The end of the world

Hola chicos! Feliz Año Nuevo! Ok, pressure is growing so I have to write some more lines. I got a bit lazy during my Xmas break. So what happened? After some more or less sunny days in Viña del Mar I visited friends in Santiago de Chile for Christmas and New Year. After the Christmas family celebration we once again left for some days to the beach. Back in Santiago I used my free time to do lots of sports ... that felt good :o) I am regaining the weight which I lost in the Andean countries :o) New Year's Eve we spent in Santiago ... but they didn't have fireworks :o( The other striking difference was that there weren't any completed wasted people around ... I kind of missed that ;o)
Well, I can't remember the last time I started the New Year on January 1st ... but it was great to do so since I had a flight to Punta Arenas that day. Flying across the Glacier National Park with amazing view on Patagonia's glaciers from the air I finally made it to Patagonia. The end of the world. I love it :o)

After a short visit to Punta Arenas I moved on to Puerto Natales, the gate to Torres del Paine, a fantastic national park in the Chilean part of Patagonia. Impressive mountains, blue lakes and wonderful valleys. Unfortunately, I didnt have enough time to do the full hike around the mountains (as I didnt have time for many other things during my trip), but still I did some great hiking in the park. I will certainly come back! It's fantastic!

After Torres I crossed the border and made it back to beloved Argentina. Finally I am able to understand people in the street again. I still don't know what language they are speaking in Chile ;o) I think trying to learn Spanish in Chile is like an attempt to learn German in Switzerland ... pretty fruitless ;o)
So yesterday I arrived in El Calafate in southern Argentina. What makes this place worthy? The glacier Perito Moreno. A huge glacier ending in Lago Argentino. I visited it today. Absolutley amazing! Being a good tourist I started my day with a boat tour to the front of the glacier to admire the breaking off ice chunks. Well, there wasn't much breaking off at that time. To compensate us for that a huge chunk of ice all of a sudden came up from the deepness of the lake pretty close to the boat. That was scary. We expected things to drop down and not to pop up out of nothing! Luckily things which are already in the water do not produce large waves ... otherwise we would have gotten pretty wet. It was like a submarine popping up right next to you.

The rest of the time at Perito Moreno you normally spend standing on some balcony and watching the glacier waiting for some big chunks to break off ... and I got to see a lot of those! Fantastic day! And it's damn secure as well ... ice chunks only destroy balconies at night ... like 2 days ago ... and then the balcony (or better what's left of it) is quickly closed ... because it is dangerous ;o)

Sunday the next glacier is waiting for me. Upsala glacier. It's even bigger than Perito Moreno :o) Monday I will move on to El Chalten, the hiking capital of Argentina at Mount Fitz Roy! Hiking days!
Hasta luego!