El Calafate

For the impatient: Pictures

Many of the few inland glaciers in the world sit in Patagonia, and El Calafate is the city from which you can see the most. In fact, a short ride in a bus, an even shorter ride in a boat, followed by a 20min hike will get you walking around on the Perito Moreno Glacier! While trekking on the glacier doesn't give you much of a sense of how large it is, the viewing balconies across the lake show how the glaciers just spill down the mountain. When Perito Moreno spills down, it cuts off one Lake Argentina's arms off from the main bottom. This means a differential of 25m in height can form between the cleaved bodies of water. Apparently, in March, this makes for a spectacular showing as the water breaks through the weakest part of the ice.