La Leona river, Brazil

In Patagonia, in the eastern part of Los Glaciares National Park, the Leona River starts at the southern end of Lake Viedma and empties into Lake Argentino, the largest in the country (608 square miles, or 1,560 km2), for which it is the main source. The Leona is fed by the melting blocks of ice broken off from glaciers The meltwater is light coloured and cloudy because of the large quantities of clay-sized sediment called glacial flour resulting from the abrasion of the bedrock by the glacier. It gives to the river its characteristic milky-blue tint, which the Argentines call dulce de glaciar, “glacier cream”. The color contrast is even more striking because the banks, subject to seasonal floods and the lack of rain or snowfall are almost bare of all vegetation. The river was christened the Leona in 1877 by the Argentine explorer Francisco Pascasio Moreno, who during one of his expeditions in the region had been attacked by a female puma, a “lioness”. Like most of the Patagonian watercourses, the Leona offers a rich variety of fish, especially salmon and trout, some of which have been introduced.