Pinguinos

Well after discovering that we had missed seeing Orcas by one measly day we tried very hard to maintain our excitement of seeing penguins. We went to Punta Tombo to find Penguins where there is the largest colony of Penguins outside Antarctica. It was beyond weird to see Penguins sunbathing, it felt like they were on their summer holidays or something.

The Penguins were pretty damn cute and there were thousands of them, I had imagined them all crowded on the beach fighting for room but instead they spread themselves in land, despite having to return to the sea to feed.

Yes my hair needs a shear!

Also we think the owners of the land must have decided to diversify as there were also loads of Alpacas?/Guanaco?/Llamas? - we don't understand the difference.

Silver Service in Bariloche.

It's a small world after all. On the other side of the world not only do we bump into Natalie and Tom but we find the equivalent of the 'Happy Man'. Huge plus, Bariloche was HOT, shocking but pleasantly surprising!

On a crazy day of cycling around many, many, many hills we found some very exciting places. We found the 'Happy Man' (Argentina Style) plus a lake to swim in. Unfortunately we hadn't realised there would be the opportunity to swim so didn't have swimming stuff. This failed to stop the boys though, Matt and Tom seem to lead each other astray somewhat. In the end the boys were greatly entertaining people as they worked out routines to jump into the lake in some kind of choreographed manoeuvre.

Chiloe - Yes it's in Chile, no it's not a spelling mistake!

Well after all the hard work that we had done in Torres del Paine it seemed only fair that we had a relaxing weekend at the seaside. We worked our way up from Puerto Natale to a point 30 hours and some 1100 km further north (having to travel through Argentina to get there due to a lack of roads in Chile!). We spent a few days chilling in a little island off Chile called Chiloe, where the sea food was amazing. Houses are built on stilts in the water and vultures mix with sea gulls on the beach. We both ate ridiculous amounts of fish including the local speacility of Curanto a sea fish and meat stew with corn bread. Also tried Congrio a big eel like fish which tastes amazing! YUM YUM

 On the way back into Argentina we also discovered the reason that Starbucks has yet to have broken South America!

Torres del PAINe

First to clarify it was not painful and I Matthew loved it. Harriet also loved it in so far as she can say that she did it!

Torres del Paine is one of Chile's national parks and you can either walk the 4/5 day W Trek or an 8 day Circuit. We chose the W Trek and due to irregularity of buses we had 6 days to complete this. Turns out that however unfit I (Harriet) am we could have done it in 4 days easily. In total we walked just over 80 km, thanks to Matt's inability (or Harriets!!!) to read a map we went the wrong way for a good hour on the last day. I'm sure many of you can imagine my reaction to being told that we had to go back and then I was still expected to walk 20 km on top on this detour.

On the plus side I would say that I have never seen views as outstanding as those in the park and that despite finding it hard work it was definitely worth seeing. We were ridiculously lucky that we had 5 days of glorious sunshine and it only rained as we were leaving the park. In fact we had been so conditioned to expect rain and perhaps even sleet, despite it being summer, that we took only thermals, fleeces and waterproofs with us to the park. This meant that on some days we were more likely to get heat/sun stroke! Luckily the park is so clean and unpolluted that you can drink from all the streams so it meant that we could drink without carrying too much water or having to ration it!

 We (by this I mean Matthew) had to carry the tent, sleeping bags and food for 6 days. I took the roll mats and the few clothes I was allowed to bring. As we only had 2 showers on the last two nights of the 6 day and 80 km walk I'm sure none of you want to imagine how disgusting we were. In the 80km we saw the 'Torres' three tower looking mountains at sunrise, lakes, glaciers, guanco (llama things), condors and gauchos. It was pretty cool to be honest but we are now having a break from trekking for a bit owing to a promise made by Matthew that if I didn't cry we could see Penguins!  Penguins are next week, YAY!

It's the end of the world!!

We are in Ushuaia which is the Southern most city of the world, technically in Argentina but to get here from mainland Argentina you have to cross into Chile, so we received 4 more immigration stamps, which somehow still excites Harriet.  From Ushuaia you can get to Anarctica, not that we will be heading that way this time, cheapest tickets are $3.500 - it was at very tempting to put our savings on 28 on the roulette tables, however being very sensible and mature I decided this was a terrible idea and managed to dissuade Harriet - lucky escape me thinks.

Instead we dared to venture onto a 4 hour boat trip on the Beagle Canal and saw Sea Lions, Cormorants and "learnt" about extinct (bar one) indigenious people who apparently lived naked all year round. As we are in the Summer here, and the temperatures have failed to reach the dizzying heights of double figures Harriet and I think they maybe should have invested in some North Face!!

Cormorants - We wish they were Penguins

The city of Ushuaia is more like a town but it has a pretty cool vibe and a million (well approximately a million)  English people, most going on cruises. There is nothing stranger than hearing a Northern accent in a tea house 14,000 km from home! The Tent - named Terrence- is going very well depsite ice age conditions. The campsite was  very posh, this one even has WIFI. There are also beautiful birds in the woodlands surrounding - see pic!

On the way from Ushuaia to Chile crossing the Magellan Straits we saw Commerson's Dolphins. 

El Chalten

So, we decided to go to the Argentinian capital of hiking - obviously - it seemed like a sensible idea,what with Harriet's high levels of fitness. Harriet once told me a story of refusing - when she was younger - to climb a mountain for which she got labelled as "Barbie got lost", I now appreciate this more. Although I must add that she acted like a grown up and only had one minor paddy. Going for a walk with Harriet reminds me of walking my Mum's dog, you get to a point and then you are forced to drag, bully or push her to go any further.

Also, sensibly, we decided to buy a tent. Which again made sense in our heads, it's not like Patagonia is renowned  for gale force winds and rain! Its bright orange and goes beautifully with my hair.

We went for a couple of "treks" and saw some more mountains and a horrendously dirty and small glacier. The highlight had to be walking for 12 km to get to an apparently beautiful lake in front of Cerro Torres - a spiky mountain. Mr Cloud decided that he (or she) did not like us though, and obscured the spike, and the lake turned out to be the remnants of muddy glacier - not so pretty. The hike to and from though was amazing, and the water from the snow melt water streams was glorious - almost better than English tap water - ha.

 Bird with a super cool hairstyle

 Cerro Torre sin clouds

Unnecessarily arty flower photo