Fodor's Expert Review Parque Nacional Los Glaciares

As the name suggests, this national park is renowned for being the home of 47 glaciers, with almost a third of the entire park covered in ice. A giant ice cap located in the Andes Mountains, the world’s largest outside of Antarctica and Greenland, feeds all 47 of the glaciers, which snake through the Patagonian steppe and sub-polar forests, eventually crumbling into milky blue glacial lakes. A UNESCO World Heritage site, it is also the largest national park in Argentina and spans over 2,500 square miles, encompassing the territories running from El Chaltén down to El Calafate, on the border of Chile’s Torres del Paine. Spotting the glaciers is the highlight of any visit to the park, with the most accessible one being Perito Moreno, which can be reached by road. Visiting the Upsala and Spegazzini glaciers requires a boat journey, and the Viedma Glacier can be seen from hiking paths on the shore of Lake Viedma, a route that is particularly popular with trekkers and climbers who journey onward to Mount Fitzroy and Cerro Torre (which are also within the park limits). Lago del Desert and Lago Roca are the other two most visited sites in the park, but outside of these locations the majority of the park is left wonderfully unexplored and untouched. There are few places to stay in the park with the exception of a few estancias and campsites at Lago Roca and on the hiking routes of El Chaltén. Beyond the stunning landscapes, the park is the natural habitat of guanacos, ñandúes, cougars, and the South American gray fox, as well as more than 100 different species of birds. The park is open all year-round, although winter frequently sees snowfall as the temperature drops below freezing.