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비교표

Five anchorages up the northern arm

The cruise reads like a chart: a single dashed track west from Punta Bandera, five marks along it, and a clock time at each. Here is the shape of the day, mark by mark.

1. 1 ~8:30am Punta Bandera

   La Soledad Port, boarding

   The coach from your El Calafate hotel reaches the private port of La Soledad at Punta Bandera, about 47km and roughly half an hour from town. This is where the northern-arm catamarans board, a different port from the one used for Perito Moreno's boat crossing.

2. 2 ~9:45am Escuadra Bay

   Out onto the northern arm

   The boat clears the near shore and opens out into Escuadra Bay, the first wide stretch of the northern arm proper — mountains closing in on both sides, the lake's turquoise deepening as the water gets colder and glacier-fed.

3. 3 ~10:30am The Condor Nesting Wall

   Cliffs the condors work

   The route passes below cliffs where Andean condors are commonly seen riding the thermals the ice generates — the same rising air that keeps a nine-foot wingspan aloft without a single wingbeat for minutes at a time.

4. 4 ~12:00pm Upsala's bergs

   The largest glacier in the park, in pieces

   Upsala is the biggest glacier in Los Glaciares by area — around 765 square kilometres, some 54km long — and its channel is where the boat slows to pick a path between the bergs it has calved. Lunch is usually served on board around this leg, plates on the table while the ice drifts past the windows.

5. 5 ~2:30pm The Spegazzini front

   135 metres of ice, close up

   The day's final anchorage is the tallest ice front in the park — Spegazzini's wall rises to roughly 135 metres, more than double Upsala's own ice front, and the catamaran holds close enough that the scale only really lands once you're under it.

From Spegazzini it's the run home — back through the same channels to La Soledad Port by late afternoon or early evening depending on the season, with the coach returning you to your El Calafate hotel after.