Patagonia

Hi Everybody,
We are currently in Puerto Natales, Chile, but leaving today for El Calafate in Argentina. Patgonia is beautiful. Cold, and windy but beautiful. The pictures I have here really don't do justice to the variety in the landscape, the colors of the tough, ground hugging plants that survive in these harsh conditions, and the commanding presence of the rock formations that interrupt the long strethes of flat prairie.

We took a tour yesterday to a national park, Torres del Paine. Along the sheep studded hillsides we saw rheas, condors and guanacos, passed through glacier carved valleys, and marvelled at the sheer expanse of the wind-whipped Patagonian steppe.
Unfortunately, our ride out to the park was a little too exciting for our taste. We got into an accident. It wasn't serious, but it could have been. The driver was going too fast along a road under construction and hit the cement base of a pylon which burst one of the front tires. The van then pulled sharply to the right, off the road and bounced off of a steep bank of a hillside which sent us the other way, over the foot high lip of the road under construction, bursting the other front tire. We swerved back and forth until the driver managed to stop. I thought for sure we were going to roll, which would have been very bad since the other side of the road went right into a lake. The van also didn't have any seatbelts so we went for a wild ride inside the van. Besides the shock of it all everyone was fine and we hitched as a group onto a passing bus which took us to the nearest town where the tourism company sent another van so we could continue the trip, only about 2 1/2 hours behind schedule. We really are so lucky.


The mountains at the tip of the Andes in Torres del Paine, shrouded in clouds.






Bits of neon blue ice floating away from the Lake Grey glacier.



Guanaco



Rhea



Mike hugging a big friendly Milodon, aka a giant sloth whose remains were found in the that cave.