Day 11 - Torres del Paine National Park (2/20/13)

We have reached one of the most beautiful places I've ever been to. Thank goodness I woke up and felt 90% better – Jim, unfortunately, has his cold full force. We board the bus and Jim sleeps a bit. Hopefully, he’ll feel better when we arrive at the Park as this is the part we’ve all been waiting for. We have a six-hour bus ride to get to our destination. The road we are taking is not very heavily traveled. We make one stop at a coffee shop which appears like an oasis. It is $3,000 pesos to use the bathroom , but it’s free if you buy a cup of coffee or cocoa.

The entire trip from Punta Arenas to the Park was all scrub-grass, dry plains with mountains in the background. Very desolate. Every so often you would see a ranch house, but it is a very remote area. You can fly to this area, but if you took the ferry, it would take 3 ½ days to get here.

Saw sheep and cattle ranches – the land is so dry and barren of a good food source, that you can only have one sheep per 2.5 acres.

We saw a family of rheas, the papa and 13 chicks. The rhea is an ostrich-like bird. The father raises the chicks after they hatch, while the mother goes off to mate with another male.

Argentina can be seen in the distance to the right; it is only 2 miles away at this southern point. Chile and Argentina have had their differences, but because of close proximity of the two countries in the south, there is a lot of crossing over the borders and relations are better here.

We stopped at a shrine that was very interesting. Senora Correa was on a mission to help someone in the area; she became lost, did not have enough water with her. She had a baby with her. She was lost for so long that she died of dehydration. Gauchos came along and found her dead body, but the child had nursed from her and was still alive. The gauchos still honor this miracle by leaving bottles of water at her shrine.  They appear all over Argentina.

We also "trespassed" on some fenced off land. We crawled over wire fence to get to some concrete bunkers used during one of the wars. We saw wild flamingos at a pond over the hill from the bunkers. The flamingos have no shrimp to feed on here, but keep their beautiful color by eating a red algae.
All along we can see the Andes Mountains off to the left. And, then we see the Torres del Paine (meaning Towers of Blue.) These are not part of the Andes; they are a separate mountain range – the Andes are 45 million years old and these are only 12 million years old. And, oh my, are they beautiful!!!! Every turn of the road gives you a breathtaking sight.

We get to the hotel in the middle of the park, drop our bags, and head out for a three-mile hike. We go to Lago Grey (Lake Grey) where you can see the glacier in the background, the lake and iceflows that have broken from the glacier. They are a beautiful blue color. What an awesome sight this all is.





Back to the hotel for Pisco Sours and dinner.

We came out after dinner to a beautiful Southern sky and we were trying to pick out constellations and Santiago helped us identify them.

BED…..we are very tired again……and up and out the door by 7:30 tomorrow.