Well Darling,
Now we are sitting bright and early (3:09am Pacific Time - 8:09 in Santiago) in our spiffy Holiday Inn by the airport, repacking for the final leg down south - a three hour flight to Punta Arenas. I forgot how much I enjoy being in a Spanish speaking country. The folks are friendly, we know most of the greetings, and we have a sense of the culture about to unfold. The temps are very warm at 28C, but I suspect that will change as we go further south. Last night it was still dusk at 9pm, I don't know when dawn began to show up this morning. I will report that tomorrow.
I've been a pretty good boy about not spending too much time working. Today I left an email for Rob to deal with it, and that felt good. :). I'm hoping to catch up more on my personal emails to peeps as a part of my Winter Promise to Self. So with that: Until Later.
Dad.
Later - now 10:35pm in Puerto Natales. We managed to arrive in Punta Arenas at 4:50pm after passing a rhea, guanacos, and the usual assortment (as if we were in West Texas - even the Chilean flag looks like Texas' - but without the arrogance) of horses, cattle, sheep, and an albatros (I am still confirming that sighting). We filled up the gas tank ($2 per litre) and immediately began to explore the city (and shop for beer). We only went the wrong way once on a one way street & then finally found our boutique hotel. This is a humble town and feeds off the explorers going into Patagonia. Happy dogs run around like it were Tijuana, Mexico and several do a good job guarding their owner's businesses with growls for potential customers, disguised as cats. We found a lovely micro-brew pub with killer carnita tacos that included a nicely spicy cilantro sauce. Below you can see what I look like when I can see the table through the bottom of my glass.
When we drove in, Kahsia immediately spotted some Black Neck swans which we sought out later. at least 8 species of birds. During the walk along the shore, I think we saw a few Coscoroba, terns, the Black Neck swan, sand pipers, and an oyster catcher.
I was caught without a journal and will be better prepared for tomorrow's adventure. Now it is 11pm and finally dark. Breakfast is early and we have a two hour drive on a gravel road before we enter the Torres de Pine park. There, finally we can really settle in for several days. BTW, sunrise here is at 6:00am.
OK - it is now 7:00pm on 26 January. We look forward to dinner at our hotel being served at the civilized hour of 8:00pm (Lunch is available from 1-3 pm, but thankfully we can get breakfast before noon. More on point, kid, we spent the day driving to and thru the Torres del Panne national park here in southern Chile. Getting here we passed within 10 meters of the Argentinian border, but didn't take the time to dash over the line and get our passports stamped (I know, I know - shame on us!)
We've wasted no time immersing ourselves into the incredible mountains that rise from no-where. Since your mom and I are both Texans (me by honorary proclamation by the great Texas governor John Connaly), we think we see Patagonia as West Texas on steroids.
Well January 27 snuck by without a posting and we must report our visit to Largo Grey and its Glacier Grey. It was cold, wet and windy but we took a boat tour which included a well-timed, but early Pisco Sour. After crossing the lake we arrived at the glacier. Below we see the army of ice marching forward to their certain end as a solid.
As we approached, we also saw first hand the transformation of the earth, millimeter by millimeter
I must tell you Kendra, this is one expensive place to visit. Admission to the park for three days is $100. A three hour boat ride to a glacier is $230 for two. A day long fishing trip would cost $700 for the two of us. A tube of Pringles was $10!!!! Note these numbers are USD.
We are also jumping into the birding biz. This is tough stuff. The little bastards either flit around like nobody's business, fly at altitudes of 10k or higher, or otherwise do not avail themselves to sitting patiently while I focus my binos (that's bird talk for binoculars!). The other challenging bit is that you are holding binos, not a camera, and thus must document every nuance so you can look 'em up when you find time to grab the field reference. Seriously though, it is lots of fun and below is the first of several entries that we are compiling for the Big Year (see below)*. There are only seventy different kinds of hawk-like birds here, so our educated guess with this fellow is that he is a Crested Caracara. Kahsia took this picture when he was munching on some day-old jack rabbit. Right after this photo was taken, we saw a pair of condors circling overhead. Tomorrow we will be taking a hike to Mirador Condor to get up close and personal with these great birds (and maybe get a free ride).
I need to draw a close to this post, otherwise we will end up with a mono-blog which might disappoint you, oh faithful fan.Our tech is giving us fits, though. The hotel's wifi is reasonably perky, but yer mom's ipad and her Mac Book Pro are not emailing properly so she must use use gmail from her browser which means the photos travel from camera to external hard drive to the internet down to my computer and then back up to the internet to get posted into the blog. If they look tired or a few bits short of a full byte, that is probably why.
Until Next Time, then.
Love,
Dad
* A Big Year is when the Birder (meaning me) identifies 100 unique species of birds. It only sounds easy but the fact that we are in South America - the planet's primary repository for nearly all the species - we may have a chance. Unfortunately the word "identify" has us challenged a bit as we've seen probably 20 different species, but have only clearly identified a couple! That is the down-side of being a Junior Bird Man.
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