Goodbye, Patagonia

On our last day in "real" Patagonia (technically, I think the Lakes District is considered Patagonia by the Argentinian government, probably just so they can label wine as Patagonian!), we traveled back to Punta Arenas, where we had flown in nearly a month before. Our bus made it into town with just enough time to run to the docks and catch a boat, all so we could fulfill Allison's final Patagonian wish:

PENGUINS. PENGUINS. PENGUINS.

We sat down for another (knee-agonizing) 2 hours to make it to Isla Magdalena. Totally worth it.

There are 69,000 breeding pairs of Magellanic Penguins on the island. I tried to fit them all in this picture, but some were hiding in their burrows.

A set of penguin chicks, looking very cute. They're starting to lose their gray fuzz and develop the distinctive black-and-white feathering of adult penguins.

I stared at the pengüinos, and some of them stared back.

8 January 2010

Picture of the day: sunset over Lago Nordenskjold and the Valle de Francés, a few steps from our campsite on the third night.

7 January 2010

Picture(s) of the day: Glaciar Francés, right next to our campsite the second night. We kept hearing claps of thunder every 20 minutes, and wondering what in the world it could be, since Patagonia almost never gets thunderstorms. The next day, we figured it out: avalanches! (Check out the second picture to see a nice avalanche we finally got a shot of.)

6 January 2010

Picture of the day: the mountains around the Valle de Francés.

This was the third, and most beautiful, day of the trek. We hiked up the Valle de Francés, which was stunning in a way that is hard to capture in photos. On one side was huge, Andes-like mountains with hanging glaciars. On the other side was sheer rock mountains, too steep to hold snow. It was like someone pushed together Rocky Mountain National Park and Yosemite National Park into one very small valley.

5 January 2010

Picture of the day: Glaciar Grey stretching back to the Southern Patagonia Ice Field.

We spent our first night of our trek on a beach next to this glaciar. Not surprisingly, it was a bit cold that night!

ALIVE!! (take 2)

We survived our second trek, the famous "W" in Parque Nacional Torres del Paine.

And by survived, I mean barely survived. There was a nasty incident with getting very, very ill at one of the most distant points of the trail (apparently there's been a breakout of norovirus or some other similar nasty at all the campsites on trail for the past 2 weeks). However, Allison is a total champ who can hike 11 km--that's 4.5 hours!!--with a full pack to get back to civilization, even if she's been throwing up all night. We found out later that a group of 20 people had been evacuated the same night from the park to the hospital at Puerto Natales. (Wimps.)

However, most of the trek until the last day was beautiful weather, beautiful views, and wonderful hiking. We knew we were going to have a good time when we arrived at the park, got on the catamaran to get to our first trailhead, and were rewarded with this view:

Los Cuernos behind Lago Pehoé

4 January 2010

Picture(s) of the day: Glaciar Perito Moreno, one of the major glaciars feeding Lago Argentino.

While most glaciars in the world are receding, this glaciar is one of the few that is actually growing. It also is one of the fastest-moving in the world, advancing about 6 feet per day. We spent a few hours on walkways above the glaciar, watching huge pieces (i.e., the size of small buildings) of ice calve into the water.