Friday 8 April 2011

Torres del Paine

Dear all                                                                         Following our mammoth 30 hour bus journey to Punta Arenas we sure needed to have a rest to recover and this little town didn't disappoint. As with most South American towns it is based on a grid system & the main areas of interest are all based around Plaza Munoz Gamero.  Dean managed to find a great cafe Lomits and he had a huge burger whilst I sampled a Completo (Hotdog with tomato, mayo & avocado). Yummy!  This wind swept town is a former penitentiary and has had its fair share of reprobates & would be pioneers. Nowadays its more reliant on tourism and oil exploitation. We did do our bit for dog kind when we managed to rescue a small collie off the beach where he looked like he had been stranded below the harbour wall for a couple of days and was wet and his feet torn from trying to jump clear. We managed to pull him out & then we had a shadow for the rest of the day until he found a source of food!
 Our next stop was Puerto Natales, a rather dull fishing & ferry port, which is constantly awash with tourists headed towards South Americas most visited national park.  The place itself is not too bad, but I really fell in love with the amazing skies as you can see to the right.
As the weather had started to turn for the worse &the fact that we had just moved into low season our options to visit the park were resticted to either a very expensive 4-5 day trek or a day trip. Guess which one we picked? Hee hee!

. The nice think about the day trip, was that we got to see much more that we could ever have covered by foot although we couldn't get up close and personal with the granite pillars of Torres del paine. We had a little aside at a cave where Milodons used to roam - Big ugly sloths from about 10,000 years ago. I suppose that about all I have to say cos I truely believe that the pictures below show how gaspingly beautiful this place is without me rabbiting on! Even Dean was suitably impressed. So without any further fuss enjoy..................................................................

Yes that is a Guanaco jumping the fence

So pretty!

Condors up close and personal!





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