Our advice for visiting the Perito Moreno Glacier

You've seen the photos. The Perito Moreno Glacier is a force of nature. An irresistible, irrepressible force of nature.

You can't take your eyes off this great wall of ice. The scale is bewildering — a wall of shimmering, glassy blue ice some 5 kilometres long. Up until recently, it was one of only three glaciers in Patagonia known to be advancing, and forms part of the third largest body of frozen freshwater in the world: the Southern Patagonian ice field.

Boat trips take you right up close. Wooden walkways thread a panoramic course in front of the great wall, easy vantage points to watch enormous chunks of ice calving off with a rumble of thunder, crashing into the iceberg-strewn Lago Argentino.

Sounds too good to be true, right? Where's the catch?

The catch is that snaking line of luxury coaches flooding the site with visitors during the peak summer months, drowning the sound of birdsong under a thousand footsteps.

The Perito Moreno is Patagonia's most accessible glacier, a short two-hour hop from the tourist town of El Calafate. Add that to its vast size, its worldwide fame and the ease with which you can watch it perform, and you have a reliable recipe for crowds. 700,000 people were estimated to have visited in 2024, the vast majority in the peak season between November and March.

It can all get to feeling very busy, very quickly. 

That's fine if you're enthralled with the glacier, but compare it to what we're able to do in Chile — where your glaciers come with a private audience and an overnight stay on your own chartered boat — and it's not an experience we're particularly proud to put our name to.

So how do we share one of South America's great natural wonders without it feeling like a conveyor belt?

One option is to visit from one of the luxury estancia lodges spread across the landscape around El Calafate. In theory, you head there on an exclusive small-group boat trip. You sail from your lodge and disembark to walk through lenga forest to a stunning viewpoint, for you and your fellow guests' eyes only. Often, you toast the glacier with a glass of whisky chilled by ice fresh from the lagoon. Not too much though, because you soon need to get out and stretch your legs on the walkways... 

And that's where it goes a bit wrong, because straight away you're in with the masses, clonking around on the wooden boards, getting your elbows our to get a photo from the boat and wondering where all your peace and quiet went.

So let's set that aside for now.

We have three bits of advice to dispense.

Firstly, go early, or go late.

Get in before the park 'opens' and have it all to yourself, or leave it late and enjoy the ice in the calm of the Patagonian afternoon. We've been at both ends of the day, and we've been there at peak hours. The difference is extraordinary. Having one of the continent's great natural wonders to yourself feels like a true privilege...

You either drive there yourself, or we put on a private taxi from El Calafate that waits while you have your time with the ice.

It's a simple solution, but the best ones often are.

Our second bit of advice is equally simple - manage your expectations. If you expect it to be busy and a bit annoying, but know it's worth it all the same, you can only really be pleasantly surprised if you catch it at a quieter moment.

Better still, have a think about what you could be doing instead, over the border...

Perhaps our best bit of advice is to consider how else you can have your glacier time in Patagonia. 

A couple of hours at Perito Moreno pales in comparison to a night or two sailing the icefields on a private boat charter over the border in Chile. That's the real win. It's the thing our clients tell us again and again that they loved most. Not another soul around for hundreds of miles, just you, your hosts and the ice. Nature at its rawest. No tips or tricks needed.

That experience is the centrepiece to our Chilean Patagonia: Carretera Austral Road Trip. If you like your nature wild and peaceful, that's where we'd be heading.

But sometimes it's better to just talk about it. As you can see, we've walked the walk and are not afraid of a controversial opinion or two. Part of our service, our job, is to share the right places with the right people. Patagonia is too far away, too special, to risk not getting what you want. Let's talk.