Torres del Paine National Park

Wednesday May 21, 2008 6:45 AM the alarm sounds... rise and shine. It´s time to head 2 hours west to Torres del Paine National Park. We eat breakfast and then proceed to wait for the next hour for our tour guide and jeep. Eric and I are sitting in the living room, waiting, until finally the phone rings. Gloria (the lady whose hostel we´re staying at) answers the phone and tells us that the jeep is running late due to a flat tire. That´s fine, they should be here soon and only an hour late at this point. I could have slept in much longer than 6:45, as many of you know how much I like to sleep.

So, about 15 minutes later we hear this car screech around the corner, do a 360 in front of the house, and T-Bone into the curb. It screeched again, and continued into a 180. Eric says "Here is the jeep." I looked at him and said "I am NOT going in that....!!!!" and he started to laugh of all things. Laugh at me becuse I was scared to death that that was the car that was going to drive us 2 hours on icy roads to the national park. The car ended up driving away and left me to think about who really was going to be picking us up. It ended up being a nice man named Hector with a Dutch couple in the back (who were headed to the park as well). Quite an exciting morning!

The Torres del Paine National Park was breathtaking. Mountains, rivers, lakes, glaciers, icebergs, waterfalls, and lots of wildlife. Guanacos, which are related to the Llama, foxes, and condors just to name a few. We were at the park from 11AM until 6PM with a private tour guide. Some of the pictures from the day are posted. It was a wonderful day that took us from gazing at the Torres del Paine (which one of Eric´s friends has climbed)to holding 1000 year old ice from the Grey Glacier. Every now and then throughout the day, Eric would start laughing to himself, recalling the look on my face from that morning and I would just look at him, shaking my head. Oh well, it makes for a good story I guess...

We are now on our last day here at Puerto Natales, Chile and will be getting on a ferry tonight at 9, called the M/V Puerto Eden to head north to Puerto Montt. We´ll be on the boat until Tuesday. We have plenty of cards, dice games, books and what I´m sure will be amazing views as we head north to keep us occupied as they don´t have internet on board.

The week in Puerto Natales has been very relaxing, other than the rush of anxiety and fear the other morning from the screeching car. We have enjoyed the hospitality of Gloria and her family at this hostel and she even taught me how to make empanadas from scratch, dough, and everything. I hope to try it out when we get back home. Anyone up for homeade empanadas? We won´t be writing again until late next week when we´ll have pictures of the ferry trip and more stories to share.

Until then, ciao!

Erika