Hielo & Aventura — Local services in El Calafate

We did the Minitrekking, which is around 210.000ARS/170€ per person without transfer as we had our own car. You still need to pay the park entrance by yourself which was around 10€ or so per person.

The whole tour is advertised with a duration of around 9:30 hours on their website.

If you look at the breakdown it says 50 mins for boat transfers (to and from the glacier), 3 hours trekking along the coast, the glacier, and forest, and 1 hour visit to the walkways (which if you come with your own car can be done as long as you want). So the remaining 3h40 mins seem to be transfer time for those taking the transfer option. The drive from El Calafate to the port is around 1h one direction btw.

Now..the experience itself. Seeing the Perito Moreno glacier from close was definitely an impressive experience. However, we felt that the experience was advertised bigger than it actually is and overpriced for what you eventually get. Patagonia in general is expensive, but this was the first time during our two months trip that we felt the experience wasn‘t worth the price tag.

The itinerary:

Once you left the port, you have a 20-30 mins boat ride towards the glacier. You get a nice view from a different angle, but nothing compared to what you get from the walkways anyways, which are included in the park ticket price.

After our arrival we were given 40-45 mins to eat lunch next to the glacier. It felt a bit weird to have the lunch break immediately after the boat transfer, as the experience only just started (for us), but ok.

After that you have a 20 min walk towards the glacier-walk-entry point where you‘re given the equipment. There‘s a small stop on the way where you get some additional info on the glacier. To be fair, nothing that isn‘t covered in your average guide (LonelyPlanet, etc).

The actual glacier walking time is around 1h and you‘re walking quite close to the shore. So don’t expect going deep into the glacier.

There‘re two longer and more expensive trekking options which allow you to spend more time on the glacier, but according to our guide the view is quite similar, you just walk for a longer period as you start further back.

The trekking itself is very low paced. I assume this was to accommodate the mix of people in the group and their individual fitness levels. Somebody with average fitness could probably do the trek in 20 mins.

Along the trek there‘re 2-3 stops where people can take pictures and you finish the trek with a glas of whiskey or glacier water and some chocolate.

After that you walk back and wait for the boat to pick you up and take you back to the port from where you can head towards the walkways. As mentioned above, the walkways are included in the park ticket, which you have to buy extra anyway. They offer amazing views on the glacier and you‘re quite close to the glacier as well.

So..there wasn‘t anything particular that was bad about the experience. The view was nice, our guide was good, etc… but, it just felt that walking on the glacier for 1h wasn‘t really worth...

Sublime glacier adventure! On the 28th December, I took a gamble on Big Ice and was rewarded with an epic adventure, and sublime views. To kick off, the busride, boatride and walk along the Perito Moreno boardwalks gave stunning views of our adventure to come. It was a lot of work to participate in (no joke about the physical fitness requirements) but Hielo y Aventura are amazingly well organized and our mountain guides, Sebastian and Jonathan, super eperienced. They got us moving through 20km of moraine and big ice trekking with all safety measures in place (crampons, helmets, training, and rope + clips), and put us in small groups of 10 so that we had vast stretches of glacier views to ourselves. They are very knowledgable bilingual guides who point out stunning views, new formations, belay you over icy crevasses to check out glacial waterfalls and sinkholes, and make you smile despite the gruelling hike. We made it to the summit in time for lunch, and were treated to epic views of icy fields underneath the stretch of Andes from The Cathedral to Lionshead. Despite not having any knowledge prior, it was an instantly immersive and empowering experience. We celebrated our victory at the end with whiskey and were awarded a special souvenir keychain (old school mountain boot with crampons) which i'll cherish always. This was one of the most demanding but rewarding bucket list things I've done and I'm so happy I did it, even if I got black toenails afterward from all the downhard movement on ice. The hardest hike was defo the moraine trek to get to and from the ice, a lot of uphill/downhill there - what a cardio workout! I think they need to provide tourists with an elevation profile of the thing, 20km in 5 hrs at the pace we made was really cray-cray. Defo don't do this with any pre-existing injuries, back problems, or if you don't have any daily exercise regiment. Pre-arrange dinner at your accomodation ahead of time because walking after this trip is a big no-no. And give yourselves time to rest after this one before attempting Fitz Roy in El Chalten! 5 stars to Jonathan...

I would have given this incredibly incompetent company 0 stars if it was possible. Do not waste your money here! Patagonia has many many beautiful glaciers to hike. This one you can watch close enough (and there’s even a bus that goes there) and don’t need to spend 240 euros (which is a rip off) with a company that has 0 customer orientation. Like other people said in other reviews, the first thing that sounds strange is the age restriction thing. You are only allowed to go on the big ice trek if you are under 50. I’m still young, but I hate this kind of behavior! It’s age discrimination!!! I don’t even know how are they allowed to pull that off. It says a lot about this company: a bunch of ignorants. Do they even know that age is not in any way an indicator of people’s fitness??? Do they even know that Mc Namara, a surfer who is 51, just broke the world record by surfing the worlds biggest wave in Nazaré which is 35 feet high? After sending emails back and forth, in which they didn’t accept our forms because they were signed with sign in and the iPad pen (which is legally binding according to the Argentinian law) because we are on the road and have no printer, we decided not to do the trip with this company. They were arrogant in their tone in the emails instead of customer oriented, and did not accept a signature upon our arrival. We are very thankful we didn’t book because we found another glacier to hike much better then this one, with a much better company then this one. Customer orientation is a must when doing a tour this type. You want to be with people who respect their customers. They have the monopoly of the perito Moreno and are the only company allowed to do the glaciar hikes here and, like dictators, they think they can behave whatever they feel like. Patagonia is so beautiful and this people only...