Incredible on a perfect day.
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The mountains of Torres del Paine are maybe the most amazing we have ever seen. And our first time to see a glacier ending in the water. The face of the glacier is maybe 80 ft. high. And it amazing to be walking along in an alpine forest and seeing snow capped mountains above you and only being at 500 ft. elevation, but the peaks are 9000 ft in elevation. The peaks are of various shapes and colors. First refugio was very nice. Bunk beds with sheets, blankets, soap and fluffy towels. Breakfast included scrambled eggs. Second refugio more rustic and not as clean. Nice sleeping bags-no soap or towels. Both had large dinners to match ten hours of hiking-meat, potatoes, soup, bread, “Tang”. Desert. Hot and filling. Many people on trail. The route is part of both the circuit and the W. And can be done as a day hike from Paine Grande-both people spending the night there and day trippersfrom Puerto Natales. A short catamaran ride connects the road to Ref. Paine Grande. Thursday windy but made for photographical clouds. Friday less windy but mostly cloudy and a little drizzle. Our second Refugio was good too. More what we expected-sleeping bags, no towels, thinner walls. But nice warm common area, interesting guests, pleasant young staff, hearty simple food. Barely adequate hot shower.
Today we visited Magdalena Island, home for several months to 150,000 penguins. That is a lot of penguins. They are smaller than the emperor penguins. The weather in Patagonia is a rapidly changing mix of sun, rain and wind. Rains almost every day. But the scenery is great. Here in the very south mostly the vegetation, although on Navarino Island some spires.
Chile and Argentina here we come. We’re on board. Our travel companions Bob and Anita left yesterday and we’ll catch up with them in Ushuaia. We sent out snail mail and email greetings, but may have missed a few people. You can see it here. Just getting over jet-lag after being back for five days. The trip was great. We met some wonderful people; reestablished relationships with others, enjoyed great scenery—natural and man made, had good food and wine, did some good hiking and biking. And learned some French—we’re both improved immensely and Louisa can carry on a conversation. We would liked to have posted more, but we didn’t take a computer, and France and Switzerland don’t have many internet cafes. We took a bunch of photos and plan to post some on the site. No video except some shot with point-and-shoot cameras. One of the thing I first noticed when coming home is that more than half the vehicles are monster SUVs, trucks, and crossovers (station wagons). More than half the cars in France and Switzerland were (sub) compacts. Almost no pickups. Tradespeople use compact vehicles (like the Chrysler PT cruiser) or Sprinter like box vans. The other thing of course is the lack of old, beautiful buildings. They keep up their old homes and villages and spent money restoring public building and castles, etc.. No wonder France is the number one tourist destination in the world. But they take tourism more seriously than we seem too. (Getting on soap box: I would assume tourism creates lots of lower skilled jobs that we certainly need. A recent LA Times article stated that tourism was now the regions biggest employer, since trade had dropped. We probably need to save more old building and realize that tourism is important to the economy. We will have to lower the barriers to foreigners traveling here too. We can’t be and don’t want to be Europe, but we could consider tourism more when making public financing decisions.) 
1100m road climb. Mostly singletrack down. 
Greg and Louisa in front of their French language school 
Bonnie sur Loire 
Jazz on the Street-Sancerre |
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