Even after the extremely strenuous trip from Dahab to Petra, I have not lost my eagerness for discovering new countries in just one day. But when the driver for a 5.30 pickup is twenty minutes early, even a morning person like myself can get a little grumpy. The drive to the Chilean border alone takes three hours, which gave me a chance to sleep a bit more. As soon as my passport had received another stamp fornthe collection, the countryside strated getting more interesting as well with Flamingos and Emus next to the road. And many Guanacas.
Guanacas are, as I have learned today, basically low-land lamas, as lamas - with the thicker fur - only live above 3000 m (to be featured in an upcoming blog post). And there are plenty of the flatland-lamas. They are basically everywhere (even on the thousand Chilean peso note edpicting Torres des Paine). The first picture-worthy spot without guarnacas was Sarmiento Lake. And getting out needed some self-control. If one would expect a place 1000 km from Antarctica to be cold, Ushuaia was the Carribean compard to the Chilean Andes. I haven't been this cold in a long time - must have gotten used to the mild Irish winter.
A hiking path not only led us past many brunt trees that a careless Israeli backpacker has to be made responsible for but also into a mild little snow storm. Our guide seemed quite taken by surprise as well as he said that it should be spring right now. Torres del Paine has a very special microclimate. The weather is said to change five times a day and thus - to the benefit of my alrady slightly blue fingertips - an hour later we had beautiful sunshine. It still took a while until the thick clouds started to fade a way and draw the veil on the amazing scenery of the mountains. The contrast with the turquoise lakes, fed by glacial water and the granite and basalt rocks was really pretty to look at.
Torres del Paine is definitely a great national park. There is a five day hike called the "W". Anyone up for it after seeing the pictures?
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| A guanaco |
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| Many guanacas |
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| Torres del Paine in the fog |
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| The trees/bushes here are burned down.. |
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| ...as a careless Israeli camper torched 30% of the Park |
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| Looks inviting, but might be a bit chilly |
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