Perito Moreno Glacier is found in Argentina's Los Glaciares National Park which is about a 90 minute drive from the nearest town of El Calafate.
The Argentine government has built an elaborate walkway to make it easy for tourist to view Perito Moreno Glacier, and consequently it is a major tourist attraction in southern Patagonia.
The clouds hung low on the mountain side when we arrived. It drizzled off and on, and it appeared not to be a good day for photographing Perito Moreno Glacier. However, it stopped drizzling and the cloud cover softened the light, making it much easier to get well-balanced photographs of this attractive glacier.
We began our visit with a boat tour that took us up close, but not too close, to the face of the glacier. Here you see the shoreline of Lake Argentino as we approach the glacier.
Here's the face of the glacier, averaging over 200 feet high from the surface of the water.
Perito Moreno Glacier is 19 miles in length and three miles wide. It occupies a total space of 97 square miles.
You can see the scope of this glacier from this Google Earth photo.
An astonishing fact:
this glacier contains the third
largest body of fresh water
in the world!
Another interesting fact: Perito Moreno Glacier is one of only three southern Patagonia glaciers that is not retreating. The reason is thought to be the abundant snow fall, the high altitude, and cold temperatures of this region.
In addition to the 200+ feet above the surface of the water, this wall of ice extends more than 300 feet below the water line.
Just as the boat made a U turn to take a second run by the glacier I saw the glacier "calve" and heard a thunderous sound. I held the shutter down on my camera and fired away to get this sequence of shots.
And here comes the wave from a relatively small calving. Fortunately we were far enough away that the wave dissipated well before reaching us. What a thrill to catch the glacier calving.
Boom! I heard another big splash and caught another small piece of ice breaking off the face of the glacier.
With all this calving, we thought it would be good to view the glacier from land, not for safety reasons but to get a different perspectives of this active mass of ice.
People go trekking on this glacier, but not in this rugged area. That would be suicide.
It was about time to leave when I heard a few small chunks of ice falling into the water which gave me just enough time to turn and see this massive calving.
As I reached the top of the viewing platforms I turned to have one more look at this truly magnificent work of mother nature. Julie and I are most fortunate to be able to travel to these beautiful places, not only to photograph but simply to enjoy.