Bienvenidos a Puerto Natales!

Day 4: Punta Arenas westward in Chile to Puerto Natales.

We awoke in Hotel Ilaia and were met with a delightful breakfast set out by the great ladies at the Hotel. Before breakfast though, I had to sort out an issue with my credit card. Apparently there was a mass hack of VISA accounts and my account got hit. This was even on a relatively  new card! The fun part was the customer service rep's reaction when I described where I was. Yep, no way they were going to get me a card for the remainder of this trip. Oh well, not the most convenient, but stuff happens.

Hotel Ilaia.

Cool little rally type car.

Firehouse or Cuerpo de Bomba de Chile in Punta Arenas.

Road work, so a long confined hike to the bus terminal.

Interesting mural where you wait for the bus.

Not the bus we rode in. Our bus was a swank double decker with seats that reclined almost flat. Sadly this was the best, most comfortable bus we would ride in for the whole trip. 2 1/2 hours to go!

Waiting on the bus.

Interesting air ride suspension fittings on the bus and most of the trucks around the country.

Cool architecture in Punta Arenas, most of it modern. I think this was a high school.

Neat church.

Neat old port building offices.

Hopefully not our boat. (It wasn't of course, but this was one of the older boats owned by Cruceros Australis)

Neat Armada de Chile boat sitting as a monument outside the port as you drive by on the way out of town or to the airport.

Radome in Chile.

A really wide load ahead of us being escorted by red lights.

EF getting comfortable on the bus ride.

One of the many rivers we crossed on the drive out. Probably good fishing in these parts.

Oil or gas drilling operation. It's a pretty big presence in Chile but not an overwhelming presence.

Neat four door, probably diesel, Ranger. Too bad we can't get this in the States.

The main gate to one of the estancias (ranch) on the main road.

Coordinates of Lili Patagonica, the hostel we stayed in.

Puerto Natales, like many of the towns we were in, has a large presence of dogs. I think they are mainly strays but seemed to be okay. In other towns they were in rougher shape.

Sorry for the but shot, but we sat in on a W hike briefing at Erratic Rock (a hostel in Puerto Natales) that was highly recommended by several guidebooks. The speaker, a Kiwi, gave lots of good intel on the hike. I though his pronunciation of circuit was funny, sir-keew-it. The briefing was actually held at Base Camp, the store/cafe/hangout next door. With about 35 young, outdoorsy people crammed inside I felt like I was in the lodge at White Grass.

A poster about a group helping the street dogs problem in Puerto Natales.

More forest fire posters.

More street dogs.

If you can click and enlarge this map, you can see we started the W from the east, or right side of the map, hiked up to Las Torres, then the middle part of the W was up the French Valley, and the final left/western side of the W was up to Grey Glacier.

Those of us that went to Erratic Rock stopped at this place (can't remember right now) and had what I called fish Phillys. It was called Salmon Papillote, a salmon fillet, grilled and covered with cheese, onions and peppers, and tomatoes and pancetta. Not what I was expecting, but really good.

We also stopped in this cool Dried Fruit and Nut store. All of us picked something here that would sustain us on the W and well after. The chocolate covered peanuts were really good!

Representing the Kiwis in the climbing gym/closet.

TR spots as EF gives the rock wall a try. This rock gym was in a small room in Lili Patagonica. Small, but a really neat adaptation of an unused space for a rock wall/workout area.

I may have to take this out and bring it back in to rotate it, but the cops drove around in their Rangers with their lights on the whole time.

Neat FJ40.

Sad to see this guy looking for food in the trash.

Cool, prepped Suzuki.

Ah the Good Old Dominion. Now in dish soap form!

Possibly a military Unimog on the streets of PN.

The lamb on the grill at Carlito's.

Carlito's is a great family style, grill/restaurant. It didn't really get going until about 9:30 so it worked out well as we had some late night dinners.

Pollo a la brasa that I had.

Sorry for the blurry, but EF tried her hand at the "hamburger" which was about as big as the plate it came on! You can see a better picture of it a couple of pictures above.

Today was a travel day, but as you can see, we had some interesting new experiences. After the ride in from Punta Arenas, we drug our bags over to Lili Patagonica, our hostel for the night. We would stay again here on our way back from the park after the W hike. We checked in dumped our bags and split the group up. One group was going to try to catch the last bit of the briefing at Erratic Rock hostel and the other was going to hit the supermarket for provisions.

I went with the group to the briefing, which was excellent, and afterward we stopped in at Fantastic Sur to finalize arrangements for the refugios (huts) that we were staying in for the W hike. After arrangements were completed, we had lunch as described above, went back to Lili Patagonica for the 7pm briefing there, went back out to an outdoor store (bought some maps and a Nalgene) before sitting down to dinner at La Picada de Carlitos as described above in the pictures.  After dinner it was back to the hostel to do some final packing then off to bed.

Next up: To the W!