Blogs from Puerto Natales, Magallanes, Chile, South America - page 18

The bus journey down to Puerto Natales was pretty uneventful. We did see the Torres del Paine mountains in the distance however the only point of note was marvelling at just how long the border crossing process took. We passed this time with Rory, Emer and Bettina who we first met on the ruta40 trip and had met again in El Calefate and their stories of taking nearly 24 hours to cross a border in Africa! We arrived at about 10pm on a Sunday night and therefore we weren´t hopeful of our chances of being able to get to Torres del Paine the following day (having tried to arrange this from Argentina and failed miserably). 30mins later we had all our transport and logistics sorted and booked. The other 3 even managed to get their onward ... read more

Oh well...what to say...just another fantastic 3 days treking round some of the most dramatic scenary on earth. This is such a tough trip !! So..after taking advice (see later..grrrrr) we decided to do the trip without tents, as we were were booked into a Refugio for the first night and were told we could hire tents for the remaining nights. We were told to take sleeping bags, as apparently the ones available at the refugio´s were not too good, so we hired some from our hostal. Since Lou's back was still hurting, Steve honerably agreed to carry most of the kit (guess who´s writing this blog !!)... Blimey...does anyone know how much space two winter sleepings bags take up...and how much they weigh...had to cut down on the grundies. Anyway...we were given duff advice. All ... read more

Hello all, We left Ushaia on the 20th. Travelled north to Rio Gallegos. On the way there, we crossed into and out of Chile. This meant four border crossing stations (out of Argentina, into Chile, out of Chile, and back into Argentina) and four passport stamps in one day! Rio Gallegos is not a real touristy town. We wanted to keep moving, so we only stayed the night and moved on to El Calafate. We stayed in El Calafate a couple nights. The second day, we visited the Perito Moreno Glacier in Parque Nacional Los Glaciares. Until recently (approximately fifteen to twenty years) it was one of the only advancing glaciers in the world. It is massive! The face is 5km wide and it flows onto a lake were it calves off into icebergs. We got ... read more