Feliz Ano Neuvo de Chile

Trip Start Jul 02, 2003
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Trip End Jan 17, 2004


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Friday, January 2, 2004

Happy New Year to you all - as you can see I'm back in Chile - down this part of the world you can't help keep crossing over the border back and forth between Chile and Argentina. From Bariloche I took a tour across to Puerto Montt in Chile - it was a combined tour taking in 3 lake cruises and buses in between - I figured this was the easiest way to see some of the lakes, volanoes and mountains and get to my next destination as quickly as possible. The tour was nice and the mountains and lakes very beautiful even if it was cloudy and overcast all day and it even rained at one point. Ther was fresh snow on the mountains just a few hundred meters above where we were - this isnīt what I was expecting, I thought that even this part of South America would be warm in the middle of summer! Now I'm slightly regretting posting my jacket, hat and gloves home from New Zealand as it's not even a cheap place to buy a new one.

Puerto Montt itself has nothing to offer tourists but it is the gateway to Patagonia and the starting point for the Navimag cruise down through the fjords of Chile to the town of Puerto Natales which is how I spent my new year. The cruise lasts for 3 nights dropping us of in Puerto Natales on New Year's Day. As I'm sure you can imagine, the boat dropped us off then very quickly everyone found a hostel and went to sleep of their hangovers. 3 days on the boat was highly entertaining with a great bunch of other backpackers, lots of card playing and a large amount of beer, wine, whisky, pisco sour, wine and the odd bottle of bubbly on New Year's Eve. During the tour through the fjords if you're lucky you'll see plenty of wildlife but all we saw of much note was a couple of seals and some whales in the distance. Well we could see their breath in the distance when they came up to surface but that was all.

Now that I'm in Puerto Natales I'm taking a couple of days to explore around here. Again the town is nothing much but it's the scenery around that is special. Many people who come here go off treking into the Torres del Paine national park for days at a time. Unfortunately time is against me with just 2 weeks to go so I'll be going there on a bus tomorrow for a very quick look around then off to Argentina to see one of the world's most spectacular glaciers then off to Punta Arenas via a penguin colony. With a bit of luck I'll then be able to find somewhere to upload some photos.
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