Puerto Natales and Torres del Paine

---

Geo: -51.7325, -72.5051

On Tuesday 26 of January, I left El Calafate with the 8:30 AM bus and at 3 PM finally arrived to Puerto Natales. During this 6:30 hours bus drive, I sat next to Maria from Hamburg whom I had met in the hostel where I had spent my first night in El Calafate. She's a very nice person and we had a good time together. She was going to do the W-track with some brazilian guys she had met in El Calafate and afterwards making her way north to Colombia where she had done some volunteering before.When we arrived, I went directly to my hostel. It wasn't far but I almost didn't make it, so much hurt my stupid foot... The hostel, "The Singing Lamb" was great! A big kitchen, a huge living room with sofas, computer and a bar. The rooms were spacious enough and everything was clean. The staff was very nice and helpful and booked for me a tour for the next day : 1 day in Torres del Paine parc. I hadn't eaten anything the whole day, so I went to a restaurant where I had a huge burger with french fries. It was way too much, but delicious! xD Afterwards I went shopping for food and I bought a bus ticket to Punta Arenas for Thursday. I spent the late afternoon and evening reading and uploading pictures. Since I tried to copy my pictures from my SD-card on my USB-drive in the Americas del Sur hostel in El Calafate, I couldn't see any pictures anymore on any of them. The computer showed that both were quite full but said the folders were empty. I was afraid I might - again - have lost all of my pictures, but luckily my dear friend Gregor helped me via teamviewer to get access to them. They were in hidden folders and I needed a special program (total command) to be able to see them. He saved me! :-)
That night I also met a young girl from Chile who was travelling with her german friend (they had known each other in a school exchange program), her dad and her friend's mother. It was funny, both girls speak spanish and german but their parents speak only 1 language and so never understood each other and the girls had to translate everything. :-)The next day, after a very good breakfast, they picked me up for my tour. We were about 20 people and I made friends with Sophia from China, José from Spain, near Barcelona, professor of economy and business at a university, a guy from South Corea and 2 guys from Talca in Chile. Our bus stopped at lots of beautiful viewpoints and our sympathic guide gave us good information. Like "Paine" means "blue" and the first person discovering this area called this "the blue mountain chaine".

During all this day my foot hurt a lot and I decided to go to a pharmacy the next day. I wasn't feeling very good because of the Ibuprophene I was taking and with stronger meds it wouldn't get better, but it was necessary...I found out that I had lost my bus ticket to Puntas Arenas and so I went to the terminal when we got back from the tour to buy a new ticket. There were no more tickets for that bus but the nice lady from the Bus Sur agency told me to just show up in the morning, the only empty seet has to be mine, it would be ok. Great! :-)Back at the hostel I went to the bar and had a beer. I talked a lot with the nice bar tender - I don't remember his name - and a bit later another girl jiined me there. Zee is from California and a great, funny and happy person. We talked a lot about our travels, our plans for the future, etc. and our young bar tender made cocktails fir us. It was his first week of work there and he had never made cocktails before, so he tried different - sometimes strange - things. My favorite was the tequila sunrise and the pisco sour. ;-) We were joined by Phil from the US and by a couple from Germany. We had a lot of fun that night! :-) Maybe Zee will visit me in Sao Paulo and we tried to convince Phil to join us. If she can't make it, we'll meet in winter in Europe where she will spent some time, maybe travel around France and Italy or Belgium, Germany... Who knows. :-)The next morning, I got to the bus terminal and waited patiently until everybody was in the bus to see which place is mine. Guess what, no seet stayed empty! WTH?! I guess someone found my ticket and took my place... Fortunately half an hour later another bus went to Punta Arenas and had a seat left.

---

Photos

Torres del Paine day tour
Lots of guanacos everywhere