Calafate

Calafate is a city to the far south of Argentina, in the midst of Patagonia. It sits alongside a huge lake - Lago Argentino. It's a bright blue colour is due to minerals left in the water left by the upstream Upsala glacier. Additionally, in this photo you can see large blocks of ice - icebergs - floating in the lake - that also broke off from the glacier upstream.

Everything you can see in Patagonia looks the same - it is called "the Patagonian Steppe" - huge tracts of brown grassland, very flat, with just the residue of some hills around Calafate - all that is left of that easternmost part of the Andes after the glaciers from the last ice age scraped them clean.

The reason it is all brown dry grassland is because it is very windy (on account of it being so flat), and very dry, on account of being east of the Andes, which absorb the rainfall/snowfall from the prevaling westerly winds at that latitude. The part of the Andes belonging to Chile, to the west, gets all of the moisture.

So what happens to all of that snow that falls on the Andes in Chile? Well, this was the reason I had come to Calafate. Snow keeps falling on the Andes, but it doesn't melt. This is how you get a glacier - when more snow falls than melts. The snow gradually compacts, and after a while becomes ice, which "flows" down the mountain into Argentina.

The most famous glacier in this region is the Perito Moreno glacier:

This glacier is famous because as it flows down the valley from Chile, it cuts off a finger of Lago Argentino, damming up the water on the western side. This temporary "lake" gradually fills up with water, until eventually the pressure is so high it "bursts" the dam, which is trully spectacular. This last happened in 2004, and prior to that in 1988.

Even ordinarily, large blocks of ice periodically fall from the glacier into the water.

I didn't get to see any really big blocks fall, but even when seemingly "small" blocks fell into the water it made a terrific crashing booming sound that echoed around the valley. You could always hear the glacier creaking and groaning.

I had hoped to do some hiking around the nearby El Chalten area, but the weather was terrible when I was there, so I instead had to go to Bariloche for that.