“The Incident”

We just missed the booking agency as they closed at 10pm and we got there about 10:30. too late to make new booking for the grey glacier, but they can book us for the day after if we come back tomorrow. So now, Argentina and Perito Moreno is binned as we can do the same thing here without the 5 hour trip. I am up for this flexibility thing and changing plans as required.

So we book in the next day and we have to be in the park for the 8am ferry. This necessitates a very early departure in the Hyundai, leaving around 5:30am. It’s a long way to the park on some pretty dodgy roads.

Cruising along, enjoying the drive when WHAMMO. A big hare runs in front of the car and unable to avoid it I plough into it head on and the car is not well. The Hare has ripped off most of the wheel guard lining and the front guard has popped most of its anchors and is wobbling loose.

We tried to amble on, but it became painfully clear that we would not make it as we still had 150km to go on some very very rough roads. So I turned us around and rolled gingerly back into Puerto Natales, all hope of Ice Hiking was gone, as was $700 for the trip, as was my enthusiasm for the rest of this leg of the trip.

It was devastating to me, it still is. It was the one thing I wanted to do, and with a series of bad decisions, bad luck and poor planning it had all gone to crap. I vowed that this was not the last time I was going to be here and the rest of the time in and around Patagonia would serve as a Reconnaissance for the next time we come here to do it properly.

The following day we had a trip booked for two days into the park. The first day was a boat trip into the Serrano Glacier with an overnight at a lodge across the river from the Glacier. It was very beautiful, but I had developed a cold so I was quite keen to linger in bed. This was perfect for this lodge as there was little else to do.

The Following day has us on A zodiac up the Serrano river into the Torres Del Paine national park with a trip through the park in a van to see the key highlights. It is a stunning park as the pictures here and on Flickr will show, but as I said before, this is a reconnisance mission and while beautiful, it is not as beautiful as being in the mountains and seeing it all up close.

The following day we had our last night in Patagonia as we made our way to the airport bound for Santiago for a very quick stop over of about 12 hours before boarding our flight and heading to Ecuador and the Galapagos islands.