Cisne De Cuello Negro Puerto Natales

... Santiago gay pride parade when everything goes a bit mental for a while.

Our weekend in Santiago was mainly spent eating, drinking and sleeping. We were looked after by Ian, a friend of our friend Aaaandrew in Leeds (Hello Andrew!) who took us out for amazing steak & kept us well watered, when he wasnt playing international cricket for Chile!

On Monday, having recovered from the timetravel lag and the modest hangovers, we ...

... and we had less then three days to decide where pack and go. Looking at the weather for Patagonia we were decided not to go... then after Ryan said Brazil would be too dangerous we decided to go. So we booked our trip for 10days and started packing. I had looked at the chapter and was excited to see penguins! Glaciers! Huge mountains! I had herd people camping and hiking around, and people had asked me if i was camping, but I insisted we would be ...

Accompanying me to Puerto Natales were Renee - a Dutch girl working in Colombia helping rehabilitate ex-FARC child soldiers back into society, and Maite - a proud Basque girl who genuinely got upset at being called Spanish. Whatever.. Being low season, Puerto Natales was pretty quiet when we arrived, seemingly the only life around were a couple of street dogs going at it, keen to display us their techniques while we tried to find a hostel. We managed to find another freeze box ...

... at an estancia where you get a typical chilean asado (BBQ) before reaching Puerto Natales again. Puerto Natales is a small fisherman´s town at the shores of the fjord Ultima Esperenza where once or twice a week the Navimag ferry leaves up the chilean fjords to Puerto Montt (4 days journey - about 500 USD). There are some good fish restaurants here (mainly mussels and salmon), a relief after all that Argentinian beef ...

... well on those bumpy roads. Back in Natales, we had dinner and a quick email check before trying to get a good night's sleep in preparation for a full day hike in the park tomorrow. I've seen lots of photos of Torres del Paine. Some of the photography is stunning, but nothing quite prepared me for seeing it in person. If you ever have the chance to get here, don't hesitate, just go. Yes, it's a long schlep and it's expensive and it can be cold and rainy, but it's all worth it.

... be smuggled into the country, came upon our instant falafel mix, which we were so looking forward to cooking on the trail. After some confused attempts at explaining the contents in Spanish, Chris finally shrugged and said, "uhhh, falafel?" This evidently meant little to the guard, but a lot to the two Israelis in line behind us, who immediately shouted "falefel? Who has falafel? Where did you get that? You must come to Israel!" Back on ...

... in the next day, showered, checked out, then went for a nice hike along the Serrano River for a few hours. After a relaxing nap outside in the beautiful weather, we caught a bus to head back to Puerto Natales... took WAY longer than expected... there were several stops along the way to drop off passengers, or pick up new ones... I think we may have had our fill of buses for a few days! We got back to our hostel around 10:30 ...

The bus ride to Puerto Natales was relatively uneventful. We have grown accustomed to the Patagonian scenery, open barren fields, with occasional mountains popping up here and there. We arrived in town, and after some orientation problems found Casa Teresa, and checked into a small room on the second story of ...

... the people of this place. The civil war which started in the early 70's really divided the country. I suggest if you are interested you read a little literature or wait until I return home to find out more. Not that I am an expert. Anyway, the weather was extremely hot and you really could not do anything until late afternoon. I did some walking tours of the city and was lucky to come across the Chilean theater company rehearsing for their outdoor concert and I spent a ...

... this magnificent Torres del Paine national park behind us...



Then it was back into the REAL Patagonia, which is extremely flat, with only the odd hint of mountains or anything interesting!



We got home about 5pm, checked back into our hostel and I had to stop myself ...