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Published: April 16th 2007
Our bus out of El Chalten eventually got us back to El Calafate where we only stopped for the night to pick up our stored luggage and we were booked on the morning bus to Puerto Natales back in Chile.
In the morning once again we were followed by a lovely dog. This time a sheep dog all the way to the bus stop. At first we thought we were imagining it but it happened too many times to be a coincidence. They trot ahead of you then stop look back, waiting for you then keep going till you get to the bus station. We felt terrible because we had no food for the big fella (which is clearly the desired outcome for the dog) despite his faithfull service! Talk about streetwise.
Anyway....
Our bus to Natales was long, drawn out and the border crossings longer. Because there is a fairly frosty relationship between Argentina and Chile both try quite hard to pretend the other does not exist. This includes keeping border crossings separated by kms instead of metres, leaving crucial parts of maps blank because they are the other country and maximising the bus trip time
Main square Puerto Natales
Ben all packed up and ready to go.spent in their own country. This meant on this trip that we took a long way round to minimise time in Chile!
Ahh to check into Casa de Cecilia was good and it was nice to have our own room and a comfy hostel again. That night we went out to a Parrilla and both had really good sirloin steaks, wine for Dan and some awesome Pale Ale (or Paly Aly as the locals say it) from the Austral brewery in Punta Arenas.
We basically worked on this blog and took it pretty easy in Natales as the weather was only getting worse. Much to Danielle´s dismay Puerto Natales has a chocolate cafe called Patagonia Dolce which even I can admit is superb. Their hot chocolates / chocolate coffees and various sweets (especially the brownie) were good enough for us to go there both days! Well with all the rain and wind what else could we do!
We met some really nice folks from Canada (John, Naomi and Evan their 10 month old son) travelling with other Canadian friends who live in Christchurch. Small world since we will be over there soon and both David and Kelly
Our guide/guard dog- Puerto Natales
We miss our Rosie and these little escort dogs aren´t helping. work in environmental type fields.
It started snowing the night before we left and by the morning it was a white town.
On to Punta Arenas where we had to wait 2 days for our flight. Of course as we went to catch the bus in Puerto Natales we had a little guard dog escort us. He barked at people if they came near us. We realised that these dogs must sense that we are missing our Rosie and decide to take care of us. After a trip through some pretty thick snow we arrived in a town with reportedly little to do for tourists. It didn´t take us too long to find quite a few decent things to do there - if it wasn´t freezing, howling wind and pissing rain.
After checking into our booked hostel we quickly changed places as it was freezing cold in the rooms and some leaking issues existed. Our new place was awesome and it helped that John, Naomi, Evan, David and Kelly were there to spend some time with due to the weather situation.
Other than some shopping, internet and eating of food we really only checked out the
local museum while we were there but that was pretty good really. Had some more nice local beer and a really nice seafood feast on the last night with the gang.
We also went and dipped our toe in the Magellan Strait!
The next day we flew to Buenos Aires via Santiago with a stop (LAN kinda runs their flights like milk runs), screaming kids and more. We did meet a nice Porteno (Buenos Aires resident) on the plane who gave us a bit of a low down on what to get up to......
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Naomi
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Fun...
You guys sound like you're having fun, despite the freezing and windy conditions in places! I'm very much wanting to know more about this guard sheep (from a blog or two ago)...it sounds much like a guard bird I have (refering to the lulling then pouncing). I am wondering if you guys think they'd make a good couple and if you think they would is there a chance of going back, getting the sheep and smuggling it home?? If no smuggling, just post it lol Seriously you guys sound like you're having a blast! Can't wait til you're home so you can tell us about it and we can catch you up on all the goings on here! Take care guys!! Much love Naomi, Myk (and Rod :p)