours is about 60 km west of El Calafate. There were many buses in the lot when we arrived, and there were several boats loading passengers. On our boat, every seat was filled. This is a popular tour. As soon as the catamaran got going, you can go out on deck. Fortunately, it was a dry day, though the wind from the speedy boat makes it chilly out on the deck. I would go outside and take some pictures, and then come back in out of the wind. Standing at the front of the boat while it was at full speed wasn't a good idea because of the spray that was kicked up. It took a good deal of time to sail out to the Upsala glacier. We passed numerous icebergs along the way, some of them were as big as our boat.

The Upsala glacier is huge (870 square km), one of the largest on the continent. It has melted back considerably over the last couple of decades. I wish our boat had gone closer, but perhaps there is too much danger of falling ice. We spent about half an hour in front of the ice face.

The catamaran then sailed up the Brazo Spegazzini (Spegazzini Arm of Lago Argentino). The Spegazzini glacier is a spectacular sight - it is tall (100 meters at the front face, though I read one website claiming the Spegazzini ice front reached heights of 135 meters), and vivid blue. Our boat got much closer to this glacier, so we could hear the cracking of the ice and even see some ice falls. Both the Spegazzini and the Upsala (and the Perito Moreno) glaciers flow from the Patagonia ice cap, which is an enormous ice sheet in the Southern Andes. We spent about half an hour in front of this glacier too, and it was a marvel to see. The blue coloring is stunning, it looks unreal. The visit to the Spegazzini was quite a highlight for this day, it was a great start for our Patagonia trip.

We returned to El Calafate and walked around the town. For dinner we went to the same Le Lechuza restaurant, except we ate across the street. For some reason, the restaurant has two locations, right across the street from each other. While we were there, was a protest out in the street - it turned out to be a protest by restaurant workers for better wages. They played drums and set off firecrackers. After dinner we walked back to the Posada Karut Josh and packed up the stuff we would bring to Chile - we would leave behind two bags of clothes that we would need when we returned to Argentina.

---

Panorama Photos

Maps

This map shows our sailing route to the two glaciers.

Videos

If you do not see the videos, but instead see a message that says: "Error: Video playback aborted" it is possible that the content is being blocked by your web browser. You may see a message at the top or bottom of your page that says "restricted webpage from running scripts or ActiveX controls". If you see that message, click on the ALLOW BLOCKED CONTENT box and that should allow these videos to run.

Iceberg

Upsala Glacier

Spegazzini Glacier

Ice Fall

To display the photo images on this webpage, I am using a freely distributed java script called Lightbox v2.7.1 written by Lokesh Dhakar. You can download this program by clicking on this link.

All the text and photographs on this webpage are my own creation, but the textured background is taken from a site, EOS development, that offers non-profit users free use of their graphics. Click the icon below to visit their site.

Click on any thumbnail to begin the slide show at that photograph

---

Rivers of Ice Boat Tour Photos