Icebergs

This post will mostly be pictures. On our third day in Patagonia, we took a boat ride. Unlike the the Perito Moreno Glacier, which has walkways, it was the only way to get out to the Upsala Glacier. Along the way, I took a million pictures of the icebergs in the lake. Each iceberg looks like a piece of art. Each one has a different depth of color, and each is a different shade of blue. The first picture below is taken as we are coming up to the glacier.

The rest of the pictures are the icebergs that I couldn't resist posting. The picture of Sally near the bottom is at the back of the boat right in front of the glacier. She was the only one who would come out on the deck with me because it was so windy and cold. So I asked her, "If Leonardo De Caprio were here would you feel like you were on the Titanic? She said, "Leo de who?" She fulfilled her daughterly duty of making me feel old.

Until next time, Adios!

Awe Some

Last week I feel like I finally understood the meaning of the word awesome. Our family took our first must-see trip here in Argentina. We went to Patagonia. Patagonia is vast, so we only saw a little part of it, but the part we saw was spectacular.

We flew into a cute little town called El Calafate. At first glance, it looks like it could be somewhere in the West. An arid climate, mountains, and a beautiful turquoise lake.

Here in Argentina, it is the middle of the summer, but it was still pretty cold in Patagonia. In the above picture, we had been hiking, so we had stripped off some of our layers. It was weird, going from humid summer, to winter, especially because my body rhythm was thinking it really should be winter, given the last 41 years it was in the winter cycle in January, but it was really used to and liking summer. I think and I'm sure you will all agree, that is why I gained five pounds. Not because I ate ridiculous amounts of fattening food, but because my body was so confused it just decided to hold onto a little more fat.

So while the above picture is really beautiful, that is not where I experienced the word awesome. It was on our first day trip. We traveled about an hour from El Calafate where we saw this:

I realize this picture does not show the awesome. You may not even know what you are looking at. Behind us is a glacier. In case anyone out there is as clueless as I was, a glacier is a river of ice. It moves, very slowly mind you, but it is a very slow moving river of special ice. I say special because it is not like an ice cube. It is so compacted and so dense that when you get a little closer, this is what you see:

Again, the picture doesn't quite do it justice, but the ice is electric blue, because it is so dense. It is totally Awe Some!! The next picture will hopefully show how vast the glacier is. As far as glaciers go, there are bigger, but what I love about this one is how it is moving into this beautiful icy blue lake. Unlike a lot of the glaciers in Alaska, this one is growing. 

We walked all along the walkways on the mountainside to get different angles of the glacier, and all day I felt like my jaw was propped open. I was in awe!

So the other really cool thing about this glacier, is that it moves until it hits the mountain we were standing on, and it blocks the flow of water from one side of the lake to the other. So the left side of the lake builds water, and builds, until it can't contain it any longer so there is a water explosion and it breaks through the glacier. It only happens about once every three to four years. It happened last June, so in the next picture you'll see the water running between the glacier and the mountain.

So the other totally awesome thing was that every minute or so a chunk of ice would break off and fall into the water. Most of them were really small. Even though they were small, the sound was huge. It was the kind of sound that you could feel. Like it was echoing throughout the valley, and in and out of your body. I'm not exactly sure why, because we were actually pretty close to the glacier, but by the time you heard the sound, it was too late, all you saw was the splash. Something to do with the ice cracking and falling faster than the speed of sound - whatever. So, it was hard to see the pieces fall. Except that I saw this piece and thought to myself, that looks like it's going to fall. It might fall in the next few minutes, it might fall in the next few hours, or it might fall in the next few days. Just in case, I'm going to have my camera ready, because it will be too late if I wait to hear it.

I was blessed to be in the right place at the right time. By far, the biggest one to fall all day was this one:

It is just starting in the first picture, falling in the second, and continues in the third and fourth.

Because this post is already so long, I won't put pictures from our next two days in this post. I'll post them in the next few days. There are some other amazing pictures of some beautiful places.

Until next time, Adios!

And I'm sure you can tell from this picture Lance enjoyed it just as much as I did. No, he didn't fall, he just was tired of looking at the glacier.