Parque Nacional Los Glaciares

Santa Cruz Province, Argentina

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Parque Nacional Los Glaciares is Argentina’s largest national park, covering 7,269 km² (2,807 sq mi) in the southwest of Santa Cruz Province along the Chilean border, and was established in 1937 to protect the Patagonian Ice Field—the third-largest continental ice mass on Earth after Antarctica and Greenland.

Declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1981, the park safeguards 47 major glaciers (13 flowing into Lake Argentino and Lake Viedma) and over 200 smaller glaciers, along with subpolar Magellanic forests, Patagonian steppe, turquoise glacial lakes and dramatic granite peaks rising from the ice. Its most famous feature is the Perito Moreno Glacier, a 250-million-year-old 70-kilometer-long ice wall that advances about 2 meters per day and regularly calves massive icebergs into Lake Argentino, creating spectacular natural ice shows visible from walkways over the water.

Visitors typically stay in the nearby towns of El Calafate (gateway to Perito Moreno) and El Chaltén (gateway to Mount Fitz Roy and Laguna de los Tres), enjoying activities like glacier trekking, ice walking, boat tours behind calving ice walls, hiking, kayaking and wildlife watching for pumas, guanacos, Andean condors and endangered huemul deer.