our first stop in chile!
so far, we have been in argentina this entire trip, but it was finally time to cross the border. however, this is just a quick jaunt into chile, we´ll be back in argentina in a couple days when we arrive in ushuaia, the southernmost city in the world.
michael didn´t even realize that our next stop was in chile (since i have been making the plans), and i didn´t realize we only had a few pesos on us (since michael has been keeping the money), and with our lack of shared information we ended up crossing the boarder with only about $5 to our name.
not a good idea.
when we realized what was about to happen we were already on a bus headed to chile and i was fairly positive we had to pay an entrance fee to get into chile, and also pretty sure that the boarder crossing would not have an atm in sight. luckily, only my second prediction was true and we were able to cross over without owing a dime peso. whew!
puerto natales is a tiny little town filled with tin houses and very cold weather.
its main purpose on the gringo trial is just to serve as a base point to visit the near by national park, torres del paine:
the park is filled with lakes which are blue, blue, blue from the sediments of the glaciers. remember, these are all straight out of camera… the water really is that color!
also, lots of guanacos (like lamas)
we also saw plenty of sheep each hanging out with their respective baby sheep… which made be feel a bit too guilty about the big chunk of patagonian lamb i ate for dinner a few nights ago. they are very, very cute little things. and we saw flamingos, which i never even really considered ever living anywhere but in zoos. and we saw them fly off which i´d also never really thought about … that they are acutally supposed to be able to fly, in the way that birds tend to do.
other than staging trips to the park, puerto natales is a sleepy place so small it doesnt even have a bus terminal… you are just left in town and there you are.
our guidebooks pointed out all of about 2 places of interest in the town (which could be walked end to end within under an hour), a church and a town square, but we happened to stumble upon this amazing dock absolutely stuffed with old, wooden, seemingly abandoned, partially sinking, and very dilapidated fishing boats. we asked the guard nicely and were allowed to walk around to photograph. it was one of the most memorable places we´ ve seen.
note the boat in the center.
or what used to be a boat… before it got crushed and sank. survival of the fittest?
we left puerto natales this morning and arrived in punta arenas, chile this afternoon. tomorrow we daytrip to an island with about 150,000 penguins. i cannot even imagine it. i hope there are babies. 🙂
