ptr~platyps
All posts tagged "chile"
I had about 12 hours in Santiago between when I got off the bus and had to leave for the airport. I bought some groceries, cooked a couple meals at the hostel, and took a snooze in the sun. Then it was time to go!
On my walk to the supermarket, I passed this dog. He was people watching.
My time in Buenos Aires flew by. Before I knew it, I was jumping on a 20-hour bus to get me to Santiago, on the other side of the Andes, where my flight to New York was leaving from.
During the bus ride, we crossed the border into Chile early in the morning, while driving over a pass through the mountains. It was a really beautiful (and cold) border crossing. This photo doesn’t come anywhere close to showing how pretty the area was, but I couldn’t stroll too far away from the immigration office to get a better shot.
I hiked out of Torres del Paine National Park, took a bus for three hours back to Puerto Natales, then connected to a bus to Argentina. I stopped in El Calafate to buy some groceries, then connected to a bus headed for El Chalten, the access point for the Fitz Roy mountain range.
Along the way I saw blue skies for the first time in a while. By the time I got to El Chalten it was raining again.
The highlight of the park: Torres del Paine. I was fortunate that some of the clouds cleared away while I was at the viewpoint. Still, my photos are nothing like the postcard shots of the Torres taken on blue sky days.
When the dirt road ended, the scenery got a lot more majestic. The trail runs through a valley and along a snow-lined river.
I got to Puerto Natales around 11pm, exhausted. By the time I was settled in a hostel, it was after midnight. Then I learned that the bus to the park would leave at 7am. No rest for the wicked!
During the drive into the park, you catch glimpses of the famous Torres from far away. The skies were blue and most of the tourists on the bus were taking tons of photos. I chuckled at them - after all, we were going to be spending a bunch of time up close to them when there would be plenty of opportunities to take much nicer photos.
Within the next ten minutes, clouds rolled in, it started pouring rain, and the Torres were almost totally obscured. Ouch!
The walk from the bus drop into the park was lovely despite the rain. The first 7km are along a dirt road cutting through some pretty marshy land. (See photo.)
Leaving Santiago, I wanted to make it to Patagonia as quickly as possible without flying. The first leg of the trip took me to Osorno, about 13 hours south. I got there at 9am, hoping to immediately connect to a bus further south. No luck: the next bus wasn’t until noon the next day. So I got a hotel room and cozied up. This painting was on the wall in my room.
The next day, I took the bus all the way to Punta Arenas. It took 32 hours. It was the longest bus trip I’d ever taken. The woman next to me smelled like cheese and I wished I’d brought nose plugs with me instead of ear plugs. Arriving in Punta Arenas at 8pm, I ran across town to a different bus company to catch the last bus to Puerto Natales, the gateway to Torres del Paine National Park.
