let's get down to some serious hiking!

I will "jump" to the present and then work my way back in time to, maybe, connect to where we were going in my last post, meeting Felipe and then travelling with him to Chiloé. I want to write about Patagonia while it's fresh in my mind.

We're currently in Northern Patagonia, riding buses on the Carretera Austral, the famous Highway 7 that runs north-south from the town of Puerto Montt to the literal end of the road at Villa O'Higgins. From there, there are various ways to get to Southern Patagonia and then, if you have the time and the budget (we don't), to the "bottom" or most Southern part of our amazing world, the South Pole and Antartica. We've chosen the CAB route (surprise, surprise), a bus from Coyhaique, a scant 12 hour ride through Argentina, then back into Chile ending in Punta Arenas. Then we'll make our way north for a bit to Puerto Natales to hike the famous Torres del Paine. Then fly back to Santiago and either hang there for a few days or hit the beaches of Viña del Mar before our leaving Chile on March 10.

OK, back to the present, kind of... We didn't start at the most northern part of the Carretera Austral, we started at Puyuhuapi because we wanted to hike Queulat National Park to see the very cool Hanging Glacier. We set out as early as we could for the hike to hopefully have a bit of quiet contemplation time and unobstrcted views of the waterfalls coming down from the glacier before the hoards arrived. We did and it was as beautiful as advertised but as we sat on a bench admiring it, along with a German girl who was there, we all couldn't help but be reminded that it was another sad reminder of climate warming. Pictures and accompanying explanations note that the pace of how much the glacier has been receding has really picked up and that is why there are waterfalls.

The pictures here are from Puyuhuapi and the hike. Enjoy!Read more