Patagonia

We flew the 2 two hours from Puerto Montt to Punta Arenas, Chile's most southern city of any size, last Saturday evening. The highway at Punta Arenas is called "the road to the end of the world". About 70 kms south of Punta Arenas the road ends. 

After sitting on the plane 2.5 hours waiting for the "engineers to fix a problem" we finally left and flew over beautiful snow covered mountains in southern Chile. We learned 1/5 of Chile is covered with ice fields.
Mauricio, from Casa Escondida (hidden house), picked us up and we had a very cozy night in his log cabin B&B. He fixed us a good breakfast and sent us on our way to our next adventure. This was our big splurge of the trip:a five-day all-inclusive with EcoCamp in Torres del Paine National Park.
EcoCamp picked us up here in Punta Arenas, drove us the five hours to the park, helped us plan our daily excursions and provided excellent guides, served us gourmet food three times a day and offered us a cozy private dome for sleeping at the end of each long day. What a relaxing way to travel! Would highly recommend.


We met people from all over the world, most of whom travel a lot and love swapping stories.  We made friends with Zahra and Hanif from Vancouver, who were born  in East Africa and speak Swahili. They were delightful and we found we had lots in common. Travelers come and go at the EcoCamp and some we met again and again on our daily activities or at our assigned meal tables.  But everyone was there to experience the incredible national park on one way or another.

The view from camp; ever-changing.

There was so much enthusiastic and encouraging energy present.

Marc and Paula, one of our guides who couldn't help but sing, dance around, and share her stories with our group.
Henry, another warm and chatty guide, drinking mate.
I'm learning to keep these blogs short. Multiple times they have disappeared into thin air just before I was finished!


Comments

  1. JillJanuary 25, 2024 at 5:42 PM

    I figured out how to comment! Had to stop blocking third-party cookies. Anyhoo! This looks amazing!! The splurge turned out to be worth it! The beauty is kind of hard to conceive of.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hope NislyJanuary 25, 2024 at 7:42 PM

    My exclamations would be redundant -- a "WOW, how amazing" would be my comment on every post. I'm glad you went the whole distance. And I love traveling with you.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Exploring Valpo, "The Jewel of the Pacific"

Valparaiso was an important seaport in the late 19th century when Europeans were rushing to San Francisco for gold. Ships sailed around the Straight  of Magellan and restocked in Valpo. Everything changed with the construction of the Panama Canal. But the city is still an important port. We saw lots of shipping containers on our boat ride this afternoon. Valpo is home base for the Chilean Navy. It was fun to see the city from the sea on our short ride. We did a three- hour walking tour today. The city was a magnet for immigrants in the late 1800s and you can see the European influence in architecture,  food, customs, and neighborhoods.  Valparaiso boasts 4 universities, the oldest Spanish newspaper (El Mercurio) and Chile's first public library. Our tour included riding several funiculars (asensor in Spanish). We also walked a lot of stairs. At the top, the views are always amazing. Everywhere there is art. Some is "teen-age graffiti " Sebatian said. But a lot of it is cr...
Read more

Valparaiso

Image
Yesterday was a travel day. I've been amazed at how well the connections have worked. Mauricio took us to the airport in Punta Arenas after breakfast. We flew the 3.5 hours to Santiago. At the airport we figured out how to get a bus into the city to get a different bus to Valpo, our colorful city by the sea. We paid our fare and, with 5 minutes to spare, boarded the fancy bus to Valpo. Two hours later we were here and by 6:30 pm we were ringing the door bell of our B&B, Casa California, in the Cerro Alegre area of the city. We met Jonny, our host who is from California, and his wife Cata (Chilean)  and sweet baby Max. We were very hungry by then. Jonny recommended a place with a view up the hill. The city is built on very steep hills. Everywhere we walk uphill or put on the brakes going downhill. Houses and restaurants appear to built on top of each other with every inch occupied. There are hidden little patios and gardens beh...
Read more

The Language

Image
We thought our diligence with Duolingo Spanish the past 6 months would pay off, but that controlled app environment has not translated into speaking Spanish naturally in Chile! Or maybe it's the Swahili that rushes to our tongues whenever we try to speak anything other than English. We are usually speaking Swa-ish or Span-hili sentences and looking at each to figure out which part is which. It's frustrating, and also laughable. But thank goodness we can understand more Spanish than we can produce, so we get along ok. But there is not much English spoken in Chile. I read that Chile uses the least English of any South American country. Mmmm, our next trips should be easier.😉 On our tours in the desert we mostly couldn't communicate with the others because of language differences.  But we found when we offered our halting Spanish to try and find out about them, the ice broke and they were happy to talk and were very patient. Those who spoke Portuguese, German or Chinese usual...
Read more