Gigi Lee
- Dec 31, 2022
- 4 min read

My 3 Day-Trip to #El Calafate - #Perito Moreno Glacier - #Patagonia #Argentina

Day 1

I took an afternoon flight from Buenos Aires to El Calafate. It’s mainly known as the gateway to Los Glaciares National Park, home to the massive Perito Moreno Glacier. It is a 3.5 hours flight from the capital city.

When we almost arrived at the airport, it seemed like we arrived on another planet. There are some small plants on the ground with rivers. The plane landed near a large lake Argentino Lakee. Then, we arrived at the El Calafate airport at around 6:30pm. You can choose to take a bus to the city, but we are going to take a taxi. *We saw the sunset from the taxi. It's so romantic. *Actually you can arrange a bus trip to El Chalten or Ushuaia from the airport. When we arrived at El Calafate, it was almost 8pm.

We are living at the 5-star hotel Hotel Imago. Since it is a little bit far away from the downtown area. They provide a shuttle service We had a really tasty fried squid as an appetizer and rib-eyes steaks at La Lechuza. Highly recommended!

Day 2

We got up at 7:30am and had breakfast at the hotel at 8am. The driver came and picked us up at 8:45am. It took an hour drive to arrive at the Los Glaciares National Park, then we paid 4000 Argentine Peso each person. (It is not included in the trip).The tour guide said that the ticket can be used for 2 days.

Originally, we thought that the day would be raining, but it snowed when we arrived at the national park. The tour bus let us step down the bus to take pictures under snow. Since we are doing the minktreking on the Perito Moreno Glacier. Hielo & Aventura is the only company, which is operating the glacier walk ($300 USD per person) . Then, we arrived at a pier and took a boat to the starting trekking point at the Perito Moreno Glacier. When we arrived at the other side, the guides separated us into groups, based on languages English or Spanish. The tour guide brings us to a house, we can put our backpacks and lunch in the house, and we can also go to the restroom there.

Miniktrekking Trip is a 1.5 hours walk on glacier and 1.5 hours walk on the land in the morning, a boat trip, plus go to the glacier walkway in the afternoon. When I looked at the videos on Youtube the Big Ice trip is double the time on ice. For me, I am not a sports girl, miniktrekking is very very enough for me.

We need to walk for 45 minutes, across a small river and rough road. We can see a small waterfall. When we arrived at the little camps. We put on helmets and crampons.

Then we stepped on the glacier. I felt that my shoes were cracking down on ice. I grabbed a bottle of water from the lake on the glacier. It was a kind of impressive and unbelievable experience. I heard that there are some little rivers on the glacier, but it was all frozen now because of the low temperature. We had glacier water or vodka at the end of the trip. After the trip, we walked back to the house and had our lunch. Then we took the boat again. During the boat trip, I saw a piece of glacier was broken. Then, the glacier area became kind of foggy and the piece fell down. When you heard the sound, it was already too late to see the crackdown. We arrived at the walkway to look at the glacier for an hour. I was so tired walking up the stairs. So if you are not a sports guy or girl, then minitrekking is enough. We saw the glacier on the boat.

After the trip, the bus dropped us outside of the hotel at 6:30pm. We had a sauna and a swim. Then we had lamb at night.

Because we were so full, we brought the leftovers to-go and back to our hotel. The 2-3 stray dogs followed us. Maybe they were hungry? El Calafate is clean and like a Canadian or European small town, the only bad thing is there are too many stray dogs.

Recommendation: **We recommend people to wear a beanie hat and beanie gloves. Don't have to wear waterproof pants and jackets, but highly recommended! If it is a sunny day, we recommend wearing sunglasses. We didn't wear sunglasses because it was a snowy and rainy day. When we were there, it was 0 degrees C with snow. So we brought some body warmers. If you have more time, you can stay for one more day, looking at the glacier at the walkway to take videos of the cracking moment!