Grand Palace, Bangkok, photo

[caption id="attachment_761" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="at Grand Palace"][/caption]

Goodbye, Patagonia

After hiking up to the Mirador Torres del Paine and down to the "Jeep," I was tired. I had driven 1.5 hours to the park and hiked about 7 hours. I had another 1.5 hours drive back to the Estancia.



As I drove, I drank water to rehydrate. The sun was still bright. I watched guanaco, condors and flamingos on my way home. The Estancia Los Tres Hijos has a small sign and a red gate. To get to the ranch house, I had to open each of five gates, move the Jeep up, shut the gate and drive toward the next gate. The sun was low in the horizon and Cerro Castillo, the local mountain for which the town is named, was silhouetted. It did look like a large castle. As I drove, groups of sheep startled and ran in front of the car. Sometimes, it felt like a stampede. For most of the drive, nothing was visible except rolling plains, distant mountains and grazing sheep. In Argentina, a "Jeep" is any SUV; I was driving a Nissan "Jeep." I had taken almost three gigabytes of photos that day and hoped I had some good ones.
I arrived at the ranch house and was greeted with the wonderful smell of roasting lamb. Dawn had a great day exploring the ranch, including the greenhouse and vegetable garden. Nicolas, 16 years of age, slaughtered a lamb in the morning. He and his sister, Catalina, 14, were at the ranch house. The third Hijo was in town in Puerto Natales. We first met the family when we stayed at their B&B in town. Dinner was lamb, fresh lettuce, potatoes, and cucumber from the garden and greenhouse. There was a tomato-based pepper sauce. After a few toasts recognizing the last night in Patagonia, we began to eat. The lamb was delicious; it had been cooked in the wood-burning oven. After dinner, we warmed ourselves in front of the large fire in the living room fireplace.

We packed our suitcases for the long journey home. Alvin turned on the generator so we could take the chill out of our room with a small electric heater. It stayed light until about eleven. The wind was howling. The wind was always howling; sometimes it howled extra strong; mostly, it just howled. I put on a fleece and long-johns and crawled under a pile of blankets. It had been a warm day, so I left off my wool cap and socks. The wind howled through the walls around the windows. The air was always moving.
In the morning. we had breakfast in the kitchen. It was warm there with the wood-burning stove. The refrigerator ran on propane. There was no phone or Internet. There were 6,000 sheep spread over eight miles of Estancia. Cafe con leche, yogurt, ham, cheese, toasted rolls and marmalade. We were ready to go. Hugs and kisses. And good-byes from Pepe and Floracita, the pet bull and guanaco. Pepe and Floracita were orphans from birth and had been brought up on the Estancia. For whatever unlikely reason, they are inseparable. We were off, driving back through the five gates to the dirt road to Puerto Natales and the paved road to Punta Arenas.
After five hours of driving, we took the plane ride to Sangiago. From the air, we could sometimes see through the clouds. We went over Perito Moreno and Los Glacieres National Park and marveled at the size of the glaciers. We flew along the coast of Chile and saw snow-capped volcanoes.
In Santiago, we rested for the night. The next day, we returned to our Spanish school and gave a presentation about our travels to our fellow students. We had successfully traveled our planned route to Bariloche, Esquel, Puerto Montt, Puerto Natales, Rio Gallegos and Ushuaia.
At 10.30 p.m., we boarded the plane for Atlanta. I told the flight attendant that our seats were "veinte siete a y b" and realized he didn't know what I was talking about. For the first time in two months, English was the expected language. We stepped into the Delta plane and crossed the line. I thought, Goodbye, Patagonia.

Torres del Paine

Torres del Paine is an icon, certainly for Chile, but more generally for Patagonia and southern South America. Guide books and tourist books prominently feature its photo. Granite peaks and towers soar from sea level to about 9,000 feet. Although these mountains sit within the Andes, they are much newer, about 3 million years old. The Torres are three pinkish, granite towers that sit in a row above a small lake formed by glacial run-off.
From the beginning of our trip, we planned to go to the national park. But because of weather, it took several tries. We got our first glimpse of the peaks, the Cuernos, from Navimag (see previous post, Navimag on good days). When we first arrived at Puerto Natales, we planned to go directly to the park; but the rain was a downpour, so we jumped on a bus to Rio Gallegos, hoping to return for better weather. As we returned by bus from El Calafate to Puerto Natales, we got our second view of the park; the Torres shined in the distance across the plain.
Torres del Paine is a long way from anywhere; it's three hours or 250 miles from Puerto Natales. Although we stayed at an Estancia west of Cerro Castillo, it was still a 1.5 hour drive. The first day I attempted to see the towers, the guardaparque thought the weather might break, but warned me they were not visible. After hiking for awhile, the rain (and snow) became more intense. I went to the Refugio de los Torres, had lunch and turned around. I waited a couple of days and tried again; I got a gorgeous, sunny day. The lower trail goes through a forest of lengua trees. Gauchos use horses to take food to the refugios. The biggest problem is that I wore too much clothes and got hot. As they say, Se vale la pena (It was worth the trouble). They are truly a natural wonder of the world.
My recommendation is to go in December or earlier. By January, the wind and the tourists are in full force. During my hike, I bumped into several groups of twenty hikers along the trail. At the mirador for the Torres, there wereover 50 people. When I stopped to take photos of guanaco,
vans stopped behind me. Right around Christmas, the park fills up and stays that way throughout the summer. Also, if you can, plan on backpacking and NOT having reservations. Backpacking makes it easier to experience the interior of the park than staying at a hotel or hosteria. If you backpack, but have reservations at the refugios, this is also problematic. What do you do if it is cloudy and you can't see the Towers? Go on to your next reservation and miss seeing them?

map, Southern South America

good days on Navimag

This is an old ship that ran aground and now serves as a navigational market (and house for seagulls). I really like this photo. We were very happy to see the sun come out again after the storm. It is taken in color. This ia a glacier the Captain took us to as a consolation for not seeing Pio X, the largest glacier in South America. I don't know the name of this glacier.

Here's our porthole in our cabin and a photo I took leaning out the window and the photo I took.


Here are peaks we passed just before we reached Puerto Natales. They might be from Torres de Paines.

Dawn looks rather cold as we pass through a very narrow channel.

The Captain had to navigate through several very narrow channels.


We were all happy to reach land again.

Navimag in storm

We sailed from Puerto Montt, Monday, 25 December. As we moved from the Pulluche Channel on Tuesday evening we sailed into bad weather. By one report, winds were 120 kilometer or 80 miles per hour and the waves were five to six meters or 15 - 18 feet high. The Captain found himself unable to navigate around a point of land and was unable to head south to the Penas Gulf. Instead we headed due West and at various times were headed Northeast, essentially treading water in a treacherous storm. I'm unsure why we sailed into the storm. We saw numerous dishes broken and heard many more. Soup flew in the air, spaghetti covered the floor, hot coffee went into laps, waiters made heroic efforts to save food and drink. A section of the bar in the pub was broken and lay on the ground. A medicine cabinet and locker were ripped from the walls. Numerous passengers were sick and many (including me) retreated to the realative safety of their bunks to wait out the storm. By one report, it was the worst encounter by Navimag in three years.



The NaviMag website shows sunny weather, dolphins, whales, glacier and smiling passengers. After we embarked from Puerto Montt, we had a pleasant cruise through the Moraleda Channel. It was overcast with a few sprinkles and a brisk breeze. However, as we moved through the Erràzuriz Channel and went thru through the Pulluche Channel, we could sense a change in the weather and could see the whitecaps and storm cloud ahead of us. We had been previously advised to take our motion sickness pills around 1 p.m. in the afternoon in preparation for our 3 p.m. arrival in the ocean. Our normal course put us in the open ocean for about 12 hours. As a ferry service, Navimag is different from Skorpios and others that stay inside the inner passages.

The wind and wave height were abnormal. While standing beside the bridge, I could watch the waves crash into the ship. About every sixth wave was large enough to spray foam across the bow and cause the anchos to bang against the hull with a large boom. The weather progressively worsened. At dinnertime, plates were flying off the table and passengers chose to remain curled up in their bunks rather than stumble down the hallway to the dining room where they would grope bolted down tables while attempting to move hot soup from its bowl into one's mouth. I found that lying in the fetal position in my bunk was the most comfortable position. Even so, my body physically moved in rhythm with the waves alternatively lifting me up to the had of the bunk and pushing me down to the foot; I was physically moving, being pushed around, up and down the bunk.

As the night progressed, the tempo of the anchor boom increased to a solid beat. The ship's hull and walls squeaked and groaned. Everything in our cabin table flew onto the floor. I could hear more dishes crashing in the dining room. The mirror on the wall swung back and forth and banged against the wall. Rain and waves darkened the portal view of the horizon pitching up and down. At midnight, I got up to take more Dramamine. Our compass showed we were going due west. Our original course at midnight was to turn left on a southwest course. In the morning, I confirmed the captain chose to go out to sea to avoid bad weather and potential conflict with land. I put my ear plugs in and slept well until 7.30 a.m.

We are now about 12 hours behind schedule. We are cruising southeast through the Penas Gulf (yes, it means Gulf of Pain). I think we will be happy to see the San Pedro lighthouse where we will enter the Messier channel and presumably escape the waves and wind. We are now running with the wind. The waves rock the ship back and forth like a ferris wheel ride in an amusement park. The scene outside the window changes from looking at the sea almost at our feet toward gyrating up through the horizon well up into the sky.

These are the flags before and after the storm.

Christmas photos

Here is Dawn buying provisions for the long bus ride. Bariloche is full of chocolate shops, each of considerable size. Their chocolate is wonderful.
This is a view from the bus window on the way to Puerto Montt. It is Volcan Puyhue.

As we were driving on the bus, we went through a little town. I had my camera out with a long lens and was looking for photographic subjects. I saw this little girl and trained my camera on her. Before I could take the photograph, a bus came between us. In the meantime, the father noticed my attention. He was walking with his family on Christmas eve. I looked at him through the windows of the bus between us. He lined his family up for a portrait. When the bus moved, I snapped the photo before we moved on.

Here we are at our restaurant after dinner.

Here's the sun setting over the bay in Puerto Montt on Christmas Eve eve.

This is a view of our hotel with a cloudy volcano behind it. The other view is from our hotel room window.