Torres del Paine National Park, Chile

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February 15th - Gonna go easy on the words today.  This park needs no introduction.  We learnt a bunch of interesting stuff and we saw those iconic towers. But more than that we spent the day enveloped in Patagonia, its landscape, its weather, its flora, and a little of its fauna. We breathed its air, we felt the sting of its horizontal rain flailing our skin, we tasted its dust, and our eyes swam in its endless expanses of steppe, lakes, and granite.  Here are some pictures.

Our guide, Boris, was an enthusiastic and able photographer

Hmmm

Above average picnic spot

These two

Boy, wind, improbably blue water

North, Central, and South towers, visible at the back of the Torres del Paine massif

Windy, everywhere

Guanacas, reminsicent of deer but related to camels. You will see them all over the place

The dusty road through the rolling Patogonian plains

This was the windiest point on the trip. Our guide recommended holding onto the kids. He was not being overly dramatic





Boris, Crystal, and Felicity on the new bridge over the Grey River on the way to Grey Lake

Iceberg, calved from the Grey glacier, floating in Lago Grey 

When we're carrying the rain gear around with us all year, it is good to have one or two occasions to justify it. Rain and wind on the shore of Lago Grey

Glacier ice. I studied a little glaciology but I have no idea how long ago the snow fell that became that ice 

Condor above Lago Grey


The mightily impressive Milodon cave. A tourist attraction that is enjoyable and educational

This is a lifesize model of a Milodon, a large mammal extinct for around 11,000 years. It didn't like the end of the iceage here because everything turned into a big lake.  A lake which also created the Milodon cave, in which we are standing.


Available in the gift shop that we passed on the way home 




Comments

Jason Clarke said…
very nice pictures, wish I was there, miss you!
love,
Olivia
February 18, 2022 at 2:42 PM
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