It’s more than two months since we were in the southern Chilean region of Patagonia. We miss Patagonia so much our hearts just flutter every time we browse through the pics we took while there!

On 31 March 2008, we arrived in Puerto Natales, a town in the Chilean Patagonia (located nearly 250 km to the north of Punta Arenas) after taking a 3-hour bus ride from Punta Arenas. Puerto Natales is the “capital” of both the commune of the same name and the Última Esperanza Province of Magallanes and Antártica Chilena Region. We put in the quotation marks because it’s more like a very remote small town, quite bare of touristic shops.

When we were there, it was almost the start of the winter season, and so there were very few travelers there. The place was so peaceful and skies so cloudy that we couldn’t help reminding ourselves over and over again we were “at the end of the world”. There is only one “real” hotel in Puerto Natales; the other type of accommodation are basically family-run guesthouses or inns. There are 2 small supermarkets, and one was already closing and getting rid of its goods before winter.

We hope Puerto Natales stays this way - real, authentic and unhyped - for the sake of preserving its laid-back atmosphere and incredible scenery.

First day in Puerto Natales

 

Most shops were closed for the afternoon

 

Cute dustbin!

 

Grace with a mural of local painting behind

Church

We’re still not sure whether these trees were artificially shaped to look so rounded, or whether they grow into this shape naturally without help. We saw so many of these rounded trees (even in Punta Arenas) that we think perhaps it’s all natural.

 

Pedro with an old locomotive from the early 1900s

 

The inside of one of these round trees. After seeing this, we thought the trees might be naturally rounded.

 

Looks like something from a movie set

 

One of the hundreds of stray dogs in Puerto Natales. We’ve never seen so many stray dogs as we saw in Chile!

 

One of the buildings along the road. The place felt so much like Scandinavia.

Very yummy beef stew!

Fish and chips a la Patagonian

The most beautiful part of Puerto Natales is the sea and the Última Esperanza Sound. We’ll show you that in the next post!

We’re pretty close to Antarctica here in southern Chile. Antarctica has the largest icefield in the world, followed by Greenland and then the Southern Patagonian Icefields which we went to visit.

Grace on the boat

The biggest glacier we visited here in the Patagonian Icefield is the Perito Moreno Glacier on the Argentinian side of Patagonia; it’s a massive 258 km2. It empties into the Lago Argentino, and we could see how it actually formed an ice damn blocking one part of the lake from the other which makes one side rise 8 meters higher than the other.

Notice the boat? It looks like just a speck near the glacier

And here I am on that boat just a few minutes before

When you see the boat next to the glacier ,you can see how truly massive it is. The front wall of ice goes 50 meters above the lake and 150 meters to the bottom of the lake. It’s around 2km wide where it reaches the lake and stretches back some 32km.

Being so close to such a tremendous view of nature is truly awe-inspiring. We couldn’t stop looking at it and taking pictures of it.

 

The whole setting seemed like it was from a movie or fairy tale. There was a mist hanging over the mountains and the water in the lake was turquoise in color and as smooth and shiny as a piece of glass - until a chunk of ice fell off and sent some ripples through the lake.

 

Whenever a chunk of ice would break and fall into the lake, it would let off a thunderous roar. If you look closely at the picture above, you can see a small chunk falling off and the ripples it generates.

Going up close to the glacier on a boat

Some of the ice was really such a deep blue that it almost didn’t seem real, after all, we always imagine white or transparent ice. But where there were cracks or scratches on the white ice, it seemed to be filled with a deep blue glow.

We would have liked to stay admiring the view all day, but alas we only had a couple hours. The drive from Puerto Natales, Chile, to this glacier in Argentina took the better part of 5 hours each way, and the border closes at 10pm so we had to rush to get back in time.

How many people can go see penguins in their natural habitat after a morning’s work? Probably not too many, but today we were one of the lucky few. Yesterday, we flew from Mexico to Punta Arenas, Chile. Chile claims that Punta Arenas is the southern-most city in the world, although Argentina claims Ushuaia is. On the map, Ushuaia definitely looks further south, but Chileans say it’s too small to be considered a real city. Regardless of the veracity of either claim, it’s definitely a great place to be and there is a lot to do and see around here.

Our first penguin of the day

The penguin colony we visited is called the Seno Otway Reserve and at this time of year, most of the penguins have grown up and left, and the only penguins left are those that hatched late, took a while to grow up, or possibly couples whose egg never hatched and they’re still waiting. All of these penguins are Magellanic Penguins and live for 25-30 years.

Watching each other’s back

Grace on a watch tower overlooking penguins in the background 

 

Penguins coming back from a fishing trip

Molting penguin

This young penguin seems to be molting a bit late in the season as most penguins have already gone out to sea.

That’s not a penguin - it’s a ñandú

The ñandú looks a bit like an ostrich or emu, but is only found in certain parts of South America, including Patagonia (South of Chile where we are now). This one was looking for some food at the Seno Otway penguin colony.

p.s. During our time in Mexico, we were so busy that we rarely had time to write about what we were doing and seeing as every moment on the computer was spent working. We still have a lot of footage to show of many of the interesting places we visited and we’ll put it up later on.