Hostal Francis Drake Puerto Natales

... than everyone else and was feeling really unwell. We went for tea at 7pm but she returned to the hostel after deciding eating was making it worse. It was then bed watching films for us all. 11th May 2009 Woken up by what sounded like a hurricane, it was rather scary and very difficult to sleep through. We went down for breakfast at 7am, after putting on our thermals and several other layers, just hoping the weather that woke us would pass quickly. Luckily ...

... the next site. Without a navigational map and only the park entrance guide to a resource, what we assumed to be a 6 hour 19km walk over flat land turned into a 8 hour 25 km hike over gusty mountains, muddy fields and a stinky swamp. Our already blistered feet and lack of direction led us off the path and into 30 minute detour through a sticky swamp which soaked our (non waterproof) clothes, socks and shoes and dampened our already drowning spirits. Night was about to ...

... on the trail although the most popular part of the trail is the "W" which is pretty much overrun with people just like Yosemite Valley. When I got on the other part of the Circuit there were far fewer people and a group of 12 or so of us got to see each other and catch up at camp each night after our days of hiking. I met a cool couple who are in their late 50's/early 60's ...

... Puerto Natales, discussion à la clef. :) ---------- After an eventless trip (only 3 hours for once!), I found myself a little bit in the North of Punta Arenas, in Puerto Natales, the southern limit of the Torres del Paine national park. Punta Arenas is on the shore of the Magellan Strait, and Puerto Natales is surrounded by incredible mountains, a wild and superb nature: before reaching town we got a glimpse of it, and everyone was jumpy in their seats, taking tons of ...

... trip - bit of a mind blower as it is only visible when you reach the top of the pass on the side we climbed up. The sheer scale of it and the reflection of the ice in the sun is quite something. Swiss couple hiking with us who were all over the world hiking (the Swiss really like to hike) and they were blown away with it as well. The funny thing was everybody had told us about the Valle de Francis and the Peaks but nobody had mentioned this view and for us ...

... and ran into a guy called Adam from the Uk who has been travelling around on his bike for 3 years, check out his web site www.theshortwayround.com.uk, had a couple of beers and pizza and we ran into 2 more guys travelling solo from Luxembourgh and Switzerland so the 4 of us had a good night talking about there travels. Next day I took a boat trip upto the Balmaceda and Serrano glaciers on the Chillian fjords which was pretty awesome with a BBQ lunch at a sheep ...

... through the head wind and the sand and dirt pelting us in the face and began warming up pretty quickly carrying all of our backpacks with tents and sleeping bags and food for the next 5 days. As the refugio we arrived at disappeared into the distance we were able to look back and see the amazing blue of the lakes and the snow capped mountains in the distance which kept our moral up along with the help of our singalongs which included classic Eric Clapton ...

Unlike the other countries we were able to travel around extensively we picked only slices of this long country, Cheelay (phonetically). The slices we chose were the top, middle, and far south (Atacama, Central Valley, and Patagonia respectively). The Atacama was surreal, Stantiago a pleasure, and Patagonia an adventure! After ...

... Bullock film in the room, I tried to get a grip on the blog.

She then joined me in the internet place, where we stayed until it started to get dark.

It's SOOOOO good to finally get fast machines and a fastish connection so that I can load up some photos. If only they had drives which could read my latest photo DVD, it would have been perfect.

We enjoyed the 80s pop megamix playing at just the right volume in the background and all in all it's ...

... Legends ;)

So all 4 English teams were now through to the 1/4 finals for the first time in history (in fact the first team that ANY country has had 4 in the last 8) and Liverpool were odds-on to play one of them in the next round...

After the game finished I went out to help Katie finalise the preparations, so we had a manic couple of hours running around buying food, looking at backpacks, walking poles, etc etc.

In the end ...