Perito Moreno Glacier and the baby Guanaco

After our mammoth trek we headed back to El Calafate in Argentina, a quaint little trourist town which is the place all the tourists in the world appear to come in order to see the Perito Merino glaciar.
We decided to take a tour rather than find our own way there, mostly because we just wanted a few few hassle free days, and we´d heard good things about it too. This tour took an alternative, much bumpier road to get there, the advantage of which was that we got to see a load of cool wildlife that doesn´t live near ther main road. We saw about seven or eight huge eagles, lots of nandus (small grey ostrich type things - have yet to take a good picture of these!), grey foxes, hares, a skunk and a condor (albeit from far away). The best bit however was that we stopped at this little goat farm on the way, where they had adopted an abandoned baby guanaco (little a llama) which seemed to live indoors and think it was a dog. Anyway, it was so cute and I got to feed it milk from a baby bottle! Anyone who knowns my fondness for all things cute and fluffy will be able to imagine how happy this made me!





Next we continued on to the glacier. We stopped a little way away from it and did a short hike along the shore of the lake towards it, before hopping back in the bus which took us up to the viewing platforms. The reason this glaciar is so famous has a lot to do with the fact that there´s a very convenient peninsula which lets you get right up next to it, and it has seriously good views from there...



The glaciar is huge.The walls are about 60m high above the surface of the lake, and go about 180m down below the surface, and big chunks of ice fall off it every few hours. We ate lunch looking out over the glaciar, and while we were watching this huge section fell off into the lake making a really loud boom and an enormous splash. It was so awesome to see, although the best was yet to come, as our tour included a boat ride into the lake, and as we were floating about 300m from the wall four huge stacks of ice fell off one by one into the lake right in front of us! We couldn´t have been closer really, and we got a perfect view. Made the boat rock a bit too! If you look carefully you can see some of it falling in the picture below.



Ice falls and baby guanacos in the same day! Definately one of the highlights of the trip so far!
In El Chalten now looking at more mountains. Btw thanks for all the comments, we love to read them so keep them coming!