Patagonia

Surprisingly to me Patagonia was a bit of a disappointment. Maybe I have been traveling too long or just went about it the wrong way. The Argentinean airline went on strike, so I bused it down and then you realize just how big Argentina is and how scenery is so incredibly dull. Passing the same undulating scrub land for days on end, sleep on the bus, wake up in the morning, nothing has changed, the same view. It seems a long way to go just for a few hours site seeing. I saw whales on the east coast which was nice, but for that afternoon it took 17 hours on a bus to get there. I spent three hours staring out the bus window one morning and counted 3 horses, 2 sheep and 2 birds. That after 3 hours! no cars, houses, people, bored, bored, bored.

Long overnight buses transport me further south to unremarkable towns.This kind of pattern repeated itself, very long bus journeys separated by a day or two of site seeing. The good bits are really good. The roar of ice falling from a glacier, clouds sweeping the vertical faces of mountains, watching wood peckers in the forest, but it is always tinged with the fact that I have another long bus journey to follow.
I cross back into Chile. At this point there are only roads on the map. I face the same kind of issues as before in Chile with expensive accommodation and dire food, my standards are pretty flexible, but some of these places are the pits. I also get the only disappointment of my trip. The weather in Torres del Paine was awful. Constant driving wind, bitterly cold, damp, low cloud. I pay for the permits, do the four hour bus journey to the start of the treck, but I force myself to accept the reality of the situation and made the tough decision to turn around without really experiencing the mountains.

If you travel this far and spend this much you have to say how good they are, but...

I get a bit stuck trying trying to get out of town. There just are not many options this far south. So I take the easy way and fly over the mountains to Puerto Williams, Cape Horn. It makes me feel good just typing that. The last town in the world. Which amuses me as is quite an unassuming town, where as typically the Argentines across the water in Ushuia brag about being the most southerly town, T shirts, mugs. key fobs etc.

But here there is just nature. No gift shops, no restaurants, nor tourists, I was of only three visitors in town. Everyone just gets on with their regular jobs. Its very quite, calm, pretty, empty pebble beaches fringed with forests and zig-zag mountain tops. Its very much like Scotland, which is a bit ironic having traveled over 10,000 miles from Scotland.

In actual fact I get into a bit of a fud down here. Partly because I'm tired, the cold damp weather, the poor food and the constant traveling, buses and to be honest some of the other back packers. Anyway, leaving proves to be quite difficult. As nobody expects any tourists there aren't any regular means to leave the island. The thought of being stuck here over Christmas spurs me to find a boat going back north, as it happens a very uncomfortable and expensive journey to Argentina.

And what do I do next, jump on a boat on Christmas Eve going the opposite way heading south to Antarctica.