We´re in Patagonia, Chile. The mountains and glaciers make New Zealand´s look tame. Little baby glaciers in comparison.

Yesterday we completed a 5-day trek in the Torres del Paine National Park. It was awesome - but more so now that we are finished, washed, clean, with the prospect of hot showers, nice dinner, and soft bed ahead of us. I told myself many times over the last 5 days that I am not hard-core, what was I thinking, and that 5-day camping treks are way optimistic and that I should remember this and never sign myself up to such an undertaking ever again.

However, we now have nice picture-postcard memories, and the worst of times can sound like the best of times when re-living them from the comfort of a warm restuarant. My knees took a bit of a hammering on all the up-and-downs, and I now ease myself down-stairs like a geriatric, but this all means a good excuse for taking it easy over the next few days: We treated ourselves to a taxi from the Puerto Montt airport to Puerto Varas, in order to avoid negotiating Puerto Montt´s big bus station. And tonight we have a bathroom en suite ... the sort of stuff we fantasized about during the trek (which had extremely scary lavatorial facilities).
So no specific plans over the next few days. Just wishing with ever fibre of my being that I could speak Spanish. So embarrassed that I have the audacity to come here and expect
to be able to communicate in English!















Pasta, again?