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Hello. After the storms, blizzards and exceptionally high winds at the end of last week (it sounds as though you've been experiencing similar weather...), we sailed on Saturday and Sunday up a very (unusually) calm and very stunning Beagle Channel to here, Punta Arenas, where we arrived yesterday evening (Sunday 21st January).
It was a wonderful trip, and we were lucky (this time!) that the weather was good enough to be able to sit for most of it up on the deck and watch hours and hours of a rolling view of snow-capped peaks, glaciers, islands, sunshine reflecting on the water, lots and lots of birds - cormorants, giant petrels, albatross and penguins, and even the odd dolphin! It was amazing and really really worth doing. I really love it in this part of the world, and I'm so glad we got to spend a couple of days on the water, it absolutely being sailing country around here; and to see it all as we did, in fantastic sunshine, under blue skies and with snow on the mountains from the storms last week. Magic. This trip is one piece of magic after the next.
We'd met a few other travellers in Puerto Williams and a few of us were getting the boat to Punta Arenas. Australian Simon we'd met crossing from Ushuaia. He does seasonal work sea-kayaking off the boats that go to Antarctica (not a bad job, eh?!) and is, by all accounts very fit... It turns out that he left to do the Dientes de Navarino trek half an hour before we did last Tuesday.... got to the end of what would normally be Day 3 at the end of the first day, and finished it the next day - thereby doing it in two days! Astrid and Knut from Germany were on their third day when the blizzards hit, were overtaken by Australian Simon(!) and walked the next two days' worth in one - for 12 hours! So we have a photo of the 'Dientes de Navarino Finishers' aboard the ship - oh, and Simon!! It all made for good chat when we met to get on the boat!
In the hostel we'd also befriended Alex, from Anapolis, Maryland, who was really good company. At 22, he's just graduated from a small college (St. John's, I think it was) in Anapolis where everyone follows one curriculum, learning for learning's sake, with no specific vocational purpose and all the things that you think you should know when you're older! It sounded great. He knew everything about Shakepeare, the Roman Empire, poetry, but thought he was perhaps tending towards something to do with the natural sciences and the theory of evolution in the future, because he'd loved that too! It was just really interesting talking to him, and he was a really lovely guy. Simon and he spent much of the time sailing up the Beagle Channel discussing the Roman emperors!!
So now we're here until Wednesday (24th), when we get the bus to Puerto Natales for one night and from there head up the next morning to the Torres del Paine. There's just so much to see down here! You've all got to put it on your 'to do' lists!
Lots of love, us x
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