Puerto Natales, Chile

  Puerto Natales, Chile
Monday, February 7, 2005

Back on the bus February 6th to leave Argentina and drive to Puerto Natales, Chile, our gateway city for the hiking at Torres del Paine. Once again our bus trip was long (over 5 hrs) but we could see Torres del Paine looming ahead, and the windswept plains were punctuated by rhea, large South American ostriches Click here to jump to more info on the rhea, and crested caracara which are birds of prey and look a bit like an eagle. Going through the Chilean border was also a treat, we had declared that we had some dehydrated vegetables and fruit (ours had been processed, and dried fruit de-pitted, which was allowed) but we´re not even sure if they noticed our declaration or if the border crossing was just a formality. Regardless, we made it to Puerto Natales, a small town with a long misty dock and black necked swans and seagulls. It is the capital of the province of Ultima Esperanza, situated by Señoret channel facing the Cordillera de los Andes.


We have decided to take a couple of days off here before starting our next hike in Torres del Paine. The town is quite small but we have already declared El Living as our second home. El Living is a small vegetarian restaurant/cafe with 3 comfy couches and some more formal tables, run by a couple from England. Lunch yesterday was toasted avacodo, cheese and tomato sandwhiches on homemade wholegrain bread, and dinner was squash cashew curry with homemade bread!
And of course a bottle of Chilean wine thrown in for good measure. Theo had to navigate Nadine home to the hotel and tuck her into bed!

Tonight (February 7th) we are staying at Concepto Indigo, a great hostel on the waterfront where we have a large double bed and private bathroom, although we haven´t really splurged as the place is similar in price to the cheap hotels and family-run hosteria´s we have stayed at on this trip. We have already gone back to El Living for lunch and had a great spicy Carribean dish. Tomorrow we board a bus at 7:30am to go to Torres del Paine, where we will be hiking over 110km worth of trails over about 7 days. Off to find some dinner (we have already eaten the special at El Living for today so we might have to choose elsewhere!).