We met Vicho’s mom, dad, siblings, in-laws, nieces and nephews, cousins, friends, etc. and though some spoke English many only spoke Spanish which we tried to communicate as best we could. Scott and I had been able to practice in Peru, but Chilean Spanish is much different. They speak very, very fast and also a lot of slang making it much more difficult to follow. Lora and Vicho could translate for us if necessary and usually it was necessary! We stayed in Las Prisas from Saturday until Tuesday. We spent much time relaxing at the house, visited the beach, explored San Antonio’s fish market, hit golf balls at the driving range, had cerveza’s and vino J, and ate very delicious Chilean foods. There were maids at the house who would prepare the meals. At the fish market we picked up Chilean Sea Bass, which was probably one of our favorite meals.
Vicho and Lora
Scott, Andrew, and Vicho
Seal and Pelicans near the San Antonio fish market
From Las Prisas we went back to Santiago, where Lora and Vicente live. Vicho had to work the rest of the week so Lora planned to take us around the city. Wednesday we rented bikes and Lora showed us many of the different neighborhoods. Santiago is a progressive city that pretty much has everything you could find in the US. The downtown has some beautiful skyscrapers and buildings, fine dining, good shopping, nice parks, etc. The residences and business/offices are all kinda mixed together in the city. We really liked the architecture and styles of the homes and buildings Throughout the day we sort of felt like celebrities because we were stared at by the Chileans all day. Here we are, 4 gringos riding around Chile together, definitely not the norm around Santiago! The 4 Gringos! (pic above). That evening we had a fantastic dinner at a seafood restaurant known for their oysters. Not only did we have oysters but also octopus, crawfish, shrimp, crab, eel, razor clams, mussels, and ceviche - all fresh and oh so good! 
On Thursday we drove to Casablanca Valley, which is Chile’s wine country. Vicho actually works for a vineyard called Santa Carolina as a sales rep and sells it in the US so look for it at the wine store. We visited 3 vineyards: Veramonte, Emiliana, and Vina Mar. We enjoyed getting to know more about Chilean wines and they really do have some good (and inexpensive) wines. Lora had taken a wine class when she first moved to Santiago so she really knows her stuff when it comes to Chilean wine.
Us at the Vina Mar winery
On Friday Lora took us to the mountains around Santiago to check out some of the beautiful scenery. In the evening we headed to the Monticello, which is a brand new casino south of Santiago. It was a very nice casino. We all played blackjack and were pretty lucky! I think Scott and I came out ahead $250! On Saturday we went back to Las Prisas to visit with Vicho’s family and on Sunday we said our farewells. We really had a fantastic time getting to hang out with Vicho, Lora and Andrew and meeting all of Vicho’s family and friends. I think it gave us a good look into the Chilean culture and way of life. Vicho and Lora, we appreciate all your hospitality and hope to see you all soon. Andrew, there's always a certain amount of ridiculousness that happens when we hang out with you. Thank you for keeping up the good work! Andrew went back to Boston and Scott and I headed south to a town called Punta Arenas. This town is in very, very southern Chile in Patagonia also considered to be ‘the end of the world‘. We left Sunday evening around 8:30 and arrived around 1:30 am Monday and went straight to our hostel. Punta Arenas is a town of about 100,000 and sits near the water though isn’t an especially nice or pretty city. It’s known for its penguin colonies nearby.
On Monday, we went into town to figure out plans for Patagonia. The place we had heard is a ’must go’ is a national park called Torres del Paine, which translates to 'Towers of Blue'. Torres del Paine is located near another town called Puerto Natales about 3 hours north from Punta Arenas so we booked a bus ticket to Puerto Natales for the following day. In case you are wondering why we didn’t just fly into Puerto Natales from Santiago, it’s very simple - there are no flights from Santiago to Puerto Natales. Our understanding is that there is one flight per day that goes there from a small town in Argentina and it is so windy that they practically have to land the plane sideways. Not ideal so that was totally out of the question. In Patagonia, even though it is summer it doesn’t really get above 60-65 degrees and lows are in the 30’s and 40’s. It’s the wind that makes it feel much colder. It is brutal and nonstop. Scott ended up having to buy a warmer jacket and some gloves to block the wind. On Tuesday we took the 3 hour bus ride from Punta Arenas to Puerto Natales. We had made arrangements to stay at a lodge that sits on a hill overlooking a fjord called Seno de Ultima Esperanza or Last Hope Sound. In the distance you can see snow capped mountains. Simply beautiful.
That afternoon we went and had lunch and walked around the little town of about 16,000. It is a simple, yet quaint little town with coffee shops, outdoors/sports shops, numerous tour agencies, restaurants, and artisan stores. The main area stretches over a few blocks so it is a very walkable town and only a 10-15 minute walk from our lodge. In the evening we had dinner at the lodge. King Crab is very popular in southern Chile so we tried a baked crab dish that was very good. Our lodge was able to book different excursions for us and booked a bus tour to Torres del Paine for the following day. Originally they quoted one price and then once they booked told us it was about $40 more because they had to book with a different company.
We got picked up around 7:45 am and headed towards the National Park. Our guide, nicknamed Frenchie, because he is French first took us to a cave called Milodon Cave. The significance of this cave is that in 1895, a German named Hermann Eberhard discovered the remnants of a giant sloth. This was helpful to us because it explained why there was a giant sloth statue upon entering Puerto Natales The remnants they found were some skin and then bones, but they never actually assembled an entire replica of a sloth from what they found . We hiked to the cave and Frenchie explained about how the cave formed from lakes that were created from glaciers. There was also a giant statue of a sloth inside the cave. 
Frenchie
Brooke and the Giant Sloth (kinda sounds like the name of a band)
After spending about an hour there, we moved on to enter Torres del Paine. The drive to the park was gorgeous and once we entered we were surrounded by the amazing beauty of mountains, lakes, fjords, glaciers, and the greenery of the flora and fauna. We made stops throughout the day to different scenic lookouts. One of our favorite stops was an hour long hike to Grey Lake and Grey Glacier. In the lake were bright blue icebergs and sitting in between mountains was the glacier that seemed it went off forever back in the distance. We got some fantastic pictures though they don’t ever seem to do the scenery justice.
Grey Lake and Glacier
Holy Wind!
Views from Lake Pehoe
We had lunch at a restaurant in the park. It was a $25 buffet of fish, corn, and potatoes. Luckily we said no and opted for an $8 sandwich instead. We found that since we are at the bottom of the world among some amazing scenery that they will charge you for it! After lunch, we stopped at a neat lookout point where there was a waterfall with a rainbow over it and also a view of the towers.
Tres Cuernos
We also got to see some wildlife. In southern Chile they have guanacos, which are in the camelid family. Sort of like a cross between a deer and a llama. There were also nandus, which South American Ostriches and a baby fox. The park is also home to puma, condors, and black necked swans though they weren‘t around for us to see. Overall, we enjoyed that day getting to see the wonderful and beautiful scenery of Patagonia. In the evening we had dinner at our lodge again. We also booked an excursion for the following day to go out on a boat and go through Ultima Esperanza Fjord, which borders Bernardo O’Higgins National Park, and then visit the Balmaceda and Serrano Glaciers. Bernardo O’Higgins National Park is the largest in Chile at 13,600 sq miles and was created in 1969.
We got up for breakfast at the lodge then took a taxi to the port to catch our boat. The lodge had sort of messed up and failed to book our boat excursion as we had asked them to 2 days before. We had come back from our Torres del Paine tour and inquired about it to make sure we had a ticket. They had to book it for us right then and turned out that the cheaper boat excursion we had requested was full so that meant we had to take the more expensive boat. The more expensive boat also had a VIP/First Class section with roomier, reclining seats and was only a little more expensive so we opted to get those seats since we’d already been forced to get a more expensive boat. Also because this was a 10 hour day on the boat. We boarded the boat and were directed to our seats in the front row. It turns out the designer of the boat failed to leave ample foot space between the seat and the wall. Then late someone decided to cut out some of the wall to make space, but it wasn’t much space. So much for our precious VIP seats! Haha! 
We left the dock and headed through Ultimna Esperanza Fjord and passed beautiful scenery along the way. We passed waterfalls, glaciers, and an island of cormorants (see pic). This bird is a cross between a penquin and a duck. It took about 2 ½ - 3 hours to get to the sight of the Balmaceda Glacier that we stopped near for pictures.
Balmaceda Glacier
Then it was about another hour to get to Serrano Glacier. We got off the boat at Puerto Toro to go get closer views of this impressive glacier. Everyone hiked about 5 -10 minutes to a lookout point to see the glacier. Then they gave everyone 2 options for further viewing of the glacier. You could hike about 20 minutes longer and get to another lookout point about 500 meters from the glacier or you could get on a small boat that takes you to the lake in front of the glacier where you get about 50 meters from the glacier. Of course, the latter options costs more money and of course we are suckers and paid to get closer to the glacier. But hey, it isn’t very often you get to see a glacier up close and it actually ended up being well worth the money. We really enjoyed the ride and in all honestly some of the best pictures from our trip are from out visit to this glacier. In the lake in front of the glacier there were icebergs and the guide of the boat broke off some of the ice to take with us. We spent about 45 minutes on the little boat then headed back to the big boat.
Once we all got seated, the guides came around with cocktails. The ice in the cocktail was from the iceberg the guide had broken off. You could pick between Whiskey or a Pisco Sour. Scott had Whiskey, I had the Pisco Sour and the ice was delicious! Very nice touch getting to have millennial ice of the glacier in our drinks! By this time it was about 1pm. They gave us snacks to go with our drinks and then we headed towards our lunch destination. It took about 2 ½ hours to get there.
Scott and his whiskey drink
We arrived at a ranch that was founded around 1892 by the German, Hermann Eberhard (same guy who found the sloth skin). There was a beautiful catamaran sitting in the bay when we arrived. Our lunch was being cooked when we arrived - roasted lamb. Everyone was seated in the house and we enjoyed our lunch of lamb, potatoes, avocado and tomato salad, and Chilean wine. We sat next to a couple from Chicago and had enjoyable conversation amongst the beautiful scenery. On the ranch there were chickens, sheep, and cattle.
More lamb
View from the ranch
After lunch we boarded the boat and went back to Puerto Natales. We decided to hang out in town and try to make plans to go horseback riding the next day. We opted to try to book it through a tour company because our lodge hadn’t provided the best service when we booked the boat excursion. We asked one of the guides on the boat and she recommended a place near the square. When we got there were couldn’t find it. We asked a man in the street if he knew where the horseback riding company was. He said that he worked at the horseback riding company and could book us a reservation. We were obviously a little skiddish about meeting a random man in the street that from what we understand of his Spanish says he is our horseback riding guy. As we continued talking to him, I looked up only to see our tour guide from the previous day. I stopped Frenchie and told him we were trying to book a horseback riding trip with this guy. Frenchie spoke with him and told us he was legit and the price was appropriate. Awesome! We gave him our name and information, but didn’t pay him. He said we would pay the next day and we’d be picked up around 2:30 to go riding from 3-6pm. Perfect. We were looking forward to sleeping in and relaxing a bit before the ride. We walked around town a bit then found a brewery that the Chicago couple on the boat had recommended we try for both cerveza and dinner. We had a very enjoyable time there then went back to the lodge. When we arrived we were greeted by the guy at the front desk. He was a different guy than the previous nights. He didn’t speak much English, but we were able to understand that the horseback riding people had called and said there was a problem with the horses. Apparently the horses were sick in the afternoon but not sick in the morning because they told us we could go at 10am for the same price. Scott about lost it and was convinced the lodge was trying to sabotage our horseback riding so that we’d have to pay for one more expensive or something. Poor guy at the counter. Sick horses. Hmmm….my theory was that since we were going riding on Friday afternoon, it wasn’t the horses who were sick, it was the workers who were ’sick’ of working and probably needed a siesta that time! Who knows! We decided to skip the horseback riding and took the day to relax and grabbed some lunch in town and also went to an internet café so we could get on-line. The wireless internet had barely been working at the lodge and we needed to make some room reservations in Punta Arenas and Lima. We also wanted to research New Zealand and Australia since they are our upcoming trips. We grabbed some dinner later on at a great seafood restaurant. We went back to the lodge, relaxed, and packed up our belongings because we were leaving the next morning to go back to Punta Arenas.
On Saturday morning, we got up for breakfast and then called a taxi to come pick us up to take us to the bus station. Before we left, Scott got on the computer in the lobby of the lodge and saw the news of the 8.8 earthquake that hit 200 miles south of Santiago. Uh-Oh. We wondered about Lora and Vicho and his family. We also wondered how we would get back to the US. Our itinerary was to fly from Punta Arenas to Santiago on Sunday morning. Then to fly from Santiago to Lima at 6pm the same day. Then on Tuesday we were supposed to go from Lima to Miami, then Miami back to Charlotte. We are still in South America.
We made it to Punta Arenas on Saturday afternoon and have been there until today. Punta Arenas is more or less a stopping point to get to better places in Patagonia so there really isn’t much to do. We had made plans to do the main tourist attraction on Saturday afternoon, which was to visit Isla Magdalena. This island is home to 150,000 penquins! We hopped on another boat that went through the Strait of Magellan to get to the island and see this grand colony of penquins…and it was grand! They were everywhere. If I had to guess I probably saw about 81,244 penquins! The boat ride took 2 hours to get there, then we got to go out on the island for 1 hour and then 2 hours back to Punta Arenas. We had so much fun walking around and taking pictures of the penguins. It had to be one of the windiest experiences. I don’t know that I’ve ever been around such constant wind gusts that nearly knock you over. Despite the wind, we really enjoyed observing the little tuxedo guys. We got some good footage of them waddling around and also coming in out of the water. Very cool experience.
Video Clips:
So that was Saturday. Since then, we’ve basically hung out at our hostel, eaten, and gone to the airline offices to figure out how to get back to the states. Luckily our hostel has TV and English stations. We were able to get CNN and see coverage of the earthquake. The tricky part about our airline reservations is that we fly one airline, Sky Airline, from Punta Arenas to Santiago. From Santiago to Lima and Lima to Miami we fly another airline, called LAN. We visited the airport on Sunday because the ticket offices in town were closed. Sky Airlines took our name and number and said they’d call when they had an update. Yeah right. LAN said they didn’t know anything and couldn’t help or even check a computer for information. On Monday we went to the offices in town. Sky Airlines didn’t know when they would start flying to Santiago again and took our email address to email us when there was an update. Yeah right! They thought it would be 2-3 more days before they knew anything. The LAN office was a disaster (see pic of line outside the office above). The first time we went, there were no lines formed. People were just all scrunched in trying to get in the front to speak to someone. Many of the employees don’t speak English, which makes it difficult to understand our situation dealing with 2 airlines. We came back after lunch only the office was closed. Naturally it closes from 1-3pm every day (siesta time). We came back at 3pm and there was a line wrapped around the corner down the street. We decided it would probably be a waste of time since we didn’t know when we’d be able to get to Santiago since Sky airlines didn’t know anything.
On Tuesday, we found out that there were about 3,000 people stranded in Punta Arenas. Funny, we’d seen them all yesterday at the LAN office. We finally had a good wi-fi connection so decided to use Skype to call LAN. Scott tried calling the numbers in Chile but of course they were busy. He got through to the LAN office in the UK and they told him the earliest LAN could fly us from Santiago to Lima was March 9th. He inquired about having us routed anywhere else besides Santiago, specifically Buenos Aires since we are very close to Argentina. The LAN lady checked and the earliest flight we can get back is Saturday night at 10:30 pm. It goes from Buenos Aires to Miami and arrives around 5:45 am. Then we fly from Miami at 9am to Charlotte and arrive around 11am. Yay! We’re going to make it. So now we are in Argentina in a town called Rio Gallegos. We arrived last night around 6:30 pm and then we leave early Friday morning and fly to Buenos Aires. We will have 2 full days there to check out the city! Should be an adventure on top of our already big adventure! Being delayed and stranded for a few days is not the end of the world by any means. As long as we’re safe that’s what is most important. Our big worry in all of this is that we would get back in time for our next trip. Getting back on Sunday is just in time for our next trip, which starts on Monday! We leave in the afternoon and fly to Los Angeles to stay overnight and then takeoff for Christchurch, New Zealand on Tuesday evening. We‘ll have just enough time to wash clothes, make some phone calls, repack, maybe file our taxes. Oh well…it‘s all part of the fun of the adventure!
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