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I crossed into Chile from the southern border with Argentina...

Chile

Raphaelk
2004-02-02 20:02:46

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I crossed into Chile from the southern border with Argentina. I headed to Puerto Natales which is near to the Torres del Paine national park, which has some lovely scenery. The weather recently had been abysmal, some people I met had spent days in the park without seeing any mountains because of cloud cover. On my first real day in Puerto Natales, we could see the weather was good. So, myself and a couple of others decided to club together to rent a car to look around the park as there might not be another good day for a while.

As we were driving towards the park we had to go along a dirt road diversion because of road works. At one point there was a bit covered in water. Although the road appeared solid beneath it, as you can see from the first photo below it turned out to be soft mud, which meant that we had to wait until someone could tow us out. Fortunately a petrol tanker came soon with some chains which were necessary. After this little adventure the rest of the driving was pretty uneventful, luckily the scenery was not. Our first stop was to see a fabulous view of a mountain with a perfect still reflection in a small lake, the lake had such a mirror finish, there was no distortion or ripples whatsoever. From there we wound through more dirt roads to the waterfalls . Then it was mostly a case of taking in the various views of the mountains and lakes. From time to time we came across nice animals such as Guanaco and Rhea . The Torres del Paine (or blue towers) themselves would often be hidden from view because of the clouds. Although they are impressive fingers of rock the park in general is well worth a look. One of the other attractions in the park is the Gray Glacier, a massive chunk of ice with attractive blue icebergs floating across the lake.

From Puerto Natales I got on a ship through the Patagonian Fjords to Puerto Montt. The ship's main business is carrying cargo, but it also ...

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