Flamingos

After a few days in the Magellan region of Chile, we arrived in Puerto Natales, a small town in the southern part of Chilean Patagonia. This town is the closest civilization to a large national park where we’ll be trekking, even though it’s still 200km away from the park.

We took a 3.5 hour bus to get here, and at first we could only see the same arid landscape as Punta Arenas. We saw a ton of wild flamingos along the way, and that was an absolutely unique experience. Seeing them is actually something I’ve thought a lot about since, because when I saw them in zoos, I never dreamed I’d actually see them in the wild.

With about an hour left to go, however, the road curved and all of a sudden we could see the entire mountain range, and as we got closer, we were able to see mountain ranges on all sides. The mountains seemed to stretch on forever, and the overcast day gave them an incredible blue glow.

The first view of the mountains

More mountains, as seen from a moving bus

The town is quiet and touristy, but it’s been fun to explore. We went to a informative talk on the trek we’re doing and then had some great pizza for dinner. (There hasn’t been a lot of Chilean food in this town, unfortunately. It was first settled by German and Dutch relatively recently.)

The town sits right on the Strait, and on the other side is the mountain range. After dinner, we walked down to the water, which was incredibly stunning and incredibly windy. The winds in this region can get up to 190km/hr! Last year, they blew over a tour bus.

The Last Hope Sound

Mountains on the other side of the Sound

The wind!

After our trek (I promise an entire post devoted to the trek once I have my computer and DSLR photos), we crossed the border to Argentina. There were a few fiascos with buses and boats (more on that in another post), so we ended up in a town we didn’t think we would. It was beautiful, but I did feel unsafe for the first time this trip, just because the locals were definitely eyeing us as we walked by, and not necessarily in a nice way.

It could’ve just been my nerves and exhaustion though, because after I got more acclimated to the town, I really enjoyed exploring all of the shops. The best part, though, was the view from the boardwalk. The town of El Calafate is nestled between mountain ranges and the largest lake in all of Argentina. The view at sunset was truly breathtaking- and there were tons of Flamingos!