Puerto Natales

A short (3 hours), pretty bus ride took us to this gateway town to Chilean Patagonia and the national park. On the way we saw flamingoes and several more guanacos.
The town is relatively small and set on a pretty bay and is jam-packed full of surprisingly good restaurants, lots of hotels/hostels and shops selling high-end hiking gear. Apart from wandering around the town, we took a trip out to the nearby Lake Sofia where we did a short hike to see our first Andean condors flying above the cliffs.
Like other towns in Chile and Argentina, people seem to let their dogs roam free. The dogs are clearly well fed and looked after (in stark contrast to feral dogs we saw all over Asia and Africa), but they are everywhere. Unfortunately, they are not all friendly and one seemingly very cute sheep-dog type unceremoniously bit John on his calf as we walked by. Quite a shock! Christy used her best ‘Narcos’ Spanish to let the owners know we were not happy to be bitten by their dog. Luckily, the bite only bruised, but didn’t break skin. This is the last place we’d have expected something like this to happen after many harrowing experiences with dogs in Asia and Africa. We’ve definitely been wary of dogs since this incident.Read more