Puerto Natales, where I knew just about everyone!

I was very sad to leave the Navimag ferry and all the friends I'd made, but I should have known better really. I always used to say during my last trip that you just have to stick with it as things can improve very quickly and unexpectedly. In this instance it happened within about 2 minutes when Heath, who hadn't booked a hostel in advance decided to go with me to mine as I had a reservation at a nice place and given the time of year there'd likely be a free bed. Yay! I wasn't losing all my new friends in one fell swoop. It turns out, I wasn't really losing many of them. After dropping our stuff off and grabbing a coffee, we headed out for lunch and bumped into Sarah! Happy days!!

The three of us grabbed a beer and then headed to the Erratic Rock Hostel (I have since discovered that an erratic rock is one that has been moved by a glacier and and then left behind way from its source when the ice melts!) where they give talks on the treks within Torres Del Paine National Park, namely the 'W' and the 'O'. Sarah's plans had changed and so rather than the O which had been her original intention, both she and Heath were now planning to do the W and so for them the talk was invaluable. For me too. I'd had no intention of doing either trek and the talk just reinforced that! It also confirmed that there weren't many spaces left in the refugios and campsites in the park and as reservations had to be in place before doing the treks we made a number of visits between the two places you make reservations at for Sarah and Heath to firm those up (see how nicely I worded that Sarah and Heath!).

That evening we decided to get together at mine and Heath's hostel for an evening of pisco sours. Turns out Heath makes a mean pisco sour with ginger!

although Sarah and I joined in with the improvised cocktail shaker too!!

Wine, then whiskey followed the pisco sours and of course, the inevitable hangover followed the next morning! 

We were eventually in a state to do stuff around 2pm and so decided the way forward would be to hire bikes as it had turned out to be a lovely day. Of course, that being the case, everybody else it appears had had the same idea and so unfortunately (but with a personal minor sense of relief) we discovered there were none to be had. Not wanting to completely waste the day we decided to take ourselves off for a walk along the coast instead for that day's activity!

and who should we bump into along the way, but Johnson! He was being very Johnson, sitting watching the world go by with a beer and a cigarette. We stayed and chatted to him for an hour or so and whilst there another 4 Canadian people from Navimag turned up. I've never known so many people in a foreign place, it turned out that people we knew popped up all over the town, although sadly I didn't see Kerry in Puerto Natales, our contact was limited to email there.

The Canadians had been for a walk round the coast too and so we followed on their footsteps passing some cool sculptures along the way

We ended up at the Singular, although not until after Heath had gotten us to climb over random fences!

It was such a beautiful 5* hotel 

that we suddenly felt well enough at the have a cocktail and a delicious snack. 

It was a lovely way for the three of us to finish off our time together, as Sarah was heading to El Calafate the next day.

That left just Heath and I to celebrate his birthday the next day! I had a lovely day and thankfully it seems that Heath did too which was good! We started with a nice breakfast in the hostel, then had a cup of Heath's good coffee (it's all Nescafé instant out here but he has a little travel coffee maker thereby saving the day!). Then we went and did ticket booking for us to head off in our various directions the next day and headed into town for a wander round to check it out and have lunch. The pizza place we were hoping to go to that had been recommended by Percy, the naturalist on Navimag was obviously a very popular haunt as it was chocca! So we ended up getting empanadas and beers elsewhere...

and decided to go back for pizza for dinner that evening instead which we did followed up by birthday tiramisu!

The next day, we both had early buses and so headed up to the bus station together. Heath was going up to El Calafate, my destination the following day so we'd planned to catch up there again and I was on my way to Torres Del Paine national park for the day. I'd been umming and ahhing about whether to do a guided tour there or just to take the bus and figure it out myself. An unbelievably loud snorter in our dorm room who was audible through my amazing earplugs left me very tired and so I made the bad planning choice of doing it myself. This is not to say that what I saw wasn't amazing, it was, just that I wasn't able to see anywhere near as much on foot as I would have done on a mini bus. Anyway, some highlights are below...

Sadly a careless tourist caused a large fire a few years ago, burning huge swathes of trees and whilst the scrub has recovered, I literally saw around 7-8 live trees in the area of the park I was in. I found the dead trees really mesmerising. They were a mixture of beautiful, horrible, macabre, sad, elegant and grotesque all rolled into one. I may have only put a handful of pictures containing them in the blog, but trust me, I have many more!

Unfortunately around 4pm the weather turned. The wind rose and this sign became particularly relevant 

it started throwing it down so after this picture I didn't really see much more.

It was a late bus home from the park and so I got back to the hostel at around 9.30pm. A long but beauty filled day that finished that visit to Puerto Natales. The next day, I rose bright and early (well early...) for my bus to El Calafate which is where I am at the moment, although I'm leaving here tomorrow so after mucho mate with my new friend Patricia, I'm buzzing and will now proceed with what I got up to there in my third post of the day!!