Margie's Torres Del Paine and Atacama Desert Trip

Our first adventure was an early morning trip to an island penguin colony, populated by about 69,000 couples of mainly Magellanic penguins. We were limited to a pathway through some of their nesting areas, but they were not.
We saw many young ones peaking out of their nests of holes in the ground. The sounds of so many penguins calling to each …

In the morning we took a boat trip up Last Hope Fjord which was supposed to have taken us to a Zodiac trip on the Serrano River. The wind began to blow too hard and we had to turn around about three quarters of the way, but we were given a van ride to the Zodiac base. We took the Zodiac to the Serrano Glacier where we left the boat and walked up …

In the morning we began our trek with our guides, Loreto and Gabo. Much of the hike was long Lago Nordenskjold going west, with beautiful views of the Lake. We spent that night in cabins at Refugio Los Cuernos. Just outside our cabin was a thundering waterfall that made a perfect background noise for sleeping.

The trek up the French Valley was a highlight of the entire trip. We passed a glacier that sounded like thunder as it avalanched and calved. When we reached the top of the hike the views were beyond description. Mountains circled us, each peak very different from the other. One shaped like a shark's fin was totally unique from the others. We spend …

In the morning we hiked westward again. Much of the trail was in view of Lago Grey and as we got closer to the glacier we had beautiful views. This section had an abundance of flowers with firebush shrubs that brigntened up the pictures.

We got to the location for the boat ride to the glacier just in time. We boarded the boat and were served …

This day we hiked up the east leg of the W trek to the Torres del Paine. The first part of the trek was fairly easy, but the last part up to the towers was a rock scramble. We had fantastic luck the entire trip with clear weather so that we had perfect views of the towers. It was hard to visualize, even standing there, how tall the towers are.

On our last full day at Torres Del Paine we hiked to the east of EcoCamp in an area with an abundance of guanacos. They were quite tolerant of us being near them as long as we did not get too close.

We flew from Santiago to Calama early in the morning and were met by a driver who took us to San Pedro de Atacama. San Pedro is at about 8,000 feet and the tourist center of the desert, which is the driest in the world.

We walked around the town until our room was ready at the hotel. The town is small with one story buildings and dirt roads. …

We got up early in the morning for our drive out to the Geyser to get the best views of the steam rising into the morning light. In the afternoon we visited the Valley of the Moon where we walked through a canyon with talking walls. The rocks made a cracking noise as the salt in the expanded with the temperature changes.