Our glacier chase continues. It only cost us five hours by bus, and an overly dramatized customs check that required our entire busload to stand outside slowly frosting over at the border crossing to nowhere, while rifle slinging customs agents peeled through our bags for the the singular smuggled Dole banana.
We found ourselves in a town not much unlike the last. Built alongside another glacial river flowing towards the end of the earth; El Calafate’s streets were lined with a familiar plethora of local (they say typical) restaurants, well aimed tourist shops, and adventure promising tour companies. A few things were maybe a little different. The currency symbols had changed again, which required a day or two of retraining ourselves to do the quick math when the check came. The locals drink mate from hollowed out and decorated gourds that are both a function of tradition and individual expression. The tourists gorge on better ice cream. And, somewhere not far, there is the crystalline crack and slow crawl of the Big Ice we came to meet.
For a few days, we hobbled around the town eating ice cream, resting stiff knees and stretching sore muscles; anticipating a new adventure we knew would be spectacular and expected to be thrilling; in much the same way you’d wait in line at an amusement park eating cotton candy before riding its biggest and fastest rollercoaster. Scary with a safety net. So we thought.
More perfect, and unseasonably clear, warm, windless blue weather graced the day of our ice trek. After a morning of bilingual facts, figures, and admonishments to keep all hands and feet out of ice crevices, our predawn bus arrived at our glacier amusement park. We threaded our way down metal gangplanks for our first face to face with the ice. Just in time, as the first ray of sun crested the mountain peak, she heaved a wall of ice like the face of an apartment building into the still sleeping water at her base. Already worth the price of admission.
A short, and iceberg free ferry ride, brought us to the base of the behemoth where we met our guides, and guardian angels, for the day. We hiked for some time through the empty space where the glacier and the mountain once danced together. We marveled at her shape and spied into the cracks in her armor. She waited patiently.
After strapping metal teeth to our feet we took our first steps onto her heaving chest. What looked no different than an slick ski slope in the distance was now a field of merciless razor edged broken glass beneath us. Our angels watched, and assessed our capability as we scaled our first rise. “Angry monkey! Stomping penguin!” they would holler over their shoulders as we fumbled our way up the first curve or her rib.
Up and in we continued, one deliberate step in front of the other, no longer walking, but dancing to the firm heartbeat of the living giant beneath our feet. At our first plateau we left Earth for the first time. Nothing left was familiar. The expanse ahead of us forced our senses to recalibrate for something so foreign. We stood atop the white blade of a ridge; each side plunging into a vacuum of electric blue endlessness. Our angels swung their axes and chiseled a crusty path along one slope. One by one, we stomped across, while her blue depths below begged to inhale us; and we dared to consider her proposal. Ridge after ridge it went on like this, one guide clambering ahead to scout the path that wouldn’t come to an impasse; the other hammering out footholds and securing ice picks for us to hang onto as we inched our way along steep slopes. One misstep would have sent us down an ice luge with no end.
Eventually we crossed our last ridge to find ourselves in the middle of an ice prairie. At the center sat a blue lake so perfect that no description would be fair to its beauty. We sat there that afternoon, dining on Snickers bars hardened by the ice, and drinking water dipped from the azul lagoon and wondered how anything after this could ever be more spectacular. We dropped a few frozen tears for a place that we were sad to see go, even while we were still there; knowing that sooner than later it won’t exist for future generations of us. No photo, or go pro, or drone; no TV show, or documentary, or movie; and no drug or prose can describe what this place does to you. Just this once, don’t look at the photos below, but go and see for yourself.
