El Calafate Hotel Argentina Patagonia

It is a nice tourist village of a little more than 3,000 inhabitants, that nestles at the base of the cliff on the shore of the vast Lake Argentino (‘Argentine Lake’) and which offers very good and varied accommodation. It is surrounded by small farms that grow vegetables and fruit trees forming a belt around the small urban center. The city is crossed by El Calafate Stream, which divides the village in two. A few meters from the center of the city, a gravel road leads to Nimes Lagoon, near the lake shore, a small bird reserve which houses an important population of black-necked swans, flamingoes, ducks and upland geese surrounded by a dark sand beach. Some 8 km from El Calafate the Punta Walichu Cave which gathers some replicas of paintings made by the local aborigines more than 4,000 years ago. These reproductions of the original paintings helps visitors to understand a world unknown to them. El Calafate is the National Capital of the Glaciers and the most important city in the area. Traveling 51 km from El Calafate, you reach the Parque Nacional Los Glaciares (‘Glaciers National Park’), which protects an area covered by glacier tongues coming down from the Campo de Hielo Sur (‘Southern Patagonian Ice Cap’), relicts of the last glaciations in the Quaternary Period. Its core is in the Andes between the 40º and 51º parallels of southern latitude. This field adopts a longitudinal shape running from north to south with an extension of about 350 km and a surface of 14,300 km2 approximately. 47 major glaciers descend from this ice field, some of them belonging to the Atlantic basin, such as: Marconi, Viedma, Moyano, Upsala, Bolados, Onelli, Agazzis, Peineta, Spegazzini, Mayo, Heims, Ameghino, Perito Moreno and Frías. All of these spill over the Argentino and Viedma Lakes, which determines the particular turquoise color of their waters due to the sediments and minerals dragged from the rocky beds of these ice rivers on the mountain slopes, that remain in suspension in the waters since their specific weight is lower to the water's. This allows natural light to penetrate only to a certain depth. The most renown of all the glaciers is the Perito Moreno Glacier. Situated 80 km from El Calafate, it is the most easily reached among them. This is an imposing ice river, 3-kilometer wide and 70-meter high in its front wall, that descends from the Campo de HieloSur down to the lake, at Canal de los Témpanos (‘Icebergs’ Channel’), only 200 meters above sea level. It is the only glacier in the area which is considered to be in equilibrium, that is: not receding. It has always been the most important attraction of the region thanks to its spectacular beauty, but specially because of its unusual behavior. The glacier slowly advances down the mountain slope towards the lake, producing, as it spills down, thunderous noises and ruptures. Till a few years ago, the glacier used to grow till reaching Península Magallanes, on the opposite margin of the
lake, across the Canal de los Témpanos, blocking the natural flow of the water from one arm of the lake into the other, thus the pressure of the water trying to recover its natural course increased from year to year.