HieloGrande (Monday December 20th--Day 41)

I just returned from a completely different world...a world of misty mountains, jagged ice cliffs, creaking floors, and hidden pools of neon blue water. A world where people are the size of ants. A world that can never be fully explored. A world that will take your concept of reality and completely contort it. I just spent the day on a glacier.
To say that a glacier is a giant mass of ice is an understatement and an oversimplification. The Glacier Perito Moreno, a youthful glacier in comparison, forms thousands and thousands of meters about sea level at the tips of the perpetually snow covered mountains. As the snow continues to pack and layer over the years, it compacts into a strong, glacier ice mass that slowly makes its way down the mountain. At the base, these layers collect, futher compact, and form the ever-changing, ever-moving, and ideally ever-present mass of ice that I spent the last seven hours exploring.
I will admit that this day was a MAJOR financial splurge. As it should, the Argentinan government is very protective of its glacier. So access is limitted and expensive and direct contact is even more limitted and more expensive. Whatever. I have only one life and I`ve worked for six years to afford this trip. Besides, I knew it was worth every penny after only thirty minutes on the bus to the park. Finally, I saw the green, lush mountain valleys that I imagined Patagonia to be. Cascading waterfalls. Mountains hidden in the clouds. Huge clear bodies of water. Thick forests. Smooth sloping hills. Rainbows. By the time we reached the glacier viewpoint, I already had tears in my eyes. This glacier--a field of jagged ice cliffs stretching for kilometers and kilometers--made its presense known to every one of my senses. Its radiant blue cliffs. Its rumbling movement. Its roaring creeks as its edges break into the lake. The dense moisture in the air. My mind, clouded with disbelief, could barely keep up with my racing heart. And I would be on that ice in less than an hour.
After taking a short boat ride to the other side of the lake, we met out guides, strolled through the dense woods, and put on our gear. Game time. It really was like walking on another planet. We were so small. Whether someone was standing right next to me, twenty yards away, or 400 yards away, they still looked so very small. The mountain closest to us towered above us like a 2000 meter wall. Kilometers away, accross the glacier field, rose more mountains. And here we were, walking accross a field of dense, old, moving ice. Deep cracks. Neon blue pools. Rolling white hills. Such detail. So much texture. Every direction the same, yet every direction so different. I wish I could explain this better. I wish the pictures did it justice. I wish I could tell you what it felt like. But I can`t. It was unlike any experience I have ever had and I cannot seem to fully process what just happened. Absolutely brilliant. Absofuckinglutely brilliant.