Jan 8/9 - Pingüinera & Puerto Natales

We flew into Punta Arenas today, although we never actually made it to the town, just the airport. This is as far south as we go - Punta Arenas is along the Magellan Strait and even though its summer, it's still pretty cool temperature wise.

We rented a car at the airport, managed to squeeze all four of us and our packs into the little hatchback, and then drove north to the Pingüinera at Seno Otway.


It took us a couple tries to find the turn-off but we finally made it to the Pingüinera. And were rewarded with a bunch of Magellanic penguins running around with their short little legs. Any obstacle, stick or ledge, seemed insurmountable, but caused them little concern. They trek amazing distances once or twice a day between their burrows and the sea for food. We spent an hour or so amusing ourselves watching numerable penguins make the trek.


From there, it was on to Puerto Natales. We were staying the night of the 8th here and on the 9th were doing some organising/provisioning for our 5 day hike through Torres del Paine National Park.


We then took a bus to the park and then a catamaran to our base camp for the night before starting the hike the next day. On the catamaran, we were served nescafe, hot chocolate and powered milk. Tasty stuff.


Our first night of camping was on Lago Pehoe, with plans for an early start to Lago Grey the next morning. We were impressed with the campsite - the nearby Refugio had electricity and internet. A small provisioning store sold beer and meat. We soon found out that other locations in the Park weren't so well outfitted...