After a couple of days of travel, we landed in the windy little city at the southern tip of Chile: Punta Arenas. We arrived on a Sunday, which meant the town was pretty much a ghost town. Most shops, restaurants and cafes were closed and the streets were empty - empty of people that is. We were amazed at the number of dogs that roamed the streets. …

My family is really into beer. REALLY into beer. Beer is our own family form of currency “I’ll trade you two Bourbon Countys for one Barrel Aged Narwhal” is not a phrase that would sound out of place in my house. We have spreadsheets dedicated to tracking the rare beers we are able to find, and what our stock looks like of each …

Along the drive from Punta Arenas to Torres del Paine, we had the chance to stop at Cerro Negro Ranch. This ranch is owned and operated by the same family who runs Las Torres Hotel and it has been in the family for over 100 years.

Normally, you transfer in the morning with a larger group, and stop at the ranch for a tour, sheep show and big …

I’ll be honest. Patagonia has never really appealed to me. I live in a beautiful valley in the mountains, and Glacier National Park is my family’s weekend camping spot, so traveling thousands of miles to see mountains that looked less impressive to me in photos than what I see in my regular daily life just seemed silly. I know, …

If you want to see just about all of Torres del Paine in one day, the “Paine by Van” tour is the way to go. It is essentially like driving the two loops in Yellowstone National Park in one day. With a fabulous guide and driver to lead the way, we piled into a van with some Americans, Aussies and Brazilians and made our way across the …

The infamous Towers Trek. The one excursion that everyone swears you MUST do while in Patagonia. The normal trek that most hikers do is an 8 hour ordeal. You have 4 hours of hiking up to reach the towers, and then 4 hours of hiking back down again at the end. The hike is not an easy one, or a horizontal one. You are making your way up and over …

The border crossing from Chile to Argentina was one of the strangest I have ever made in my life! Our journey began at Las Torres where we loaded into our van with our driver who spoke very limited English. We picked up another traveler at EcoCamp and then made our way to the border. There are 2 stages to crossing the border: Leaving Chile and …

El Calafate was not quite what I expected. I’m not sure what it was that I had expected - maybe something similar to Ushuaia or Punta Arenas. Instead, what I found was what you would expect in a high-end mountain resort town in the US. It reminded me a bit of Big Fork, MT, Leavenworth, WA or Park City, UT in the summer.

The main street of …

Our day on Perito Moreno Glacier reminded us that it is best to always be prepared! Something we were careful of in our early traveling days, but have gotten more lazy about with age.

As we packed our backpacks for our day on the glacier, we basked in the sun that streamed in through our open windows in our room in El Calafate. We enjoyed the …