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Published: April 22nd 2013
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A dinner we made Thursday night!
Complete with Josh and I's favorite Chilean brand, merkat. I am finally getting around to writing about the trip a couple friends and I took to Patagonia a little less than 2 weeks ago. It is funny though, because just this past weekend we took a trip to Buenos Aires, Argentina! But for my sanity, I am going to keep this blog in chronological order, and talk about this trip first. Then, hopefully in a couple days, I will “catch up” and post about the trip to Buenos Aires.
So we left on a Wednesday night (April 10th) to go to Santiago and catch a plane to Punta Arenas. We briefly considered taking a bus, but it would have been about 30 hours each way, which, considering the time we had, didn’t seem to make much sense. So we flew and arrived in Punta Arenas at about 1230 at night. That is where the adventures began. Being cheap college students, and unsure of the transportation availability from the airport at 1 in the morning, we had decided to spend the night in the airport. A couple people from the group had the idea to push a couple super uncomfortable benches together to make an extra super uncomfortable bench bed!
I caught the sun rising!
on our way to to the penguin tour. Everyone but me made it through the night on that bench bed; I ended up on the floor by my lonesome. And coldJ On the bright side, my bed that next was pretty close to heaven on earth!
On the trip, we had a few tours planned ahead of time. The first, on Saturday, was a kayak trip on the Strait of Magellan. We thought it was going to be in the afternoon, but the weather looked better to go in the morning, so we had to be up early again! But it was definitely worth it. We even wore wet suits, looking very professional! It was a few hour kayak ride, and it started to get very windy at the end! As we were going back to our van, we saw some dolphins off in the distance! I saw one jump right out of the water, it made me so happyJ Our guide for the trip was a nice guy as well and we ended up meeting him for a beer at a bar later than night. But we did not stay out late, as we knew we had to be up early the next morning for a
penguin tour.
The penguin tour had all the makings of something really cool…except for the penguins. We saw maybe 3 or 4. Ha. It was probably our fault for not looking into more why most penguin tours were closed by that point in the year: because you won’t see penguins. We did see a couple, which was cool. But, overall, it was kind of silly. We took this boat out to this island where the penguins are and walked around for a bit. It was quite cold. Honestly, I am annoyed at the place for still offering tours that late in the season if they know there will not be many penguins. I am going to find them online and leave a bad ratingJ But at least it was just the first part of the day, so we had the rest of the day to catch our bus to our next city, Puerto Natales!
Our first two nights, we stayed in a wonderful hostel! They gave us breakfast in the morning, and overall the owners were very accommodating. They even gave us a discount to stay there because we were doing tours through them as well! The second
hostel, on the other hand, was a bit different. The room we stayed in was a little bit sketchy and the accommodations were not quite as nice. However, the owner was friendly and so, all in all, it wasn’t bad!
We arrived after a three hour bus ride to Puerto Natales, where we found our second hostel of the trip (the not so great one). We were up early again the next day for a full day tour to Torres del Paine national park. I was most anticipating this going into the trip, as I had heard many people talk about how beautiful it was! And it was a very fun day! We first stopped at the Milodon cave, which was about an hour from Puerto Natales. This cave was given its name from the discovery of bones and other parts of Milodon remains by whoever discovered it. The mylodon is an animal (obviously now extinct) that, from what I saw in a couple drawings, pretty much looks like a huge bear. From there we continued to the park. After begrudgingly paying the 40 dollar entrance fee for foreigners, everything else was great. We saw a line of mountains
known as the “W” as they are shaped kind of like…..a W. Imagine thatJ Many people often come to Torres del Paine for several days or a week to hike the W or a different mountain chain around the park. I would love to have the chance to do that someday, but with all the other stuff we wanted to do, there just wasn’t time this trip! In the park we saw some stunning views. The mountains were beautiful, and there was a river which ran through much of the park. Toward the end of the tour we took a short hike to a lake where we saw huge chunks from a glacier called Glacier Grey which had fallen off and ended up near the shore. There is something so peaceful for me about seeing nature like I did in that park. Even though it was a touristy thing, it had a real genuine and natural feel for me.
Our final day of the trip, Monday, we used to explore Puerto Natales. To be honest, the city is not that big, and we definitely did not need that long to explore it. But it was nice and in some
ways it reminded me of my hometown, Winona, MN. There were a couple nice parks (we took full advantage of some see saws, and I have a video to prove it), and a beautiful view of the water. Early on in the day, we found this stray dog (or, better said, he found us) who always carried a rock with him in his mouth. He would come up to us and put it down for us to throw. We played fetch with this dog with a rock! It definitely could not have been good for his teeth, but there was no chance that dog was going to walk around without a rock in his mouth. At one point we went into a store and when we came out he was gone. But, sure enough, a few hours later, who comes bounding up to us from out of nowhere but that same dog! He was quite a peculiar dog, and gave us all a few laughs throughout the day!
As we got closer to evening, we had to take a bus back to the airport in Punta Arenas to fly back to Santiago. Sadly, our 3 flight left at 1
and arrived at 4am in Santiago. Needless to say, none of us got too much sleep that night! As much fun as the trip was, I was excited to be back in Viña and Valpo. The day that I got back (so Tuesday morning), I remember walking to the metro to go back to my house and thinking “It is good to be home.” I couldn’t believe myself for a second! Though I have only been here a couple months, this does in a lot of ways feel like home. I go to classes here, have friends here, live here. Though it doesn’t feel like home in the same way Winona or Luther does to me, it certainly feels that when I travel here in Chile, and then return to Viña and Valpo, that I have come home. Tune in next week for the next episode of “weird but true stories from the life of Isaac Hitz Graff”J
So that was our adventure to Patagonia. As I reread what I have written, I always think of more things I could add or little details that I remember. But if I tried to add them all, I would go crazy!
I think I’ll save those for a novel or somethingJ Thanks again to those who are keeping up with this blog, it is wonderful to be able to share some of my experiences with you all back home!
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Steve
non-member comment
Thanks
Thanks for the information. Can you comment on airline costs from and to Santiago and if you noticed a local airline vs national and that price difference? Nice sentance, huh? But again thanks. Your blog has already got me thinking differently.