Navimag
Well, we`re just about finished with puerto natales, all that remains is to stock up on beer and snacks for a 4 day trip through the austral fjords to Puerto Montt on the Navimag.
We´ve just been 5 days in Torres del Paine, camping all the way. Its pure scenary overload, on one side there´s a huge glacier, the other a huge lake, the center has the paine towers - 2500m high towers of granite that well, tower over you. The east side is completely black and devastated, the result of a careless camper with a cooking stove - the fire went on for several months, which I find hard to believe considering the amount of freezing rain we had. This is all granite rock, which makes the paths straight up, straight down - you learn to dread river valleys.
We did what`s known as the "W", but kinda backwards - east to west. The hardest walk in the entire place, the climb to las torres, we did first. That was mad, real scrambling up rocks 45` angle for the last hour. 5 days worth of food in a rucksack is heavy. The full circuit sounded great, and we had the time to do it, its just the reports of knee high snow and ankle deep mud put us off. And the wind... I think the best description is, imagine 120kmh gusts of wind in every direction at the same time, and then, occasionally, one of those directions will let off. It was quite funny, you could walk uphill with the wind behind your back and you`d feel weightless.
We met some Royal Navy lads, their ship was stationed off the antartic, so they chose to tale their shore leave here. They`d got bored of skiing down glaciers dodging penguins and sea lions in antartica, they were fully kitted out with rat packs, light sticks, military sleeping bags. Its a hard life.
Doh! I changed the batteries on the camera, and it reset the settings to 640x480, I didn`t notice. Nice high res piccies from now on.
Inspite of the forest fires we were allowed to make fires at one of the campsites. We learnt how to cook a meal in a fire (Rice can take up to 2 hours) and ruin our cooking pots. It was the tasteist meal we had in 5 days though - I don´t think I´ll be able to look at another packet mix for a while.
Its funny what news makes it this far - I picked up a Buenos Aires Herald, an english newspaper. Aparantely, the Millenium bridge has been unwobbled, and the queen doesn`t think the olympics will get to britain.
We´ve just been 5 days in Torres del Paine, camping all the way. Its pure scenary overload, on one side there´s a huge glacier, the other a huge lake, the center has the paine towers - 2500m high towers of granite that well, tower over you. The east side is completely black and devastated, the result of a careless camper with a cooking stove - the fire went on for several months, which I find hard to believe considering the amount of freezing rain we had. This is all granite rock, which makes the paths straight up, straight down - you learn to dread river valleys.
We did what`s known as the "W", but kinda backwards - east to west. The hardest walk in the entire place, the climb to las torres, we did first. That was mad, real scrambling up rocks 45` angle for the last hour. 5 days worth of food in a rucksack is heavy. The full circuit sounded great, and we had the time to do it, its just the reports of knee high snow and ankle deep mud put us off. And the wind... I think the best description is, imagine 120kmh gusts of wind in every direction at the same time, and then, occasionally, one of those directions will let off. It was quite funny, you could walk uphill with the wind behind your back and you`d feel weightless.
We met some Royal Navy lads, their ship was stationed off the antartic, so they chose to tale their shore leave here. They`d got bored of skiing down glaciers dodging penguins and sea lions in antartica, they were fully kitted out with rat packs, light sticks, military sleeping bags. Its a hard life.
Doh! I changed the batteries on the camera, and it reset the settings to 640x480, I didn`t notice. Nice high res piccies from now on.
Inspite of the forest fires we were allowed to make fires at one of the campsites. We learnt how to cook a meal in a fire (Rice can take up to 2 hours) and ruin our cooking pots. It was the tasteist meal we had in 5 days though - I don´t think I´ll be able to look at another packet mix for a while.
Its funny what news makes it this far - I picked up a Buenos Aires Herald, an english newspaper. Aparantely, the Millenium bridge has been unwobbled, and the queen doesn`t think the olympics will get to britain.
posted by Matt and Lizzie at
7:49 PM
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