Perito Moreno

Perito Moreno National Park was created in 1937 in the west of Santa Cruz province, next to the Chilean border, and protects some 1,150 km². It is one of the oldest national parks in Argentina and also one of the least visited in the country, because of its isolation: it is more than two hundred kilometres from the main road along a gravel track and stays closed for much of the year.

It should not be confused with the Perito Moreno glacier, which is in Los Glaciares National Park, several hundred kilometres to the south. Both bear the name of Francisco Pascasio Moreno, the explorer and surveyor who travelled through Patagonia and donated the land that gave rise to the Argentine national park system.

The park protects a series of glacial lakes of different colours — Belgrano, Burmeister, Nansen, Azara — in the transition between Andean-Patagonian forest and steppe. It holds one of the most important huemul populations in Argentina, the subject of continuous scientific monitoring, along with guanaco, puma, condor and hooded grebe on the high-altitude lagoons. On Cerro Casa de Piedra, rock shelters preserve paintings several thousand years old.