House of Torres Del Paine

I arrived in Puerto Natales on Tuesday. It was only a three hour bus ride from Punto Arenas but it was the typical "there is only one bus a day, you can't get there from here, try again tomorrow, it sucks to be you" scenario that was the cause of delay. No fault of my own. Puerto Natales is not much to speak of - a postage stamp sized town that is nothing more than a jumping off point for people looking to hike or trek(is there a difference?) in Torres Del Pain Nacional Parque. The town is centered around the Seno Ultima Ezperanza or The Last Hope Sound. Seemingly everything in Patagonia has a name that implies mortality or at the very least mercy of some sort. Given the fact that it is late Winter here the cargo van that picked us up did the majority of the hiking and the trekking was kept to a bare minimum. Fine by me. The weather in Patagonia will turn on you like a sickly dog, one minute it is congenial almost spring-like and the next it's snow, fog or rain. Pick your unfavorable condition and it is most likely on deck.

On the five mile drive to the park the morning fog and cloud cover peeled themselves away leaving us with a 20/20 view of everything around us. The driver mentioned that we might be blessed today as the previous day's tour was a bust. He mentioned how the day before he simply pointed to where things "would" be if there were better weather. The skies above managed to hold out and it wasn't long before we were all gawking at Guanacos grazing. That last sentence was brought to you by the letter "G." Apparently the Guanaco is a member of the camal/llama family and vaguely resembles the alpaca - with the geeky neck and all. Anyway enough Zooligy they were funny and friendly and probably make excellent sweaters. Shortly after our Wild Kingdom moment we pulled up to the Miladon Cave, the Miladon being a prehistoric animal also known as the sloth. Since Sloth is one of the seven deadly sins I think we were all curious to take a look at his former digs. And what a place it was, the view was fantastic. I would say easily his place was 20K square feet. The Midalon lived large! Next we found our way to Lago Sarmiento. The still lake held a mirror image of the mountain above it on its surface creating an almost kaleidoscopic effect. The picture at the top of the of this post gives some evidence of that. It made you want to run right in to the lake and shatter the optical trick, but hypothermia being the scourge it is, it somehow didn't seem like the sensible thing to do.

Further up we stopped at a restaurant in the middle of the Park for lunch. Wha? A restaurant here? All of the driving had made us all quite hungry. The view was 4 star the food was 2 stars. Divide by 2 and you break even. It's always interesting how you are willing to overlook food quality when you are sitting on a lake with 180 degree views of mountains outside the floor to ceiling windows. It doesn't take long before you forget the food is crap and quite frankly it doesn't matter much. The idea of being in a dining room with such beautiful albeit outdoor decor is fascinating. Shortly after we took our leave and boarded on back our white yet muddy cargo van. Upwards and onwards.

Soon after our driver Manuel crained his neck back and explained that we would now be stopping at a glacial lake - Lago Grey. After a minute amount of hiking me and two Austrians found ourselves at the foot of the glacial lake. While the front wall of the Glacier Grey was slightly distorted in the distance there was an abundance of icebergs floating close enough to the shore to make us all stop and appreciate where we were. After several photo ops and close to zero temperature we all hiked back to the van. By now the sun was setting and we were all very tired from all of the looking we had done.

Fast forward another sleepy hour and Manuel drops me off at the Hotel Captain Eberhard. This hotel is a slimmed down version of the hotel in "The Shining." More on that later. Tomorrow I must catch a bus out of Chile. Really I must.

Pictures at Eleven.

CT

PS I finally uploaded the pics and they can be found HERE