skysworldadventures

This is tough... I have over 115 photos that I love and tell the story of the trip.  I'm trying to keep this short, there might be some duplicates from eariler but if so, they are worth seeing  a second time...

Well, we made it back home without incident.  All luggage accounted for and all souvenirs in one piece!  Travel back was fairly uneventful.  We got in a little after noon on Sunday and then started the process of getting back to normal routine.  Giving some love to our dogs that said the missed us, groceries, laundry, sorting through mail and all that stuff. I had a nice surprise waiting for me at work on Monday.  My co-workers apparently missed me as the decorated my cube for my return.  Yes, I know it says "Happy Birthday" and it's not my birthday but there is a strange joke around here about my birthday.  I'm routinely wished happy birthday on random days.  It's been going on for months.  Don't ask, I don't understand it either.  Anyhow... it was fun to come back to a colorful desk. I moved enough stuff to get to my computer and work and left the rest.  After I had been in and working for about an hour, the white ballo...

Today we decided to check out the coast.  We drove to Buchalemu.  ***Note:   I'm butchering the spellings of places we have gone.  According to Jeff, roughly 80% of the places in this blog are not spelled correctly.  If you actually care and want to know the correct spellings, let me know and I'll look them up for you, other wise, I'm terrible at spelling in english and worse at spanish, deal with it.*** Back to my stoey...  In Buchalemu there is a beautiful black sand beach were we heard you can go horseback riding.  Jeff and I have both ridden a little bit but are not very experienced horsemen or particularly good.  We know the basics and that is it.  It was quite supprising to us when inquiring about riding that we were simply handed the horses and pointed in a general direction and told to go.  There was a whole serries of directions and possibly instructions that we missed due to the language barrier that I took to mean "hello gring...

I did it!  I actually relaxed all day today!!!  Aren't you proud? The day started with sleeping in followed by loafing and reading my book.   We were picked up by a driver for a vineyard tour at 11:30 and lucked out.  The other 8 english speakers didnt show up for the tour so Jeff and i got a private tour.  The best part was that part of the tour was done from horse drawn buggies. The tour and tasting was great.  We had lunch at the resturant at the winery and then went to a second winery for another tasting. We then had our pleasantly wined selves driven back to our B and B and relaxed for a couple hours.  I read, Jeff pretended to read and took a nap. We ended the evening by going in to town.  They are having a 4 day music festival where they close down the street, have a few craft venders in the main square and a ton of food venders and set up a stage and have free music.  We had street food for dinner and icecream and enjoyed the band. ...

Yesterday we had a pleasant morning in Porto Notalles.  It started pooring rain which made me so glad that we had such good weather for out trip.   We got some fancy hot chocolates, second time to this shop.  We went once befoe the hike, it was so good, we went back. We took a bus to Puntas Arenas and flew to Santiago.  By the time we got the rental car, made a few u-turns and found the hotel it was pretty late.  We had dinner around standard Chilean time for once which was about midnight. After sleeping in, we did a little exploring in Santiago, picked up a couple souvenirs for friends and family and drove to Santa Cruz (yep, there is one in Chile and a San Francisco too!).  We are in the Colchagua valley which makes great red wine.  We had an amazing dinner (and wine) and are ready to call it a night...

Ok, lets start by explaining the logistics of leaving the park, then you might understand why we did what we did (besides the "because we can part" *wink*).  To leave from Paine Grande there is a boat that takes you to a bus that takes you back to Porto Natelles which is where food and clean clothes and a hotel is.  The crux is there is a really pretty hike that is supposed to take 7+ hours, is 14-ish miles long and the boat leaves at 12:30 and 6:30PM.  The 12:30 boat is really early but gets you into town at a lovely 4:30PM.  The 6:30 boat makes the hike rediculously slow or leaves you sitting aound waiting for a boat for 3 hours and gets you in to town after 10PM.  Chileans are not morning people.  Dinner is 7:00PM at the earliest the night before the hike and breakfast starts at 7:00AM.  Given the following constraints, what do you do? We opted for wake up at 6:00, skip breakfast and eat a protein bar and hike out butts off to make the 12:30 boat. ...

This was my favorite day of hiking.  It was long and tough but the views were amazing!!!   The day started with a view of the sunrise on the glaciers from our cabaña.  It was more spectacular than the pictures show, I spent too long enjoying the view before getting the camera.  The hike was 3 miles to a camping area where everyone drops their main packs and switches to day packs. Jeff at the pack pile. It is then a steep 3 mile hike up the French Valley (no idea where the name came from) with glaciers to the right, a roaring stream of glacial melt up to the best view in the park.  Due to the total legnth of the day, 14 miles, Jeff and I did a little trail running once we dropped our main packs and only had the small day pack.  This was a nice change as we used some different muscles running than hiking and it was fun. We could hear pieces of ice break off the glaciers and see the small avalanches coming down the mountains.  The sound was unlike anythin...