The Perito Moreno Glacier, found in Argentina’s Los Glaciares National Park, sprawls a whopping 97 square miles, making it one of the largest glaciers on the planet. Seeing this behemoth of ancient ice is a must-do on any Patagonia itinerary—and, luckily, Los Glaciares has plenty of walkways that allow you to enjoy up-close-and-personal perspectives of the glacier. So if you’re planning a trip to Patagonia any time soon, here’s everything you need to know about hiking the Perito Moreno Glacier.
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About the Perito Moreno Glacier
The Perito Moreno Glacier holds an array of impressive titles—the glacier is the third largest reserve of freshwater on the planet (after Antarctica and Greenland); it’s the 12th largest glacier in the world; and it’s one of the only glaciers on Earth that’s still actually growing instead of retreating. It also is one of about 50 UNESCO World Heritage Sites around the planet that consist of glaciers.
Because of all of its fancy superlatives, Perito Moreno has become one of the most popular attractions in all of Argentina, drawing close to 700,000 visitors every year.
How to Get to the Perito Moreno Glacier from El Cafate, Argentina
The Perito Moreno Glacier is located here, in the Santa Cruz Province of Argentina. The closest town to the glacier is El Calafate, Argentina, about an hour and 20 minutes east of the glacier.
You have a few ways of getting to the glacier from El Calafate.
Taking a bus from El Calafate
The most affordable option to get to Perito Moreno is to take a bus.
There’s several bus companies that take you from the El Calafate bus station to Perito Moreno—primarily, Cal Tur, Chaltén Travel and Marga Taqsa.
Even though taking one of these buses is the most affordable option, it’s still definitely not cheap (at least, when we visited)—for roundtrip tickets for my husband, Justin, and me, it cost 50,000 ARS (or about $43 USD) per person, which seems pretty steep for an hour and a half bus ride.
I had trouble with the respective bus companies’ websites, so I wound up purchasing our tickets with Cal Tur, who was willing to help us make our purchase over WhatsApp. Our actual bus ride to Perito Moreno was fine, although there were some pretty off-putting things about our pre-boarding experience (as just one of many examples, we were told, while boarding the bus, that we had to purchase tickets to the national park through our bus driver because the credit card machines in the park were down, but when we got to the park, the credit card machines were magically working, without mention of any previous issues).
Accordingly, I might recommend going with one of the other companies—we took Chaltén Travel from El Calafate to El Chaltén and had a lovely experience, so that might be a great option!
Driving from El Calafate
It’s pretty common for travelers to rent a car and drive around Patagonia.
On one hand, having a rental car will give you the ultimate freedom and flexibility, which is incredibly helpful if you have a limited amount of time in this magical corner of the planet. On the other hand, car rental (like everything else here!) is pretty expensive and may be exorbitantly so, depending on your Patagonia itinerary and if you need to drop off your rental car at a different location than where you initially picked it up. Ultimately, if you have the room in your budget, I’d say go for it!
The road from El Calafate to Los Glaciares National Park is paved and well-maintained, so regardless of what kind of car you rent, you should be able to get here without issue!
Joining a tour from El Calafate
Alternatively, you can take a tour from El Calafate to the glacier.
There’s several different options of tours here, ranging from fairly laidback to pretty adventurous.
Guided hiking around the Perito Moreno Glacier
On these tours, you’ll get picked up from your hotel and taken to the national park. Here, you will hike around the glacier with a knowledgeable local guide, who will provide information about the glacier itself and the surrounding flora and fauna. These tours also usually include a boat ride to get up close and personal to the glacier’s towering wall of ice or, at a minimum, the option to add a cruise on.
In full transparency, if you just want to hike around the glacier and admire it from different perspectives, I don’t think you need a guide here—the trails are well-marked and easy to follow.
However, depending on which tour you choose, it’s oftentimes not terribly more expensive than just taking the bus and you’ll CERTAINLY learn a lot more about Los Glaciares’ ecosystem than you would just wandering around the pathways on your own.
Consider:
- Perito Moreno glacier day trip with optional cruise add-on
- Perito Moreno tour, including guided walkways and boat tour
Insider tip: If you want to go on a cruise near the glacier, but do not want to join a group tour, you can alternatively purchase boat tickets at the park itself (although these can and do sell out during peak season).
There’s two companies that offer cruises around the glacier:
Southern Spirit, which has a ticket kiosk in the park’s main parking lot. This company cruises along the northern face of the glacier in Canal de los Tempanos, which has stunningly turquoise glacial water. Their cruise costs 60,000 ARS and departs at 10:30 AM, 11:45 AM, 1:00 PM, 2:30 PM, and, during busier periods, 4:00 PM.
Hielo y Aventura, whose ticket office is located about 5 km south of the main parking lot. This option really only makes sense to use if you’re driving to the park yourself in a rental car—plus, they sail around the southern side of the glacier, which has murkier, brown water. Their cruise costs 80,000 ARS and departs at 10:00 AM, 11:30 AM, 1:00 PM, 2:30 PM, and 4:00 PM.
Glacier trekking on the Perito Moreno Glacier
If you’re on the more adventurous side, consider, instead, trekking on the glacier itself!
On these tours, after you’re picked up from your hotel and driven to the national park, you’ll take a boat to the face of the glacier, where you’ll find a spot where you can climb up and onto the ancient ice. Outfitted with the appropriate gear and safety know-how from your mountaineering guides, you’ll hike past the swirling hunks of the brilliant blue glacier and learn more about glaciology—and may have a chance to drink 18,000 year old ice water! Afterwards, you’ll have time to wander around the park’s metal pathways to get a more panoramic perspective of the glacier.
Consider:
- Full day trekking on Perito Moreno glacier (which includes one hour trekking on the ice)
- Perito Moreno full-day excursion for trekking on the glacier (which includes one to one and a half hours trekking on the ice)
- Big Ice Tour with Navigation and Minitrekking (which includes three hours trekking on the ice)
Kayaking around the Perito Moreno Glacier
For an even more adventurous option, you can even kayak around the Perito Moreno Glacier, weaving between icebergs and gazing up at the sheet of ice, towering hundreds of feet overhead.
These tours include transfers from El Calafate, knowledgeable guides, all of your kayaking gear (including a thermal dry suit to keep you nice and toasty as you glide across the glacial water), between one and a half and two hours of paddling, and plenty of time to wander around the boardwalks surrounding the glacier at your leisure.
Consider:
Is trekking on or kayaking around the Perito Moreno glacier worth it?
I’ve traveled all over the world, but exploring this part of Argentinian Patagonia is probably THE most expensive place we’ve ever visited. Doing anything beyond just going on a guided hike around the glacier will easily cost you at least $400 a person.
We’ve hiked on glaciers before in Alaska—for free—and couldn’t quite stomach the extremely high price tag for glacier trekking or kayaking here. Plus, there’s other parts of Patagonia, namely Glacier Grey in Chile’s Torres del Paine National Park, that is considerably more affordable than the activities around Perito Moreno.
Still, if this is the only place on your Patagonia itinerary that you can glacier trek or kayak around a glacier, it’s definitely an otherworldly and once-in-a-lifetime experience that few regret having if you have room in the budget. We had friends that went to Patagonia right before we did that glacier trekked on Perito Moreno and they enthusiastically said it was 100% worth it to them!
How much does it cost to visit the Perito Moreno Glacier?
In addition to your transport to the park, like all of Argentina’s most popular national parks, like Igauzu Falls, Los Glaciares National Park has a pretty steep entrance fee—45,000 ARS (about $38.50 USD) per day for non-Argentinians.
You can purchase tickets online ahead of time or at the entrance office. The office usually accepts credit cards but I’d recommend bringing enough cash, just in case the machines are not, in fact, working the day of your visit.
Insider tip: If you purchase your tickets online, be sure to take a screenshot of your tickets ahead of time. The cell service here ranges from spotty to non-existent, so you might have difficulty pulling up the correct email for one of the park’s rangers.
If you plan on visiting Los Glaciares in El Chaltén as well (all of the most popular hikes in El Chaltén, like Laguna de los Tres trail, are in the national park), you can get a discount on tickets. For example, if you’re visiting the national park on two consecutive days, you can get 50% off your second day in the park (if you want to take advantage of this option, you have to purchase tickets in person and tell the attendant as you’re buying your original ticket that you want to take advantage of the discount).
Alternatively, if you plan on visiting Los Glaciares for three days over the course of your trip (not necessarily consecutively), you can purchase a Flexipass for 90,000 ARS, saving you a third off each of your entry tickets. This is the option that we choose to cover our time at the Perito Moreno Glacier and hiking around El Chaltén.
Hiking around the Perito Moreno Glacier
Once you’ve arrived near the Perito Moreno Glacier, there are a series of elevated metal walkways and stairs that are affixed to the land directly overlooking the glacier, offering different perspectives and viewpoints of its massive icy spires. To be honest, I was pretty surprised by how close these walkways get to the glacier—you REALLY get some spectacular views!
The national park has a handy dandy map of each of the interconnected five walking trails along these pathways. It’s super easy to combine some or all of the trails into a large walking loop to get to experience as many different perspectives of the glacier as possible. Given how generally flat and even the walkways are, this is definitely one of the best hikes in Patagonia for beginners—most travelers should be able to tackle these walkways without issue!
The available maps attribute a different color and an estimated difficulty and time frame necessary to each of the walking trails. In our experience, the difficulty and necessary time period to walk the trail is VASTLY overestimated—for example, it took us 25 minutes, with plenty of stops for photos and videos, to walk a trail that the national park rated as difficult and as requiring two hours to complete. Justin and I hike all the time, so if you’re not in the best of shape, perhaps take this advice with a grain of salt—I think most visitors will be able to hit all of the trails in the park in about four hours without issue.
Here’s a bit more information about each of the trails.
Sendero Accessible
- Color: Purple
- Length: 565 meters
- Difficulty: Easy
- Estimated completion time: 30 minutes
This is the easiest and only wheelchair-accessible walkway in the park. All of the other pathways include several stairways and would likely not be suitable for strollers or those with more limited mobility. This trail, on the other hand, is almost entirely flat (with an elevator to reach its walkways) and leads to a MASSIVE platform that overlooks the central portion of the glacier, with several covered benches to relax on.
When we visited, the covered benches were ABSOLUTELY packed with people—this platform was by far the most crowded section in the entire park. We’re not sure if this is because we visited on a rainy day and people were seeking shelter from the rain or because many of the visitors preferred to stick with the easier trails.
If you’re able, I’d suggest hiking past this platform—there’s better views (and way less crowds) elsewhere in the park!
Sendero Central
- Color: Orange
- Length: 600 meters
- Difficulty: Easy
- Estimated completion time: 1 hour
This trail leads down to several centrally located observation platforms of the glacier. Although this trail is short, it’s definitely a great bang-for-your-buck option—unless you choose to go on a tour where you hike on or kayak by the glacier, this is the closest you’ll get to it, with absolutely jaw-dropping views of its countless pinnacles of ice.
There’s two main viewing platforms here. The Primer Balcony is a bit higher up and further away, with more expansive views of the glacier. Plus, there’s a covered area that you can relax under, if you happen to be visiting on a rainy day. Alternatively, the Segundo Balcony is lower, with nothing but in-your-face views of the massive wall of ice in front of you.
Because this trail is short and offers really incredible views, it tends to be one of the most crowded pathways in the park. So, while it’s definitely worth a stop, I wouldn’t recommend spending all of your time here!
Sendero del Bosque
- Color: Green
- Length: 570 meters
- Difficulty: Moderate
- Estimated completion time: 1 hour
This pathway is quite elevated, far back from the glacier, and through a forested area. Along the path, you’ll get peekaboo glimpses of the glacier through the surrounding pine trees.
To be honest, if you were going to skip any of the trails in the park, I’d say it should be this one—we’re all about having unobstructed views of the glacier!
Sendero de la Costa
- Color: Blue
- Length: 1117 meters
- Difficulty: Moderate
- Estimated completion time: 2 hours
This is one of my favorite pathways in the park, given it offers a TOTALLY different perspective of the glacier and the surrounding area than the other pathways.
You’ll walk past a rocky beach along Lago Argentina, a beautiful glacial lake with otherworldly turquoise water and, when we visited, a massive floating iceberg, as well as the northern face of the Perito Moreno glacier along the Canal de los Tempanos. Here, we spotted boats riding along the wall of the glacier and saw several enormous hunks of ice crashing into the water below.
We were basically the only people on this walkway during our visit, which was a welcome reprieve from the chaos of the other trails—nothing but the sound of the glacier creaking and groaning in the distance. If there was one hidden gem that I recommend not missing in the park, it would be this one!
Sendero Inferior
- Color: Red
- Length: 1110 meters
- Difficulty: Difficult
- Estimated completion time: 2 hours
This is the most challenging trail in the park. In fact, there’s literally a warning sign at its beginning that indicates there’s 520 stairs along the trail and that “a very good physical condition is required” to hike it.
Don’t let this scare you too much—if you hike the trail counter-clockwise, walking along the face of the glacier first, the vast majority of these steps are actually downhill.
True to its name, this trail is the lowest of all of the pathways, climbing close to the ground along the southern face of the glacier, near the Brazo Rico arm of the glacial lake.
Given the warning sign, I had assumed this pathway would be the least busy—but definitely not so! There were still lots of people crowding the multiple viewpoints and platforms that dot the pathway.
Still, I think it was worthwhile hiking this section, given that you can see the difference in the water color here—which was much more brown than the beautiful turquoise hue of the northerly Canal de los Tempanos—and to have a view of the glacier from a lower perspective.
Getting to the trailhead
While most of the park is pretty well signed, getting to and from the trailhead is actually a bit confusing.
Regardless of whether you take a bus or drive here, you’ll be dropped off in the main parking lot. From here, you have two options to enter the walkways, which connect with all of the other trails:
- There’s a free shuttle service that comes every 15 minutes or so that will take you south to the Acceso Principal, where you can start hiking the trails via either Sendero Central or Sendero Accessible.
- Alternatively, you can start your hike from the main parking lot on the Sendero de la Costa trail and take the shuttle back to the main parking lot once you exit the trails from either Sendero Central or Sendero Accessible.
We took the latter approach—we started from Sendero de la Costa to Sendero Central to Sendero Accessible to Sendero Inferior to Sendero del Bosque and then took the park’s shuttle back to the main parking lot to meet up with our bus. In total, it took us about three hours to hike all of the trails, with plenty of stops for photos, videos, and lunch.
When to visit the Perito Moreno Glacier
The best time to visit the Perito Moreno Glacier is in Patagonia’s spring through fall, from September through April, when the weather is pleasantly cool and generally clear skies.
The busiest time is the summer (from December through February). We visited in January and there were definitely a LOT of crowds along the trail! So, if you want to enjoy the glacier in relative peace and quiet, you might want to aim for either the spring or the fall, when the crowds along Patagonia’s trails will be lower and the accommodations and airfare will typically be more affordable.
Visiting in the winter months (May through August) has some unique advantages. While it may be on the chillier side, the crowds will be sparse and you have a good chance of experiencing snow while in the park—seeing the mountains that surround the glacier, blanketed with snow, would be absolutely magical. Plus, it’s definitely the cheapest time to visit!
Regardless of when you visit, I’d suggest bringing along a waterproof jacket (like this option for men and this option for women). The weather in Patagonia is famously unpredictable, so even if you have a sunny forecast before you head to the park, it’s best to be prepared for wet conditions (I can speak from personal experience!).
What to pack fo the Perito Moreno Glacier
There are a few things you should be sure to include on your Patagonia packing list that will come in handy at both the Perito Moreno Glacier (and, for the most part, you’ll use at lots of other treks in this special corner of the planet!):
Warm, waterproof layers
As mentioned above, the weather in Patagonia and especially around the glacier is pretty unpredictable.
Sun protection
If you luck out with sunnier weather than we did, the glare from the ice can be pretty intense. So bring along sunscreen, sunglasses, and a hat to protect yourself from the sun.
Proper walking shoes
You’ll be walking on stairs and metal grates all day, so I would suggest wearing, at a minimum, closed toed sneakers that provide support. If you visit during the winter, I imagine the grates may get a bit icy and slippery, so I’d suggest wearing actual hiking boots for additional traction, if you have them with you (this is the kind that Justin uses and this is the pair that I have).
Cash and a credit card
Lunch and drinks
There’s two restaurants in the national park, but, dare I say, the food is not particularly good and the steep price tags are verging on being price-gouge-y. During our visit, we packed along a sandwich that we happily munched on as we overlooked the glacier, which was a much nicer experience than we had sitting in the restaurant to escape the rain and wait for our bus to depart.
Where to Stay in El Calafate, Argentina
Most travelers stay for a night or two in El Calafate to visit the Perito Moreno or some of the other glaciers in the area.
El Calafate is a pretty cute town, albeit on the touristy side, with tons of restaurants, shops, and outfitters to mosey around. During your time in town, consider a stay at:
- Calafate Parque Hotel: Located just a short walk from the city center, the Calafate Parque Hotel perfectly balances rustic mountain vibes with luxurious furnishings. The rooms are spacious; there’s an onsite spa; and the complimentary breakfast buffet at the onsite restaurant far surpasses most hotels’ meager continental breakfast offerings.
- Sent Calafate: This hotel is tucked a bit away from the city center, although still just a short walk away, and very convenient to the bus terminal. The staff is warm and friendly; the rooms are comfortable; and you get a complimentary a la carte breakfast every morning.
- Linda Vista Apart Hotel: If you’re traveling with a group, this family-owned property is an excellent option. Each room comes with a small kitchenette and can accommodate up to five people. The owner of this hotel is super sweet, goes above and beyond to serve its guests, and dishes up a tasty (complimentary) breakfast every morning.
Hopefully, you enjoy visiting and hiking around the Perito Moreno Glacier as much as we did. Do you have any questions about exploring this incredible natural landmark? Let us know in the comments below.
