Oh Patagonia
Trip Start
Sep 05, 2006
1
23
33
Trip End
Sep 04, 2007
Punta Arenas,
Chile
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
Patagonia is amazing. Turquoise lakes, giant jagged peaks, glaciers and the most fantastic cloud formations I have ever seen make Patagonia number one on my Ļmost beautiful place on earth-o-meter.Ļ
My friend Teresa bussed all the way down from Lima, Peru to meet up with me in Puerto Montt, Chile to embark on our journey (think DAYS of bussing) and we attempted to get on a boat from Puerto Montt to Puerto Natales (the gateway to the Torres del Paine). It would have been a three day ride through fjords and glaciers through the channels of Patagonia, but it wasnīt meant to be as there werenīt any tickets left
beautiful skies
. I was sad for a minute but realized that although the alternative was now a 28 hour bus ride, we would still get to the Torres del Paine faster and that was a plus because my new job in Viņa del Mar starts on the 20th of this month.
The bus ride was actually rather entertaining- Teresa and I caught up on stuff and I think they purposely packed all the gringos in the back of the bus because there were like 7 of us all together. We made friends and chatted it up and once we all got to the Park we kept running into each other.
It took us four days to hike the W (the most popular trail through the Torres) and we were absolutely wrecked. The weather is usually pretty bad down here but we were amazingly lucky to have wonderful weather, no rain, light winds, sunny skies with only one cloudy day.
When we were done,we came back into the village of Puerto Natales and ate some delicious pizza and fully appreciated the novelty of sleeping in a bed.
The next day Teresa left to go back up north and I was planning to go eat dinner solo with some reading material when I ran into some friends, Nate and Tom from the epic bus ride
beeaauutiful
. So we ate some more pizza and ended up chatting with the local beer-brewer, a guy from Santa Monica, CA who invited us back to his place where we sat and drank free mugs of his beer out of vats. We had a quick brewing lesson, made a couple vat-stand jokes and just sat for a while and had good conversation. The next day Tom and I took off for Punta Arenas, took a little penguin tour (theyīre SO cute!) and cooked a big ravoili dinner as it was his last night in Chile. After a couple glasses of wine I turned around and noticed a map on the wall that reminded me that I was within walking distance from the Strait of Magellan. I suggested that first thing in the morning Tom and I go for a little swim (I mean when is the next time I will have a chance to swim in the Strait of Magellan?). Tom was stoked on the idea and actually was jealous he hadnīt thought of it first...the Dutch couple, the Austrian girl and the Italian man, however, all thought we were crazy.
So in the morning we woke up, had a little breakfast and got ready to freeze our tails off. I put on my swim suit and we jogged down to the water, pulled off our fleece and jumped in! Surprisingly, it wasnīt that cold. We got out, dried off (we had expected to run back to the hostel without stopping) and casually walked back to the hostel while some construction workers that had watched the entire scene cheered for us.
Now I have a few more days down here at the end of the world and then itīs back up to Viņa to work at an English speaking nursery school until July!
