Patagonia - Chile - Punta Arens and the Journey North.

We landed back in Punta Arenas around 2300 hrs, tired but satisfied we have savoured the delights of the national parks, albeit briefly.

We stayed at a lovely B&B, with Lorena and Dan, who are the only people we've met who have a home at either end of the American continent, (one in Alaska and one in Patagonia. Check out their B&B (Tragaluz).

We booked some more tours...

our visit to the Humedal de Tres Puentes wetlands to see some birds...Chiloe wigeon...

Upland geese, 3 males closing in on a female....

Chiloe wigeon again...

Upland Goose

There is a local organisation Agropacion Ecologica Patagonica (check out the link for the tours and links to the organisation Shakoa Tours). Thanks Sebastian for a great morning at Tres Puentes.

For those of you of a nervous disposition, heres an ugly bug...

...the very ugly cabello de monte..

After the wetlands we visited Port famine and Fuerte Bulnes and the promontory that it sits on...

fishing boats moored at Buena Bay...

Port Famine was named by an English sea captain Thomas Cavendish, who landed here in 1587. He found a fort that had been built by the Spanish 3 years earlier( in1584). Commisioned by King Filip the second of Spain, and assigned to Pedro de Sarmiento de Gamboa, Sarmiento constructed a fine fort to accomodate 300 souls (La Ciudad de Rey Don Filipe) and a Bulwark on the promontory to protect the land and the straits form the privateers of the british navy (e.g. Cavendish). The 300 settlers were ill equiped with food, weapons, and knowledge of the land to survive. They were unsupported for three years and when Cavendish arrived he found one survivor and human remains strewn around the fort. The settlers had endured starvation and severe cold, and eventually law and order broke down. So Cavendish renamed it Port Famine.

Modern monument dedicated to the original Spanish settlers ("la Ciudad de Rey Don Filipe") 300 of whom perished in less than 3 years after Pedro de Sarmiento founded the settlement in 1584.

peaceful and quiet now....

..beech woods,    this could be Britain...

...some bigger beech trees...

,,,the reconstructed Fuerte Bulnes...Originally built in 1843 to protect the Straits... for Chile.

Some of the smaller structures were constructed with turf walls

whilst other are posher being crafted out of wood...

...a fine view over the promontory...

So our final day in Punta was a very full morning followed by an excellent filete a la pobre (steak - big, two fried eggs, fried onions, and of course chips) in a non to salubrious cafe (which turned out to be rather better than it looked) with two large beers. Then a bottle of vino tinto back at our last hostal Imago Mundi, with cheese and crackers, as we update the blog.

Tomorrow we catch the 10:50 hrs flight to Santiago from Punta Arenas, and the day after that we set off for....... Isla de Pascua, or Easter Island or Rapa Nui.

Patagonia - Chile - Torres del Paine, Perito Moreno, Balmaceda and Serrano Glaciers

If you visit Patagonia you will want to take a trip to one or more of the many Parque Nacionales that exist here for the benefit of all. We decided to take a tour "up North" from Punta Arenas to Puerto Natales, 200+Kms and only a three hour bus journey away (very little traffic). 

...just in case anyone forgets where they are, there are subtle reminders on some buildings...

Puerto Natales is like Punta Arenas. There are single storey timber built and metal clad buildings, about a hundred years old, and there are some....

...that are little more abstract and 1950's..

Like Punta Arenas, Puerto Natales is set bedside the water, It sits on the Fiord de Ultima Esperanza (the Fjord of Last Hope), so called because this was the last channel explored to find an alternative to Cape Horn for the route from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

...In the bright sunshine even the dumped tyre in the foreground looks beautiful in these surroundings... Fiord de Ultima Esperanza.

...kelp gulls appreciating the disused jetty, built like most thing here, around 100 years ago...

 Day 1 - Torres Del Paine National Park

 First stop on any trip here is the Milodon cave 

Look carefully and in the middle you will see some people, just to give you some sense of scale...

 The cave was gouged out in the past by a raging stream that cut through the volcanic tufa and rock to create this natural shelter

Have another look for the people in this one, aren't they small.....

...one of the first creatures to live here is on the right, the Milodon or Megatherium...

The Milodon (Giant Sloth) inhabited the cave long before humans, and is a distant ancestor of the sloths we looked after in Costa Rica, but not as cuddly and much bigger (6m - the size of an elephant). See the following link Milodon/Megatherium (Giant Sloth) or go to the Natural History Museum, London, to see a Giant Sloth skeleton.

After the Cave we hit the dirt road for the Paine Massif, and passed our first sighting of...

...guanacos, the fourth type of camelid that exists in S.America, the others being vicuna, llama and the cuddly alpaca. We now have the full set.

Vicuna - In the Peruvian Andes

Llama - El Mitad del Mundo Ecuador (at the equator 0 degrees)

Alpaca and friends

Guanaco stand about 3.5 to 4 feet (over 1m) high, vicuna are more graceful and delicate than guanaco standing about 3 feet (75 cm) high, llama stand between 5.5 and 6 feet (1.7-1.8 m) high; alpaca are smaller, have more wool, and shorter ears than the other camelids (basically sheep with a long neck).

But the sight that most people come here to see are the rock formations of the Paine Massif ( this is not some garage/hiphop group) it is a natural wonder that is soooooo photogenic....

...nice eh? only this really is not our picture (Thanks to ThundaFunda for providing this picture)

 We like to think our picture is rendered a little more subtle thanks to the cloud cover....

...how do you like your mountains, "con nubes"...

Despite the cloud we still loved the magic that this place can exert on your senses, we saw peak after peak revealed and then concealed from the curtain of cloud, which added a real air of mystery which you don't get on cloudless days.

 Some more Misty Mountain views...

Mountains of Mordor, No its Paine Grande over 3000m

...where are the "Torres", we know their in there

is it floating in the air? or not?

 After the atmospheric Paine Massif we moved on to visit Lago Grey...

...where there are Icebergs.....

...and a glacier,  Glacier Grey on the right hand side mid field, sporting a nice "grey" colour in the murky afternoon light.

Day 2 - Perito Moreno Glacier

The next outing was an ealry start to see the Perito Moreno Glacier. There is one problem for visitors to Chile, the glacier is sited in Argentina, on the other side of the Paine Massif. This means another border crossing and another stamp in the passport...and a very long bus journey.

After one hour by minibus, at the end of the dirt road is the Argentine immigration office....

 Then its only another three hours to the Perito Moreno Glacier...
 

Ah, look at us on our new sundeck, no need for a fridge for the beers..

 

...ice to the right of us....

Ice to the left of us....

 We took a trip on a boat to get up close and personal to the glacier face....

...on the bridge of the boat...

look at the size of those seracs...

The glacier face is 60m above the water level and 120m below...

...and sometimes there be whales....

...don't you know it there is always some Moby Dick walking into the frame as you press the shutter...

Despite the 10 hour round trip and the dash to the border we had a great day in Argentina and on the way back we marvelled at the expansive countryside...

...that went on...

...for mile after mile.....

 There was one last surprise for us before we left Argentina, just before the border crossing back into Chile we saw (scroll down for this one)

the "Paine Massif" with the main "Torre" on the right hand side, and "Paine Grande" just off centre, at last we can say we have seen it.

 Day 3 - Fiord de Ultima Esperenza, Balmaceda and Serran Glaciers

 Could this trip get any better? Well the next day started off with a really sunny dawn, so the answer is yes.
 Today we were taking a navigation in the Fjord to see two glaciers, in Chile this time.

...our barco...

We saw many things along the way...

 a Cormorant colony...

...some nice mountains....look not much cloud....

...some unusual cloud formations.....

...a pretty waterfall...

A sail boat battling the wind...

...another nice mountain view...definitely no cloud

...and then the Balmaceda Glacier...

 This has retreated over the last 50 years so it no longer reaches the water...
 And a short walk away is the Serrano Glacier...

...which unlike Pauls hairline has not retreated in the last 50 years!

This sailing lark is really hard work so we stopped off at an estancia for a meat feast and some liquid refresments....

...even Mahesh couldn't finish all the meat  on the parillas...

...then we had a short walk back to the boat... funny could have sworn there were more horses here before lunch...

So we got back to Puerto Natales our temporary home form home. Punta Arenas was only a three hour bus ride away, and that's where we were going next...for  a few more days at least.