Fake Plastic Town and Icy Awe

If the Disney Corporation ever need a new site for a resort in South America then they could do a lot worse than just buying up Calafate wholesale. They wouldn't need to do much development work to turn this place into Mickey's Magical Moreno Glaciar Resort. I imagine many visitors appreciate the pseudo-alpine architecture and newly-paved and planked road system and pedestrian areas by the lake. To me however, it all seemed just a little too sterile, as if the whole place had been only recently unpacked from IKEA boxes.

I once described Canberra, the purpose-built seat of government in Australia, as Milton Keynes without the concrete cows. Well Calafate is kind of a micro-Canberra with an added legion of outdoor equipment shops and travel agencies slapped down in the middle of it.

The only scruffy things I saw were the packs of semi-feral dogs roaming the streets, scrapping with each other, begging for food from the tourists and hassling the local horses. They were a welcome breath of foetid air.    

The main reason to stay in Calafate is to visit the Perito Moreno Glacier, the largest lump of ice in South America's impressively-stocked natural chest freezer. Close up, this frozen behemoth almost looks like it has been painstakingly constructed out of blue polystyrene as a luxury holiday home for Superman. In reality, only mother nature could create something so beautiful on a scale more epic than any 10,000 Hollywood schlockbusters added together.

I´ve seen some pretty spectacular things in South America but Perito Moreno more than deserves its seat at the top table of attractions on the continent. Touristy or not, I can't recommend a visit here highly enough.  

I spent roughly three and a half hours attempting to take it all in. First I took a trip aboard a tourist boat which makes you feel suitably insignificant, gazing up at the vast lapis blue walls towering above the lake. I then spent the rest of the time we had on the wonderfully-situated walkways that afford a panoramic view up the huge craggy slopes of the glacier. I stood there chatting and joking with an English couple, Jason and Kalin, the three of us transfixed, watching and waiting for the icy walls to calve ever-so-gradually defrosting chunks of ice into the water below.

 As usual, I wasn´t fast enough on the digital quick draw to capture any decent video. Jason however filmed a large section crumbling and crashing into the lake producing an echo that boomed its way up and down the valley. 

At the time it just seemed like a great way to spend a few hours but later, thinking about it a little more, I felt privileged to have the opportunity to watch something so enduringly ancient run its course for even a tiny slice of time. After all, this huge mass of ice has been there, shouldering a path through the rock for unknown thousands of years. In coming times some of its cousins are bound to diminish and perhaps succumb entirely to global warming. I sincerely hope that Perito Moreno will not be joining them. In fact I hope it will be there, still ploughing away, long after both I and Mickey Mouse are nothing more than a distant memory.