Torres del Paine National Park, Chile

-
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
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

An Alpine cycling adventure - Part II

-
Image
Day 6 - Barcelonnette to St Dalmas, 123 km (76 mi) Cols passed: Col de Cayolle (2326 m), Col de la Couillole (1678 m) Despite the brooding skies we left Barcelonnette cheered by dry shorts, confidence that we were within touching distance of our goal and enjoying the atmospheric effect of the wispy mist, high clouds and soft sunlight. Our hopes for the newly adapted route were met and surpassed as we wound our way up a stunning gorge towards Col de Cayolle. Despite a brief hailstorm as we approached the col we stayed dry and enjoyed a pit-stop and blankets amongst the snow pack on the col before negotiating over 1500 m of patchy wet descent to Guillames at 793 m. The high Alps now behind us we climbed back up through the ski resort of Valberg and on to the Col de la Couillole up at 1678 m and rolled back down to 500 m where we expected to spend the night. Our ever-supportive support team had other ideas however and let us know by way of text message that they had found a fantastic ca...
Read more

Rafting the Rio Maipo

-
Image
  Feb 5th -  Sometimes travelling is hard, and I have moaned a bit about how covid has made everything harder. But sometimes it's just pure fun.  Not to say that everything about our day out rafting was plain sailing. To begin with we had to get everyone on board (have you ever noticed how many of our idioms come from nautical activities? Ask me sometime about freezing the balls off a brass monkey...).  I enjoyed the water as a kid but I never went white water rafting until I was a fully grown person. I can see how it could be intimidating. We found Natexplora who said they ran kids trips and that was enough to sway the doubters. The fact that we ran the same route as the other six adult-only rafts on our trip was fortunately lost in the joy and thrill of the moment. There is a project to divert water from the Maipo through a hydroelectric tunnel. Apparently, this will reduce the flow of Maipo by 90%. We had heard of this scheme, and we saw these signs, although the ...
Read more

10 December days in England

-
Image
Swiss air brought us to England (Apologies for the formatting issues). My six oldest friends live in England, within around 20 miles of each other, along with their six partners and 14 children.  We haven't been to England in the winter in nearly a decade. It was unsurpsingly grey and somewhat surprisingly very dark, very early.  Ottawa is on the same latitude as Rome.  Our "true North" is suprisingly far south.  All of this English gloom was no equal to the congenial cheer that was in full flow in the run up to Christmas - the sunshine of friendship radiating through the pale fog.  We had a very smooth taxi-bus-plane-taxi trip from Chamonix back to Woking and were settled just in time to wave our generous hosts, Nick and Agnes, off to London for their Van Gogh and Shard dinner engagements to celebrate the anniversary of their first date.  We were comfortably house bound for the first couple of days awaiting what else but a covid test result.  When it...
Read more