If I had to choose five things I was most looking forward to before we started the trip, the Perito Moreno Glacier would be one of them. It has a lot of superlatives but it's the asphetics and ease of access that make it the number 1 tourist attraction in Patagonia.

We took the bus only option, however you could be tempted with spending a small fortune on ice climbing and I would be tempted if I hadn't had a go at that before. You are constantly being tempted with things you cannot afford.

The music on the bus sounded promising, how many buses have you caught where they play Pink Floyd. However it didn't last long forcing me to make an emergency lunge for the headphones. The bus made an hours detour to drop a couple of people off at a remote campsite. I didn't mind the scenery is stunning around here, mountains, glaciers, lakes (with flamingoes) and lots of beautiful wild flowers everywhere. The road was unpaved and bumpy, strangely this was the ideal time for a Chinese guy to have a go at trimming his nose hair with some scissors and a little mirror. We were waiting to see if his nose was going to be cut off, but with a few snips he gained a satisfied expression and put this scissors away, nose still intact. Even stranger Liz pointed out it was a woman but then changed her mind when he/she started to talk.

Despite the weather being sunny when we set off, the clouds rolled in as we approached the glacier. Even without the sun the glacier was amazing. The serrated ice face is 60m high and very wide. It is part of the worlds third largest icesheet (and the third largest fresh water reserve) after Antarctica and Greenland. The size and deep blue to white shadings even on a dull day are what hits you first. It is so beautiful, most other glaciers I have seen are covered in the rocks that have been gouged out but not this one. The glacier is one of the select few that ends in a lake. Only the clean top third of the glacier is visible while most like an iceburg is underwater.

The glacier is very fast moving and unlike most glaciers is not retreating. This means that the glacier is ever changing. Every few years it dams a lake, when the water pressure from the lake gets too great it forces a hole through resulting in an explosion that can be heared over a 100 miles away. We however didn't see that but you would hear a deep roar as chunks the size of buses plunged into the water. Most of the time you heard thunder noises as cracks formed under the pressure of the moving glacier.

The glacier would have looked even better in sunlight, however any hope that the sun might poke through vanished when it started raining. This happened just as we approached the glacier in a boat. If the bad timing wasn't enough the rain was coming in horizontally from the glacier. I had a go at quick fire photography, a kind of snap wipe lens routine. I have been waiting 10 years to come here, the weather has let me down so many times on this trip.

It was a good but could have been better type of day - bloody weather.