Blogs from Torres del Paine, Magallanes, Chile, South America - page 9

Torres Del Paine is one of the world's greatest national parks. It has been emptied of all economic activity with the exception of tourists but there are no shops, restaurants or other material attractions. Just the occasional discrete hotel which blends in with the surroundings. We spent a day visiting lagoons, waterfalls, glaciers,and mountains by the unpaved roads that run throughout the park. The park is dominated by the granite Paine massif and the wonderful views of its towers and horns and these can be seen throughout. The highlight of the day was the cruise on Lago Grey where we sailed to the magnificent glaciers at its northern most part.We sailed amongst the floating icebergs before arriving at the face of the 40 metre high glacier. Our boat was almost upon the face of the glacier ... read more

From The Lake District we flew further south to Southern Patagonia into Punta Arenas which is not only 3000 miles couth of Santiago but the furthest town south on the mainland of South America. After a visit to a penguin colony we headed for Puerto Natales being one of the gateways into the National Park of Bernardo O'Higgins. After a nights rest we boarded a boat that was to take us on a 4 hour cruise deep into the park where the scenery was breathtaking. Plenty of photographs were taken. We were treated to the spectactular Serrano and Monte Balmaceda Glaciers which unfortunately are decreasing in size due to the changing climate. After lunch we were transferred to a large inflatable speed boat to take us the last 35 km to the National Park of Torres ... read more

Its wild, its remote, its dramatic, unpredictable and stunningly beautiful. Torres Del Paine National Park is one of the finest places in Chile Situated in the southernmost,biggest and least populated region of Chile - Region of Magallanes Y Antarctica Chilena, it receives nearly 100.000 visitors from all over the world every year which makes this protected area one of the most popular tourist destinations in the country. The park sits on the southern edge of the massive Patagonian Ice Cap and covers almost 600.000 acres of land in a beautiful mixture of impressive glaciers, wonderful turquoise lakes and rivers, eye-catching granite peaks and valleys, lenga forests and pampas-style-terrain. Cordillera del Paine is the main mountain range in the the park and this is where the famous and majestic Torres del Paine and the prominent Cuernos del ... read more

When I was thirteen, my parents took me to Tuscany. In between the noisy chaos of Florence and the gravity-challenging architecture of Pisa, we went to a little village in the Apennines on the strength of my mother’s curiosity in Milton’s choice of simile, “Thick as autumnal leaves that strew the brooks of Vallombrosa”. If he had written “as glorious as autumnal leaves in Patagonia”, would we have gone there instead, I found myself wondering last week. For surely there is no more wonderful palate of natural colours above sea level than this, the gold, bronze, flame-orange, scarlet, pink and red of the lenga and the ñire, set against the bare rock, snow and glacial blues of Chile’s Torres del Paine National Park, a reward only for those prepared to invest a couple of days walking ... read more

Lovely penguins and amazing scenery in Chilean Patagonia.... read more