puerto natales to torres del paine

from Balmaceda we had a quick flight to Punta Arenas, where we immediately found a bus to Puerto Natales (3 hours north) to where we would spend the night and start our 5 day backpacking trip through Parque Nacional Torres del Paine the next morning!

the bus ride to Puerto Natales consisted of:

this statue ... bearantesaur? (bear/anteater/dinosaur??) we literally were all thinking WTF;

attempting to take pictures of the sun shining through the clouds. much prettier in person;

and

having a very loud and quite inappropriate conversation in english. only to remember (2 hours later..) that possibly others around us could understand english as well. but i think it was unlikely considering we didn't get any weird looks, and we definitely should have. however we did remember (too little too late) that the older couple from the U.S. we met early in the day were on the same bus...it was good for their own sake/sanity that they were sitting at the opposite end.

after buying bus tickets to get to Torres del Paine for the morning and stocking up on food for the whole week at the UniMarc supermarket, we finally arrived at our hostel - Niko's Dos

i thought the hostel was called "Niko's Second Adventure", but apparently Niko's II = Niko's 2 ≠ Niko's 2nd. this caused a slight issue the next morning because i told the bus company to pick us up at "Niko's" without thinking there might be a Niko's I since we were staying at Niko's II. luckily i (and the company) realized this in time and the bus had already came back to get us at the right hostel

ugly black poodle named Pirot ("parrot")

that night i spoke to the young girl (mid 20's) working at the hostel. she was from texas and hilariously sarcastic and was left in charge because the owner was giving tours through Torres del Paine.

an example of her dry humor: the old couple from the bus did not speak any spanish so we were helping them out with finding a hostel for the night since they didn't have any reservations. i told them the name of the hostel and literally pointed them down the street it was on, so we were expecting to see them there after we went grocery shopping. when we arrived at the hostel we asked the girl at the desk if an older couple had gotten a room here and she said "no" and asked how long we knew them, to which we responded "just from the plane/bus". her remark: "oh, so you must be super attached"

she gave us really helpful advice about what route to take through the park because some areas were closed due to the recent fire -_- (started by an israeli tourist which ended up burning down many hectares of forest .. more on this in a future post).

she also touched on how israelis are generally not very welcomed when they travel to Patagonia, and even South American in general. i've heard this from multiple sources and it really seems to be a common stereotype that israel's tourists are disrespectful and don't follow the rules. of course there are exceptions (hence the photo below of the 2 israeli men we had breakfast with the next morning who were really awesome), but there is definitely a negative stigma associated with travelers from israel. i'm still very confused on why this is but i'll try and explain more later.

early morning breakfast - 6:30 am!

the israeli couple we met that morning! they were really funny and the complete opposite of all the stereotypes i'd heard

all 5 of us with our gear for the next five days boarded the bus for the two hour drive to Parque Nacional Torres del Paine! i was unbelievably excited because this was about to be my first backpacking trip ever and i was in PATAGONIA of all places. who wouldn't be stoked?

the bus stopped at a cafe/tourist shop on the way AND i found this....

bearantesaur mystery solved! well, sort of. i really don't think this description is adequate enough to get rid of my curiosity - "Milodón: was a lazy giant, herbivore, and mammal"

the bus ride to the entrance of the park was amazing for more or less 2 reasons:
1. i ate my snickers bar that i had been saving the WHOLE TRIP (and thought about eating 30 times) for breakfast
2. i found a new type of llama that i had NEVER seen before! the guanaco

guanaco! and mystery animal running by - so legittt

once we made it to the entrance of the park we had to pay the entrance fee - and since we have official Chilean identification cards we got to pay the Chilean citizen price! only $4 luca = $8 USD. for foreigners it costs $15 luca ($30 USD) so we were stoked to save so much money

might as well show of my cédula - rockin' the red eye

at the park entrance we surprisingly ran into three friends from EAP! which wasn't the first time we unexpectedly saw people from our program over the course of our 2 weeks off. i guess we are all magnetically drawn to each other after spending 4 hours a day in class together for 3 weeks prior

after we paid we switched onto yet another bus to take us to the first campground from where we would set up tents and start our adventure!