What a crazy few days we have had. On March 3 we flew from Puerto Varas (var-ass) to Punta Arenas both in Chile. From the Punta Arenas (a-rain-us) airport we spent the day in a van to get to Torres del Paine (tore-aaze del pie-nah) National Park which had a beautiful hotel on a lake looking at mountains.

View from the bar at hotel with volcano shrouded in clouds but still beautiful

Torres del Paine means towers and blue. There are three volcano peaks which were somewhat shrouded in clouds so that is the towers part of the name. Blue represents the sky and is the original indigenous name. When we were having breakfast it was still cloudy from the previous day’s rain but cleared off into perfect blue sky for our tour and hiking. By the time we got to the towers mirador (mirador is lookout in Spanish) it was shrouded. The roads we travelled were washboard at the best and terrible potholes. Nothing was paved and only dirt roads. I think the roads were the worst roads we have ever been on in our lives and the driver driving fast on them made it worse. My reared was sore when we returned.

The Guanoco (gwa-nocko) our favorite animal

Here is our favorite bird the Lesser rhea

I didn’t take this photo as were were always driving when we saw them along the road.

We also saw condors but they were not impressive. They look like Ohio vultures but bigger. They can get 10 feet of so wing tip to wing tip but these were smaller.

On March 4 we took a tour on the mountains/volcano and took way more pictures than we normally take because of the majesty and beauty of the volcano.

The three towers enshrouded
Nice panorama
Video
This is what minor washboard inside the van looks like.
It was in upper 40’s and strong 30-40 mph wind. Cold at times
Our group, We like everyone. Bottom right is Camilia our guide overseer
This is nothing
On March 4 we flew red arrow from Puerto Varas to Punta Arenas (red) then drove bus (blue) to Torres del Piene (blue). March 5 we drove to Calafate (green). On March 7 we fly to Ushuaia (yellow). Black is flying back to Buenos Aires later this week.

Today we rode in a different van with a different drive from Torres del Paine to Calafate (cal-a-fah-tay) so we had to stop at the Chilean border to go through immigration and then 10 minutes down the road we had to again go through Argentina immigration which is not a problem but adds an hour to the trip.