Southern Chile, Feb. 2013

Ralph completed work, in Chillan, and we took time to travel to Southern Chile and Torres del Paine.  This was on Ralph's bucket list.  I have to say, it wasn't on mine but I'm glad I went. We were pretty fortunate, with the weather, given that we were a bit late in the season for that far south. We flew out of Puerto Montt to Punta Arenas and rented a car to see the sights.

So here we are at the end of the world, as the sign would indicate.

This is downtown Punta Arenas.  Very bleak area, but you can't actually tell here.  It was February, which is like August back home for season comparison.  It wasn't warm!  That tall building, in the background, is the casino/hotel and quite modern as structures in this town went.

These were very interesting murals on one set of buildings.  It was about the most interesting thing here!


Outside of Punta Arenas, there was a penguin colony.  I wasn't that keen on going as we'd seen penguins before.  However, this was incredibly interesting.  They all nest well inland, and they have all their little trails where (not surprisingly) they follow each other like penguins down to the sea to meet up with all their friends.

This is our path, but these guys don't seem to know that!  We humans have raised pathways so as to not disrupt their comings and goings.

 

We saw quite a bit of wildlife, on the roads, like this red fox.



 

We came upon this farm that said it had a car museum.  We decided to stop and it was actually pretty good, with a lot of display cars.  I'll take that one!



 

This is a nandu (pronounced nyandu), like an ostrich.

Guanaco, a relative of a llama.

Just loved this statue.  This is in Puerto Natales, where nothing else was worth taking a photo of. It is very windy there, and these are supposed to be free spirits blowing in the wind.

 

 



 

This is in Torres del Paine park.  These are the Cuernos, or horns.  Quite spectacular and we could see them from our hotel, across the lake!

These are the Torres, or what we can see of them. I believe one is behind the mountain to the right.

This was on the day we were leaving.  They'd had the first snowfall, overnight.  Changed the view entirely.

Ralph wanted to hike up to the Torres.  I'm not fond of hiking, so declined.



And up we...er Ralph goes!

 

He said it was a very long slog, and he was very sore the next day.  He didn't make it all the way to the top of the Torres, because it's a technical climb.  He made it to the base, but it was unfortunately socked in so no good photos.

We went on a glacier tour on Lago Gray.  Again, I wasn't that keen as we'd seen glaciers before.  But this, by far, was the highlight of the trip south, for me!



This arch was spectacular and we've done nothing to adjust the colour, here...this is the way it was!

 

The glacier itself.



 

Here they are retrieving the glacial ice for our drinks!



 

An unforgettable sight!

 

I loved these little bus-stop shelters. 

 

 

There were some pretty ugly sheep there!

 

All in all we had a great time there and both enjoyed our trip immensely!  Ralph would have liked to go to Antarctica, but we just didn't have the time this year.  We needed to get back to Fortuitous as there'd be no cruising time if we waited any longer.