Do you have any idea how loud is the sound of a huge chunk of ice falling into the frozen waters?

Slowly going North, we stopped in El Calafate after Torres Del Paine. The sleepy town isn´t so sleepy anymore and has become a gateway to the nearby most spectacular glacier in the world: Perito Moreno.

Being Canadians, we are no stranger to ice, snow and anything else frozen. Yet, this glacier is one of the most amazing natural wonder I have ever seen.

Perito Moreno is 80 kilometers away from El Calafate, in the Parque Nacional Los Glaciares. The glacier is basically a low gap in the Andes where the snow has accumulated and recrystallized into ice.

Upon arriving at the glacier, it looks like a long and thick river of ice in between many mountains. But as we got closer, what surprised me the most was the loud sound of ice breaking.

We strolled a long series of catwalk, some above the 60 meters high glacier, some much lower and closer. The ice block is not compact, it is a river of thick jagged peaks, some milky and grayish, some deep blue.

As the sun hit the face of the glacier, around noon, we witnessed several huge chunk of ice collapsing in the Canales de los Témpanos (Iceberg Channel). Enormous blocks suddenly crashed into the water, causing a huge wave, temporally clearing the water of other icebergs for a few minutes.

I had never seen, nor heard, anything like that before… Definitely worth a visit.