Perito Moreno National Park

The park shares a name with the glacier six hundred kilometres south and is otherwise entirely unrelated, which is the first thing worth knowing and the reason many travellers have never heard of it. It sits high in the Santa Cruz cordillera, a basin of lakes, Belgrano, Burmeister, Azara and Nansen among them, whose waters run different shades of blue and green, ringed by peaks including Cerro San Lorenzo and steppe grazed by guanacos. Huemul, the endangered Andean deer, survive here in one of their better remaining strongholds, along with condors, pumas and flamingos on the lakes. Visitor numbers run to a few thousand a year. There are trails, basic campsites and rangers, and nothing else.

History

Established in 1937, the park is one of the oldest in Argentina and is named after the explorer Francisco Moreno. Doug Tompkins, co-founder of Tompkins Conservation, first saw Cerro San Lorenzo from here on a climbing expedition in 1968, came back in 1991 with Yvon Chouinard and Rick Ridgeway, and the next year arranged to buy about 15,000 hectares of private land inside the park, which his organisation left to rewild as wildlife habitat and gave to the national parks administration in 2013 (Wikipedia, Perito Moreno National Park).

The landscape

• The coloured lakes - Belgrano, Burmeister and others in contrasting blues and greens.
• The huemul - the endangered Andean deer in one of its refuges.
• The peaks - Cerro San Lorenzo and the cordillera above the basin.
• The emptiness - one of the least visited national parks in the country.

When to go

December to March is the practical window; snow and cold close the access for much of the year and the road is exposed. Even in summer, weather can turn severe within hours at this altitude.

Practical notes

There is no fuel, food, shop or phone signal, and the nearest town is hours away on gravel; everything must be carried in. Vehicles need to be sound and carry spare fuel and tyres. Camping is basic and free, huemul sightings are uncommon, and the park closes areas to protect them.

Nearby

Gobernador Gregores is the supply town; the RN40 runs east of the park.

Key facts