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Published: April 27th 2007
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Torres Del Paine NP
Taking in the view...the pointy bits on top are called the towers and is what everyone wants to see After a couple of great days in Ushuaia I had to make the hard decision to get back on a bus again, this time heading into Chile to try my luck again with mother nature and try to get to the infamous Torres Del Paine National Park. After only just catching the bus after being told to go to a different location and managing to get a seat as I had not booked a ticket I was off towards Chile. Mind you this was all 5am in the morning and all done in spanish so I was not doing too bad to get it sorted! So can´t remember how long the bus journey was but there was a change over and it would of consisted of a double figure amount of hous. After a couple of stops in very cold places I finally got to Puerto Natales which is the base town for this National Park. Decision making time again, working out what to do and how best to see the park without having to pay too much (they charge through the nose here for everything!) Anyway after quite a while deciding I was booked on a day tour, yes
Torres Del Paine NP
Cowboys herding their sheep along the road not usually into being on tour but it was my only option as I did not have much time. Again here the weather is so changeable and unpredictable you could have 4 seasons in a couple of hours. So off I go and it seems that I have been lucky enough to get another great weather day, don´t know what I have done to deserve this good luck. Again the scenery is amazing and the whole area is just so beautiful and AMAZING!!! Not really sure how else to explain it, but as Sheree said to me you will feel insignificant once you get near the mountains. So because I am on tour we stop constantly to get photos, which is cool by me being a photo freak, and at this stage we are lucky enough to have the top of the mountains clear of clouds and it doesn´t usually stay that way for long. These mountains are famous for the towers that are on top of the mountains and I we have a great view of them and again the mountains are demanding respect. We drive around the edge of lakes and take in the views, kind of a
nice way to spend the day as I was exhausted and nice to see how the other half see the sights instead of walking everywhere. I have never had the chance to appreciate mountains before this trip and the fact that they are changing constantly, obviously not the physical structure, but with the clouds, sun and light they look different all the time. Consequently I have been uncontrollable taking copious amounts of photos. So over the day we manage to get to most parts of the park where you can drive, not a lot of walking done here and I am a tad disappointed I didn´t have time to do some hiking. The end of the trip lands us at Lago Grey which has a glacier at the far end of it, which if you have good eyesight or binoculars can see from the beach. What you can see very easily is the massive icebergs that are floating right near the beach, apparantly due to some early colder weather the icebergs are able to make it to the beach before melting. To me it just seems like an oversized drink with ice blocks in it. I was a tad sceptical
Torres Del Paine NP
The famous towers which are regularly covered by clouds...so I am lucky at the start of the day as to what the tour would be like, but thoroughly enjoyed it and was really stoked that I made the effort to get out and have a look. With the tour came the ever friendly guide who wanted to make sure that I had my face in front of ever nice photo opportunity, this is such an Argentine/Chilean thing to do, so he would make me stand there and look like a tool time and time again. He couldn´t understand why I didn´t want to be in the photo everytime, I tried to explain that I didn´t want to ruin the photo by putting my ugly mug in front of it.....but he still didn´t get it and in the end I just had to be stupid! The national park is definately on my list of things to come back to but what I did witness on my day out blew me away and as most things in Patagonia left me speechless at it´s sheer beauty and grandness.
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