Patagonia & Santiago

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Our last 2 weeks in South America were made up of a whirlwind tour of Patagonia and a couple of days in Santiago. We were quite rushed but we really enjoyed it and definitely made the most of the time!

So, from Bariloche, we caught a nice long 30 hour bus journey all the way down to the heart of Patagonia to El Calafate, still in Argentina. 30 hours sounds like a long time but we had about 6 or 7 movies (all in English), lots of sleeping and a bit of reading and before we knew it, the journey was over!

El Calafate is along the shores of Lago Argentino and close to the Parque Nacional de Los Glaciers, so once again, we got to enjoy some really nice scenery. On our first day there we took a trip to the Perito Moreno Glacier which was really cool to see. It's massive! Watching the huge chunks of ice break off the glacier and crash into the lake making a roaring noise and then float off as new icebergs is quite impressive!

The following day we took a trip a couple of hours north to El Chalten which is a small town in the middle of Parque Nacional de Los Glaciers. There are various treks from this town so we took off on a few of these for the day. We only had one day there so we wanted to make the most of it and I can safely say that after 32km trekking in 6 hours, we did make the most of it! The main attraction from El Chalten is Mount Fitz Roy and we were lucky to have a blue sky that day to see the picture-perfect mountain. We had a few other cool sights along the treks including a waterfall which was our last stop before running back to catch the bus. A great day and well worth it!

The next day, it was time to cross over to Puerto Natales in Chile. This is a small town with not much going on other than it is the gateway to Parque Nacional Torres del Paine. Torres del Paine is often called "hikers paradise" and most hikers spend about 5 days doing the famous "W" trek but unfortunately we didn't have enough time. So we had to settle for a 1 day tour of the park where we took in some of the main sights and attractions including numerous lakes, mountains, glaciers and icebergs which were all really cool to see. We definitely wished we had the few days to do the "W" trek though!

Then we got a relatively short bus journey (3 hours) to Punta Arenas which is down on the Strait of Magellan. Most tourists come down here to see penguins but the damn penguins wouldn't have any visitors until the following week, so we saw none! Apart from that, there's not much else to do down in Punta Arenas.
So then we got our flight from there up to Santiago which was our last stop in South America.
Here, we just checked out some of the main sights in the city and relaxed and enjoyed our last few bottles of vino tinto!! Santiago is another big city really with nice buildings, some parks and lots of smog!

So this is our last blog for South America and we are very sad to be leaving as it is such a cool place. It's a huge continent but easy to travel around and there is so so much to do and see. We would recommend it to anyone!

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