Torres del Paine

Puerto Natales, definately at its finest!
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Puerto Natales was a bit of a shock after El Calafate, but then we were back in Chile and so shouldn´t have expected it to be the same.  It was grotty, although it did have a lake with a pretty shocking backdrop.  We stopped here en route to Punta Arenas so that we could visit the Torres del Paine national park, the most popular, and most beautiful in Chile. We booked our tour for the following day, and also booked our bus ticket out of there for the day after that...! I´d write more about P. Natales, but there really isn´t much else to write.

Torres del Paine - one of the many lakes
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Anyway, the tour was pretty cool, we were the only two on the tour because they had no other bookings.  At first we were a little annoyed because our "English speaking guide" could barely string together a sentence in English. But after seeing a pretty impressive natural cave, the guide/driver told us that "dos otre personas will.... blah blah blah" which we found out a few minutes later translated to two other people would be joining us on the tour.  Fortunately for us, they were Americans who also spoke Spanish, and so they spent the day translating for us. This couple were interesting people. Both our age, they lived near Boston and were house painters who saved enough to travel around S. America for a year, and were REAL budget travellers.  I´m talking $1 accomodations budget, and 50c meals!! To the extent that they forfeited taking a shower for literally weeks because it was 50 cents on top of their accomodation! And rather than the relative comfort and safety of tourist coaches, they had hitch-hiked their way around the whole of S. America. As you can imagine Yaz and I didn´t talk too much about what we had been up to given that our bottle of wine the night before would have seen them through a week of accomodation, food and travel!

Torres del Paine peaks on the left. Check out the green lake in front of the mountains!
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Anyway, the national park was pretty stunning, with frozen lakes and snow-capped mountains, and the Torres del Paine peaks themselves, although it was a bit cloudy for us to fully appreciate them.  But by far the most impressive part of the day was the icebergs...! Bright blue icebergs floating in a lake, created by a huge glacier, similar to the Perito Moreno Glacier.  Again, I hate to get all fluffy, but it was quite a site...! If you´re a bit confused about the blue colour, here´s why; the icebergs are from the glacier which has been there for thousands and thousands of years. The ice itself becomes more and more compact as time goes on, and the more compact it becomes, the bluer it appears.  It´s not actually blue, it´s just that that´s the only colour it reflects due to it´s density.

Icebergs aplenty
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Ok, boring part over, we sat by the icebergs and ate lunch with the American guys while our guide slept.  I must admit, I felt a bit bad pulling out my luxury pate, tomato and cheese baguette (that Yaz had made for us) in front of them considering their lunch of a small bread roll with a sliver of meat.

After lunch we headed back, and dropped off the Americans at the park entrance as they were staying on for five days of hiking in the park. I felt a little sorry for them seeing as it was minus temperatures outside, galeforce winds, and to top it off, raining again!