Hotel Alcazar Puerto Natales

... game of cards helped the hours tick by. Special mention goes to Gary, Shelley and Tom - new found friends who made sure that there was never a dull moment to be had.<br> A memorable way to make our way north into Chile's lake district but perhaps not the most scenic due to the weather (which we have been reliably told is pretty much the same 365 days a year).<br><br>We now head east back into Argentina and the start of our trek through the South American lake district.

... nothing planned for the day we had a nice lie in until breakfast at 9.30am, filled ourselves up on food and then went back to our rooms to watch T.V until the snow blizzard stopped. We took a stroll to the supermarket at 2pm where we brought our pack lunch for our trip tomorrow and then went to the internet cafe next to our hostel for an hour or so. We spent the remainder of the afternoon watching films and dealing with dodge stomachs. Laura seemed to be ...

... forest! Who said these trails were easy to follow!? It looked like a really site especially with the cabins and the hot tub at the top &#8211; this would have been our night stopover if we had gone up Valle del Frances. <br>Quick lunch stop to regain some energy for the 4 hour hike on to Hosteria las Torres. This turned out to be one of the easiest stretches of the entire trek as although long it was mostly easy terrain, walking on wide flat paths. We made it in 3 hours (1 ...

... to do in Puerto Natales apart from wait for the ferry and eat VERY nice chocolate at Patagonia Dulce (awesome brownies with ice cream!). The scenery is spectacular and on days where it is nice (there are some, but few that aren´t accompanied by the endless Patagonian wind!), you get great views of the surrounding mountains and of the ´lake´. Eventually though my ferry ride came in, time to board the Navimag!!!! Take care. Richy :)

... 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 ...

... me that I hadn't really missed much, the views were good but no better than yesterday and more importantly he confirmed there were no orange skies to be seen anywhere!<br><br>He was happy that he'd made the effort to go up there and he had some good shots, but I hadn´t made a stupid decision, which ...