Margie's Torres Del Paine and Atacama Desert Trip

Our first adventure was an early morning trip to an island penguin colony, populated by about 69,000 couples of mainly Magellanic penguins. We were limited to a pathway through some of their nesting areas, but they were not. We saw many young ones peaking out of their nests of holes in the ground. The sounds of so many penguins calling to each other was great. In the afternoon we were drive by van to Puerto Natales where we stayed at the Weskar Lodge.

In the morning we took a boat trip up Last Hope Fjord which was supposed to have taken us to a Zodiac trip on the Serrano River. The wind began to blow too hard and we had to turn around about three quarters of the way, but we were given a van ride to the Zodiac base. We took the Zodiac to the Serrano Glacier where we left the boat and walked up near the glacier. We arrived by van at EcoCamp in the late afternoon and were delighted to find such a unique place. It would take paragraphs to describe the cabins and other buildings, so check out my pictures. In the evening we met our group of thirteen. It was truly an international group with only a few Americans. We were served pisco sours while we learned about our next day's adventure, and then ate an excellent dinner. They even had a pastry chef who made beautiful deserts.

In the morning we began our trek with our guides, Loreto and Gabo. Much of the hike was long Lago Nordenskjold going west, with beautiful views of the Lake. We spent that night in cabins at Refugio Los Cuernos. Just outside our cabin was a thundering waterfall that made a perfect background noise for sleeping.

The trek up the French Valley was a highlight of the entire trip. We passed a glacier that sounded like thunder as it avalanched and calved. When we reached the top of the hike the views were beyond description. Mountains circled us, each peak very different from the other. One shaped like a shark's fin was totally unique from the others. We spend a while sitting on rocks and absorbing the scene. After hiking back down the valley and further west we spent the night at Paine Grande Mountain Lodge.

In the morning we hiked westward again. Much of the trail was in view of Lago Grey and as we got closer to the glacier we had beautiful views. This section had an abundance of flowers with firebush shrubs that brigntened up the pictures. We got to the location for the boat ride to the glacier just in time. We boarded the boat and were served pisco sours with glacier ice as we motored towards the glacier. It has three outlets and we approached all three of them quite close. It was interesting how different sections of the glacier had different formations. From the .dock where we left the boat we took a van ride back to EcoCamp where we had another great dinner and spent the night.

This day we hiked up the east leg of the W trek to the Torres del Paine. The first part of the trek was fairly easy, but the last part up to the towers was a rock scramble. We had fantastic luck the entire trip with clear weather so that we had perfect views of the towers. It was hard to visualize, even standing there, how tall the towers are.

We got up early in the morning for our drive out to the Geyser to get the best views of the steam rising into the morning light. In the afternoon we visited the Valley of the Moon where we walked through a canyon with talking walls. The rocks made a cracking noise as the salt in the expanded with the temperature changes.

This day we drove through the small town of Tocona out onto the Salt Flats, and to the lagoons of Mescanti and Meniques.

On our last full day in San Pedro we drove out to Sejar Lake, a salt water lake that some tourists like to swim in to see how well they float.

We flew back into Santiago where Janet continued on home and I stayed on for another week exploring the city on foot and taking day tours. I returned home on New Years Eve.