Monday, March 7, 2011

Torres del Paine

As I was saying, we had to hang around for a while in Porvenir as the ferry didn't leave until 2 pm. It gave us a chance to have a coffee, take a few pictures and check things out in the harbour. The landscape here reminds me of places in the Canadian Arctic or East Coast. Not too many trees around.
The ferry system seems pretty efficient. The reservation system consists of a page in a notebook. I signed in for myself and Neil indicating that we had two motos. No money exchanged yet. At 1 pm on the day of sailing, two officers from the ship walk over to a small coffee shop to sell tickets from a booth inside. Vehicles then load as directed down a concrete ramp like a boat launch. The ferry is equipped with it's own loading ramp and the ferry schedule is adjusted to account for the changing tides. You don't necessarily load in the order you arrived and bikes aren't first here. By scheduled departure time everyone is loaded and we're under way. I noticed on our tickets that there was a fare for horses on foot. Try that on BC Ferries.

Our ferry from Porvenir to Punta Arenas. They don't spend lots on the docking facility.
Some of the active fishing fleet in Porvenir
I think it was sea urchins in these bags.
The bikes had to be well secured as it can get really rough. We were lucky though and had a smooth sailing.
Considering the type of ferry it is, they do a nice job of providing for passenger comfort. Neil said if the passenger lounge had round windows and a rounded off ceiling it would look like an airplane.
We ended up with a full load.
 So we had a good sailing across The Strait of Magellan and docked in Punta Arenas around 4:30 pm or so. We had already decided to spend the night here and ride up to Puerto Natales in the morning. We stayed at a hostel that had good parking for the bikes and was only a few blocks from downtown. I don't know much about Punta Arenas but it's a major supply center for the Tierra del Fuego area. The downtown area has lots of cool old buildings and the harbour area appears to have quite a few dry-dock facilities as well as a Navy base.
In the morning, for some reason, it felt really good to get on the bike. Maybe because we had only about 250 km to go in the warm sunshine and the wind was blowing under the speed of sound. You might be getting tired of this, but; It was another awesome ride. We saw many sheep being herded in by...uhmm, not cowboys I guess but I don't want to call them sheepboys. Doesn't seem right. How about gauchos? It was funny to see even the sheep hiding from the wind in any hollow in the ground they could find.
Horses still do lots of work here
Lots of sheep
We were starting to get out of the flat Patagonia and back into the mountains
Puerto Natales is in a pretty setting with rolling hills as you approach from the southeast and beautiful mountains across the inlet to the north. We were here to catch the ferry to Puerto Montt on Tuesday evening. In the meantime we planned to spend a few days hanging out. When we pulled into town at noon we both had the idea to carry on into the park to spend a night or two there. One look at my back wheel however had us shelving that idea. I had noticed in Porvenir that the seal for my final drive had started to leak again but it seemed to be getting worse already. I had had it replaced once in San Diego, California already but for some reason the problem was back. It would be a pain in the butt to fix now so close to the end of the trip and I would probably have to get it to Santiago to a BMW dealer anyway. I'll have to try and milk it the 1000 or so kilometers to Santiago. So we checked in at a hostel here in Pto. Natales. Actually that worked out okay. It's a very relaxing and inexpensive place to stay. On Sunday we rented a small car to go see Parque Nacional Torres del Paine. It's another one of those places you have to see to appreciate. It seems a wisely developed park and there were lots of other tourists there besides us.
I doubt it's this calm here very often. This is the view from Pto. Natales to the north.
And this is looking east along the shoreline in Puerto Natales
Our first view of the Torres del Paine area
The weather wasn't much but the scenery was alright.
Pretty cool, eh?
Finally! A Lesser Rhea. There are quite a few but they're a bit skittish.
There must be thousands of guanacos
Some people just have to go all out when they camp
This was our car. I didn't even know Samsung made cars.
Gaucho rounding up horses a long way from the estancia
Lago Nordenskjold in the foreground with Cerro Paine Grande on the left with snow on it. I think the group of peaks without snow is the Cuernos del Paine. It's amazing.
Looking north across Lago Pehoe
On the way back to Puerto Natales
Relaxing in the common area at the hostel
A good place to stay in Puerto Natales. Hostel Natales
Small cruise ship docked in Puerto Natales
So you probably won't hear from us until the night of the 12th of March unless something really exciting happens before we get on the boat to Puerto Montt. Like the ferry running aground on an island before it gets here or something like that. Like that could happen.
Chau.

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