Punta Arenas

Before we left Patagonia, I took a picture of the hotel nestled in the hills.

It was a five hour drive to Punta Arenas.

There are many places that you never expect to see in your life, and this picture is of two of them. The Straight of Magellan and Terra del Fuego.

We saw the cemetery, which was full of people because it was the day of the dead.

We saw the statue of Magellan in the main square.

We visited the Nao Victoria Museum, which consists of life sized replicas of Magellan’s ship, the Beagle, the Chilean ship that carried the first settlers to this area, and the life raft Shackleton used to get help when his ship was crushed by icebergs. All these ships have connections to Punta Arenas.

Glacier

The day of the dead is very important in South America, so much that they have to days of holiday making a four day weekend in Chile. So the restaurant had eyeballs, gravestones and other sweets at breakfast.

We went through the park towards Largo Grey.

This is where the southern Patagonian ice fields end in the Grey Glacier. We walked across the gravel to the boat.

And visited the three arms of the glacier.

On the way back we saw another waterfall - the Salto Grande.

And saw a lake with many thrombolites at the edge.

Patagonia

We woke up in Peurto Natales, and before we left the hotel we all looked at the view from the rooftop.

A couple of us woke early and walked to the town, seeing the fishing boats.

Soon we were on our way to Torres del Paine. Once we entered the park, we saw herds of guanacos.

We visited the Laguana Azul and the Paine waterfall.

Puerto Montt

The fjords are very close to the lakes, and today we drove over to the nearby sea port. The tide was out, so the boats were on their sides.

We visited the market, which is quite famous.

We had lunch at a restaurant with a beautiful garden.

Then we saw some of the volcanos around here, and boarded our late plane.

Cascades

The Parque Nacional Vicente Perez Rosales is known for its cascades and waterfalls. Like the rest of the lakes district, it’s very wet, with several of the active volcanos in the area.

We then visited a fish farm that grows Atlantic salmon spawn up to 150mm, before sending them on to another place where thee water is more salty. The gardens were created by one of Chile’s most famous landscape gardeners, using mainly local plants.

On the way back we went up to a ski field on the side of a volcano, but there was still too much cloud cover to see it.

We looked around Pueto Varas at all the German houses, but my camera battery went flat after we started to climb the tiled steps.