Karl and Kara in South America

Kara says: Mini-cruise!!! OK, just a ferry, but a three day trip counts as a cruise. This is a ferry that joins the southern tip of Chile to the rest of the country - there are no roads that connect these, the only way to drive is through Argentina which is apparently a worse option than a three-day ferry trip? I still can't quite believe that it's quicker/more economical to take a ferry than to just drive through Argentina for a bit but maybe there are customs/tax implications. So things move by ferry - cows, horses, cars, random freight. We talked to a truck driver who does the trip from Punta Arenas in the south to Iquique in the north once a month - it's thousands of kilometres, such a stupid shape for a country, they should just swap some land with Argentina to make it a more compact shape. We had a couple of trucks of horses and a truck of calves on our ferry, just out the back, one of the highlights of the day was watching them being fed after our breakfast - see pho...

Kara says: Passed briefly, and coldly, through the Torres del Paine national park on the way to Puerto Natales to wait for a ferry. I was recovering from a nasty bout of food poisoning (in civilised Argentina of all places) so my memories of the national park are basically: on bus, not vomiting, good. Pretty view, making me walk, not collapsing, good. Back on bus, get to nap, good. Walking again, cold, but not vomiting, good. Photo of a waterfall between two lakes - a little bit different, eh? Two glacier lakes, 12m height difference, waterfall. And of a herd of guanacos - like llamas but not. The only camelloid of the llama family that don't live at altitude. It was rainy that day so we could only half see the high stuff and everything was a little grey but judging by what we saw the scenery on a good day must be fantastic - bluey/grey glacier lakes, green rolling hills, spikey rocky snowy mountains. My current favourite overheard quote: interested guide talking to Isreali couple ...

Kara says: El Chalten. Day 2. The Glacier trek. Things get serious. Having gotten very excited about the Moreno glacier (see earlier blog entry - haven't you been keeping up to date?) we had to take the opportunity to actually walk about on one. This involved more of that hiking business but we were hardened climbers by now (see previous entry). We set off at first light. Now, there's a phrase I'd often heard but never given alot of thought to. Subtly different from sunrise, first light is when there's just a hint of light in one little corner of the sky and everything seems to be whispering "you should be in bed". See photo. On the upside, you get to see a gorgeous sunrise as you're walking, turning the snowy mountains to pink. We walked on, following our trusty guide, getting closer and closer to the big mountains and then got to the "Tyrolean bridge". A bit of a disappointment for me when it turned out to be just a bit of rope across the river...

Kara says: El Chalten. A very small and very new village in Argentine Patagonia near some of the pointy-ist (and therefore most alluring to mountaineers) peaks in the Andes. Only founded in 1985 making it considerably younger than me, which is a funny feeling, never been in a town I was older than before. It's a town where trucks, boats and tiny chapels can live side by side in perfect harmony. A town of old pick-up trucks. A town of sad (or angry?) looking hotels. And wind. Lots of wind. Photos of both myself and a cloud testifying to the strength of the wind. What's there to do here? Sit and contemplate the vast emptiness of Patagonia (see photo of Karl) or give in and go hiking. So we gave in and went hiking. Beautiful, beautiful scenery. El Chalten is in a U-shaped valley (that geography's coming in useful again) with low, rounded hills and just behind them snowy, pointy, rocky peaks. We thought we'd stick to the low, rounded hills for the hiking (which we decided d...