Blogs from Torres del Paine, Magallanes, Chile, South America

(Note to reader - strap in, here comes a long one) I feel a bit annoyed with myself that I haven't kept these up, and that my posts have been rarer and rarer as our trip here has gone on. Part of this was COVID, as sh*t, what do you talk about when you're locked in the house (we don't talk about COVID no no). The other part of this is that generally when I have been inspired to write has been pointing out the little humourous differences in life between here and Canada. Like the travel experiences are great, but generally it's like, we went here, and we did this. Like great, anyone can write that. The true gold is the ridiculous day to day situations that I find myself in here, based on a ... read more

The next morning we were up early and out. It was raining quite a bit now so heading into the national park seemed a bit flat. But people were still enthusiastic so that was good. We travelled on a bright yellow, private overland vehicle. My sub-section of the group ended up at the "party" end of the bus which had train style tables and access to the music and USB ports. The bus came equipped with UNO and various other card games so we whiled away a few hours playing games, and getting to know each other. The bus was really comfy for long journeys however it did have little in the way of heating so the windows misted up with the rain beating against them so it was hard to see out. We stopped at ... read more

Superb day hiking our longest ever hike to the Mirador Base de las Torres in Torres del Paine, Patagonia. The hotel have kindly prepared an early breakfast for us so that we’re ready for Andrea and Rodolfo to collect us at 7am to drive to the national park. It’s a pleasant two hour journey, but surprisingly it’s less stunning than other trips where we’ve had where we’ve seen more wildlife and mountains. We’re still approaching the Andes, but it’s just a bit less dramatic from this direction. Hiking poles at the ready, we set off at 9.15am and arrange to see Rodolfo again at 6pm...I think I’ve misheard as I didn’t quite realise how long we’d be walking for and now feel a bit nervous about my ability to complete the walk. After 1km we’re hot ... read more

Thursday 31 January What a day we had today! We spent from 4.30am (waking) to 9.30pm on a tour to Torres del Paine, a beautiful National Park in southern Patagonia which encompasses mountains, glaciers, lakes, and rivers in southern Chilean Patagonia. The park is located 112 km north of Puerto Natales where we stopped for morning coffee and 312 km north of Punta Arenas where our guide picked us up. Throughout the day we drove over 800kms stopping at many view pints. The scenery was spectacular, so I hope you enjoy the photos. There were 10 other tourists with us, and we were the only ones who didn’t speak Spanish. However, our guide who was born in Punta Arenas spoke very good English. We certainly needed our duck-down coats even though the sun was shining. At ... read more