We are in the Torres del Paine national park. We should be tenting but it is raining and blowing so we are in a velly velly expensive Chilean pub. We had a slow and gentle exit from the Santa Monica apartments at around 9am having had long showers and leisurely breakfasts. It was then a quick and dirty blast down a sealed road sitting on around 125kph to Esperanza where we gassed up, had a coffee and met lots of people on buses.
These ones are from Israel.
Kiwi was a bit po to find he wasn't allowed in the coffee shop. We ignored it!
We then zoomed off down another sealed road to Cancha Carrera where we exited Argentina and re-entered Chile. Lots of queues and paperwork. Boring! We had some lunch there amongst the bus passengers. Then across to Cerro Castillo and onto the gravel for the 100kms up to the national park. The rain was building up now so we were travelling pretty slowly in the gravel. We came up on these Guanacos on the side of the road.
Spitting!
These are the animals that I previously referred to as vicuña or as llamas. They are in the same family obviously (along with camels) but are a species of their own. An endangered animal, we were told it was the only species in the family that cannot be domesticated.
That took us up to the entrance to the national park; proper name: Parque Nacional Torres del Paine.
We went up a relatively gnarly dirt and gravel road to this flash pub. It was quite cool now, wet and windy so, being wooses, we decided to check in thinking that tomorrow we will camp. Probably. Or maybe the next day. It was painful on the wallet but we did it anyway.
Mark went across to a grocery store and bought some beer and we are now sitting, having a rain and watching the beer fall. It feels pretty good. We caught up with D&D and went for the buffet dinner. Not bad. And a bottle of pinto noir. Not bad either.
:-)
That will be about that.
Today's run: 353kms
Cumulative: 37,693 kms
Tipovers: 5
Location:Hotel Las Torres, Patagonia, Chile
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