Down the Carreterra Austral de Chile - Fabuloso

These last few days of traveling, there´s been a lot of time and lots of peace and quiet too, mixed with some adventurous moments.

view from a hitched ride

Í´ve been thinking about you all--mother and daddy (Jus and Eddie), you especially would absolutely love this scenery. I think that Patagonia is the best kept secret on this beautiful planet. Each bus ride on a dirt road is like driving through that t.v. show ¨planet earth¨, no kidding, its just one spectacular vista after another.  So far we´ve been doing this dirt road thing and camping for only about 4 days. The first two days we got a ride to a thermal hot springs on someone´s ranch  (150 hectares,  I think a hectare is 100 sq kms?) . The man who owns this place is the son of a German immigrant who bought this place to ranch and keep cattle. They found hot springs, built a rustic bathing place and that´s where we camped.  

lots of sky and horizon

We met a young guy in his twenties from Spain who is traveling with us now, his name is Girard, he´s very nice and is helping both of us with our spanish-english improvement plan. Íts nice to have a little brother with us, he helps carry heavy stuff and doesn´t mind making fires with wet wood ;-). I think he was lonely traveling alone, so its a good deal for him too.  Apparently, he says his mother is happy that he´s traveling with some women now, maybe she thinks we´ll keep him from starving. Probably true. 

So we camped there (at the ranch, sorry for the digression) and then went to another park with glacier view where pieces periodically crack off, and fall, making a fabulous thundering noise. Now we are in the city of Coihaique, in the middle of the chilean patagonia. Today has been great so far, just doing bank business and found the fruit trees in the plaza and got about a kilo of little tiny plums and apples when Girard climbed up and shook the branches (see?, little brother).... otherwise, fruta and vegetables are not easy to find down here, so now we´ll have our vitamins for a few days.    About halfway down the route to our destination of Villa o´higgins which is where we cross back into Argentina to go to monte fitzroy and the glacier perito moreno. (Daddy, I expect you to look all of these places up on Google images or whatever).   I have so little time on internet, since we´re mostly camping, that this blog is getting not much use, but i wanted to be in touch with you all. We miss everyone and wish you all could be here seeing these sights with us, but we´re taking pictures...   We may not have internet for another week, so don´t worry if you don´t hear from us. Next sizable town will be El Chalten or El Calafate, Argentina.   

more views of the big horizon all around

cerro castillo...the road to nowhere

sunset on the muddy river

cerro castillo, the meadow

up on the ridge

the marmol caves (marble)

Catherina, our host at the hospedaje...

michelle plays captain on the ferry boat