Valentinas Travels

Today, we took a bus which brought us from Puerto Natales to Punta Arenas, another city in the chilean part of Patagonia. After El Calafate and Puerto Natales we didn't really like it. Maybe it was also because we had so much nature around us for the last days that we weren't much motivated to explore the city. We had a nice late lunch at "Los Lomitos" and later explored the cementary (quite impressive!), afterwards a very funny evening at "La Marmita" restaurant.  Punta Arenas The next day, we left Punta Arenas. This journey was long. 12 hours to Ushuaia - to the End of the World. Tierra del fuego. Land of fire. We were all a bit afraid of the 12h busride (especially those without netflix...), but it was not as hard as we had thought. In the bus, we got something to eat (better service than at home!!), then we had to change to the ferry. This was a welcome change - even if the waves made us all looking contentrated to the horizon.. :-) Cros

Today started another highlight of the Patagonia tour: The 3 day hike in the Torres del paine- Nationalpark. Most of the hikers do the big "W-Trek", which takes about 4 to 5 days, we did a short version of it in 2.5 days.  In the early morning, we had breakfast (coffee, toast, dulce de leche and cake - as always!), then took  took a bus and drove to the park entrance. On the way, we had the chance to see fantastic landscapes, condors and guanacos. We also already could catch a first glimpse of the pikes of the 3 Torres ("towers" of Paine), 2800 m high and of the must-do's in Patagonia. We started our hike. The weater was perfect, so it was a really nice hike through the Ascensio valley up to the Torres viewpoint.  Condor Firste glimpse of the Torres del paine - some hours later we will be just on the bottom of those mountains! The hike was quite steep, but the views were amazing!  The Ascensio valley Hello there!  After an