Tag: Patagonia

Chile: More Patagonia Adventures

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THROMBOLITES & GLACIERS

Yesterday I took a day off, sort of. The Chief Penguin went on the 10 hour excursion to see the Grey Glacier. It involved an hour and a half by van over bumpy unpaved roads, followed by walking over a swinging suspension bridge over water, and then about 30 minutes trudging on the beach to a boat. It wasn’t super windy, but not placid waters either, as the boat took an hour to get to the glacier and then spent an hour observing the glacier, and then an hour back to shore to repeat all the previous steps—with a barbecue lunch (steak) and whiskey in ancient ice sandwiched in!  He had a wonderful day, took hundreds more photos, and was led by super guide Javier and accompanied by the two Japanese and a delightful couple from Britain.

  
So, what did I do? After breakfast, I walked the trail behind the hotel which goes down to the foot of the lake, Lago Sarmiento, that is. The trail is very sensibly marked with bright red stakes that stand above the low plants. The distance to the lake is deceptive; it looks very short, but there’s a slight rise and then a dip that you don’t see before you reach the water.  Of course, it was windy, windy!  That’s the ongoing theme here, but not as windy as when the C.P. and I went out late afternoon the day we arrived and it was so blowy, we turned back almost immediately. Today’s walk was worth it.

Thrombolites at Lake Sarmiento

This is an area without trees, a steppe, and scattered about are grasses, herbs, and small woody shrubs. There are calafate bushes and some teeny tiny purple flowers as well as white ones.

And, when you really arrive at the lakefront, there are large whitish outcroppings on the beach that look like stones, but are actually thrombolites. These ancient formations are made of a specific type of bacteria, aragonite shells of gastropods, and sand, all enclosed by a structure of calcite magnesium. Thrombolites are similar to coral and are only found in Mexico, Australia and at this lake. What I saw, touched and even photographed are millions of years old!

Lake Sarmiento is a lovely blue color and is 4 miles wide, 14 miles long, and more than 1,000 feet deep. Standing looking at the lake, you get beautiful views of the Paine Massif, a set of mostly snow-capped mountain peaks.

ANOTHER EXCURSION
Today Javier took just the Chief Penguin and me with a driver further west in the park to a couple of lookout spots and to see Lago Nordenskjöld (header photo), Salto Grande (waterfall), and some great views of three jagged peaks that are the Cuernos or Horns.  On the way we saw a number of herds of guanaco plus a mother Lesser Rhea (ostrich relative) and her brood of baby chicks.

Salto Grande
Cuernos

Unlike the previous days, it was sunny, warm, and not windy!  So much so that we began to shed layers of outerwear and didn’t need hat or gloves!  It was a lovely morning’s outing, and as always, Javier was the perfect guide.  He even brought cookies and scones and some tasty hot chocolate for our last stop!

This hotel (Tierra Patagonia) and its guides go out of their way to ensure the comfort and safety of the guests, but also to make sure they have a good time!  Basilio, the head of the guides, checked in with us at lunch to see how our morning went, and the hotel manager pops up everywhere chatting with guests and inquiring if everything is to their liking. A super place!

The food here has been excellent also (we’re eating too much) and sampling, some of us, all the specialty drinks.  My compatriot and I have both tried the pisco sours and the calafate sours, but he’s gone me two better tasting the Patagonia sour and a mate sour (bright orange in color) that is very herby and supposed to give you energy.

Tonight we will enjoy our last dinner gazing at the lake. Tomorrow morning, we leave at the unhealthy hour of 4:30 am for the four hour ride to the Punta Arenas airport. LATAM Airlines cancelled our afternoon flight to Santiago so we are now on one mid-morning.

Note:  All photos ©JWFarrington (some rights reserved).

Chile: Patagonia Adventure

JWF 2 Comments

TORRES DEL PAINE
When we last left off, we were waiting for our van at our hotel in Punta Arenas to take us to the Tierra property on the edge of the national park, Torres del Paine. Torres means “towers” and there are three granite peaks that give the park its name of “Towers of Blue.” We were the fourth and fifth passengers in the van which had already picked up a Japanese couple at the airport and a man who appeared to be Chilean or Spanish.
We were told the trip would be four and a half hours and a woman, not riding with us and presumably from Tierra, handed us each a small canvas sack with snacks.  We were headed north toward Puerto Natales where we would then take a critical right turn eastward toward the park and the hotel. The road was paved, but the ride jouncy (we were in the third seats back from the front), and we listened to or were subjected to, depending on your perspective, recordings of Frank Sinatra tunes, everything from “My Way,” to “Strangers in the Night.”  Strange in some way to be hearing this music in Chile. After two hours, we made a short stop at a roadside restaurant for restrooms and stretching our legs.

As we traveled north, the landscape changed from tundra looking sand and tufty plants to short trees with half bare branches, half leafed out in green (narre, we were told later) and a bit more green the farther we went.   

Just before Puerto Natales, we began to see lots of sheep and several ranches, and then had to wait twice while Chilean gauchos (they call them something else here) on horseback and a dog moved cattle across the road.  

Green hills now and then lots of sheep and the first lambs of the spring.

After a critical turn about half an hour from the hotel, we entered a gravel road under construction being paved. This was a really bumpy, unpleasant stretch of road.

Then the turnoff into Tierra Patagonia and another gravel road to get to the entrance. It’s a very low building, built partially underground and almost not evident as you come up to it. The architecture, by a Chilean architect (woman) is gorgeous. The inside hallways feel like being in a tunnel, but then you have big wide windows facing Lago Sarmiento on the back, picture windows in each guest room, and almost all glass in the open restaurant and lounges.  Lots of light-colored wood throughout.

I was vibrating from the ride by the time we arrived so we enjoyed lunch and vegged the rest of the afternoon until a lovely dinner in the dining room.

Today we signed up for the morning excursion to the Laguna Azul. This was a about a 3-hour outing in a van with three main stops ending up at the beautiful turquoise lagoon. In addition to our guide and driver, we were joined by the Japanese couple from the day before.

Apparently, it’s windy all the time here and with a temperature in the low 40’s, we needed to bundle up. And by windy, I mean really windy, so windy that it practically blows you over or takes off your hat or glasses. The Chief Penguin and I both wore two pairs of pants, one designed to help against the wind, and then several other layers. I put on a long sleeved shirt, my new warm fleece, and then my down jacket on top. In addition, I had gloves and a knit hat.  I needed every item!  

Javier, a native of this region, from a very small town in Tierra del Fuego, was our guide, and he was excellent! He studied ecotourism in college in Punta Arenas and worked in the park for some time before being hired by Tierra.  His speciality is the animals in the park, and we saw a number of families of guanaco along the road.

They are in the camel family and closely related to llamas. The large families usually consist of one male and the rest females.  You often see a lone male guanaco apart from the family, either an elderly one or a young one who might aspire to join the females.  And high up on the hills, there is occasionally a single guanaco acting as sentinel to warn the group of an encroaching puma.  

We spent the morning in the eastern sector of this very large park, stopping at one small lagoon, then going on to some significant falls, and then lastly to the Lagoon Azul, every time looking to see if the three pillars of granite were visible between the snow-capped mountains. Sometimes they were and sometimes not as the clouds scudded in.  

The weather here is very changeable and clouds and rain and sun come and go quickly. The excursion ended at the lagoon with a table of snacks in a secluded spot (read that, as less windy!). This hotel does things up properly—tablecloth, choice of beer, soda, tea, coffee, hot chocolate with or without Bailey’s Irish Cream, and an assortment of little cookies and fresh fruit plus candy bars. What more could anyone possible ask for at 11:30 in the morning?

We then returned to the hotel for a lovely lunch where we tried the local favorite cocktail. Not a pisco sour (that comes from up north), but a calafate sour, made with the calafate berry. The actual berries look like blueberries, but the drink is deep ruby and seemed to pack much more punch than a pisco sour!

Tomorrow we have full day excursion beginning at 7:30 am which includes a boat trip on a lake to see the Grey Glacier.  More to look forward to!

Note:  All photos ©JWFarrington (some rights reserved).

Chile: On to Patagonia

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PUNTA ARENAS

This morning we flew south from Puerto Varas to Punta Arenas.  This city is located on a peninsula just north of the Straits of Magellan and is part of Chilean Patagonia. This puts us at one of the southern most points in Chile as the Straits separate Chile from Tierra del Fuego.  Going south here is like going north in the U.S.; it gets colder, but the sun sets much later and rises earlier too!

Early in its history, Punta Arenas was a significant port, important for defense, and also the site of one of the largest sheep farms in the region.

When we exited the airport, it was very windy, a gloomy gray, and colder than we’ve experienced thus far. I immediately added my down jacket on top of my fleece. The drive to our hotel in town was about 25 minutes, and took us past lots of industry and warehouses and then finally along a stretch with a grassy median. It might be spring, but the only flowers blooming were a spread of dandelions. With the overcast sky and the slightly scruffy appearance of the real estate, it all felt a bit bleak. But then, it was getting past 1:00 pm and we hadn’t had any lunch yet.

Our hotel is an old building up the hill from the main downtown area with lots of steps to get into it and then stairs only (no elevator) to the rooms. Fortunately, we’re only one floor up from reception. They use an ingenious wire basket that looks to be on a pulley to hoist luggage up to the upstairs rooms.

The owners are the offspring of ranchers and each room is named for a trade. We are in the wagon wheel room and there is a big wooden wheel on the wall above the bed and the ceiling light fixture consists of bulbs hanging from another wheel. Bathrooms were added as they did not exist with each room previously.

We were lucky that our room was ready, but the hotel dining room was totally full so we began to walk down the hill to find some place to eat. We had gone about five blocks past lots of banks and other commercial buildings and with our hunger pangs becoming more insistent and me getting cranky, we stopped in Livorno, which looked okay from the outside and had diners inside. We should have ordered pizza and we really should have consulted the short list of restaurant recommendations from our travel agent, but we did neither of these things!

Instead we ordered the meat and fries platter which came with an overflowing mound of French fries and a piece of the toughest beef steak I’ve had in many years! We ate enough to get through the afternoon, the fries being quite good, and then continued to walk around the town.

Believe it or not, we’ve been on a mission to find a night light. We always travel with one and somehow ours got left behind on Easter Island or elsewhere. It’s a small item, but drugstores here don’t carry them, and we’ve yet to find a hardware store. In desperation, in Puerto Varas we purchased a small LED disc that took batteries, but when we got it back to our room, discovered you pushed a button to turn it on, but it didn’t stay on! For those nighttime trips in the dark, I’ve been reduced to using my Kindle.

I think that if you’d been down in Antarctica for some months and returned first to Punta Arenas, you would think it was nirvana! Clothing stores, cafes, restaurants, and at least five pharmacies (I went in all of them!)  

The Sacred Heart Cathedral is another beautiful building with a white exterior trimmed with yellow and inside a sanctuary that has a deep rose ceiling and a warmer feeling sanctuary than many churches.

NEXT DAY
This morning dawned bright and sunny and Punta Arenas was more appealing. We took a short turn around outside and snapped a few photos including one of a lovely flower garden. I think if we were going to be here longer, we’d definitely explore the museum and the cemetery, both noted sites.

 

 

 

 

Note:  All photos ©JWFarrington (some rights reserved).