obviously replied yes. A short walk down the road brought us to a spot where a puma had crossed the road while the concrete was still wet after laying it, and there they were immortalised in cement!!! We drove into the park for a while longer, and then round a corner to our first view of the mighty Moreno glacier!!

Wow!! What a sight it was, and from this point we could only see one corner of it!! The clouds had very firmly come in by that point, but Jorge assured us that it actually looks better when it’s cloudy, as it is so white that in the sunshine it’s just too bright with too much glare. He wasn’t wrong about it being white, most of the glaciers we have seen are quite dirty due to all the rocks and soil they drag down with them, but this one was really very pure white, with a blue tint. I think it’s because it moves so fast. As I already mentioned, the winds in Patagonia blow almost

constantly from the West, and bring moist air from the Pacific. Just above the Moreno glacier is a pass which the moist air is forced through as it’s significantly lower than the surrounding mountains. This causes an enormous amount of snow to fall there, and that’s what drives the glacier, so to speak. As a result, not only is the glacier huge, up to 60 meters high and 5 kilometers wide, but it is also very active. Huge chunks of ice are constantly falling off it and leaving a trail of icebergs in the lake below. It is also one of the only glaciers in the temperate world which is advancing. This basically means that the snowfall is creating ice at the top faster than it is melting at the bottom. The Moreno glacier is a bit of a special case though, as there is a peninsula just opposite it, where the viewpoints are, and as it advances it blocks up the flow of water from part of the lake. As the water builds up behind it there is more and more pressure until the glacier finally ruptures, with unimaginably