Patagonia (Chile)

Patagonia is the mountainous region toward the bottom of South America, centred on the Andes. It is not the very bottom tip - that is Tierra del Fuego - but it is relatively close. We flew down from Santiago to Puerto Natales (3.2hrs) to visit the Chilean side. It was spectacular. We visited the Torres del Paine National Park as well as the archipelago adjacent to the town, where we cruised to a few huge glaciers. Here are some pics...

On the flight down there some views of glaciers and Andes from the plane...

Torres del Paine National Park has many jagged peaks and a glaciers. We just did a day trip to see the views, but many people do the 'W' walk (4-5 days) or the 'O' walk (7-9 days) around the main massif. These are various views from the day....

On the way around we saw these Lesser Rhea, which are like a small Ostrich....

The icebergs on Lake Grey were great and the scale awesome. Check out the size of the people in the pictures for reference...

A female Magellanic Woodpecker on the way to Grey Lake...

The last stop was a cave where they found remains of a large sloth-like critter (4m tall), roaming around at the same time as the sabre toothed tiger...

This is the foreshore of Puerto Natales outside our hotel at sunrise...

These Black-Necked Swans were common in the waterways opposite town - I like the style of the young ones on Mum's back...

We had a day cruise through the waterways between the town and the Magellan Strait to see two glaciers. Incredible landscapes. On the way we saw waterfalls, a Cormorant colony and Sea Lions...

Cormorant colony....

Love the quiffs and blue eyes on these Imperial Cormorants...

This Chimango Caracara was causing all sorts of drama amongst the Cormorants....

Nearby were these Black-Faced Ibis...

The first glacier was called the Balmaceda Glacier...

We walked to visit the second glacier (Serrano Glacier) and got quite close...

Santiago

After our Everglades visit we flew 7.5hrs down to Santiago to start our 11 day tour of Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego. We had some nice views of the Andes on the way down and enjoyed our two night stay. We visited most of the sights during our visit and thought it reasonably well organised with a good metro system. Here are some pics....

We used an online guided walk for historic Santiago and thought it quite grand in parts. Most buildings of substance were late 1800's to early 1900's, including the stock exchange and town hall which appear below....

The Royal Palace is in one of the main squares, with two Westies in the gardens!....

The Pre-Columbian Museum was fantastic. It had great architecture being a modern adaptation of one of the oldest buildings in Santiago (established with gift of huge collection owned by an architect/archeologist many years ago). The explanations were interesting and lighting fantastic. I was particularly taken with the funerary figures (quite large) in timber and the amazing, very old hat collection (dating from 1100's)...

The population is about 7 million, living in quite a dense configuration. Compared to LA's 7 million it is clearly more condensed. The Andes provide a great backdrop too...

There are a few nice character precincts. Not too large and not too many, but attractive and vibrant with markets on weekends...

We stayed in a more modern part of the city, linked well to the balance by an efficient metro. Opposite our hotel was a very impressive multi-storey retail centre around a central open square...

On the second day we visited the local zoo, which is free and sited on a pretty serious hillside in the middle of the city. A funicular and two gondolas provide transport across the hills and are very well used. It was a great outing...

Ocelot...

A major waterway is engineered through the city to carry the water from the mountains. The hills in the background are where the gondolas and zoo are located....

Gators!

We've just spent 3 days in the Everglades in Florida, on our way down to Chile. The weather was pretty warm and humid. The Everglades ecosystem is fascinating, huge and very wet! It's also quite disturbed and smaller than it used to be (Miami is pretty much built on what was once part of the Everglades). There are also a lot of mozzies (like a laughable amount) that appear late in the day at the very southern end at a settlement called Flamingo. It was a focussed natural excursion looking at 'gators, critters and birds from cars, bikes, boardwalks and boats. Here are some pics....

There be 'gators! Down at Flamingo, they also have Crocodiles, which are lighter in colour and look a lot like our crocodiles (whilst salt tolerant, they are more docile than ours). This photo is of an Alligator, which are black and have 'U' shaped snouts (not 'V' shape like Crocodiles)....

There are good boardwalks in various locations:

Plenty of interesting birdlife:

Dragonfly:

Our 'Backwater' cruise was great with interesting narration from the guide:

Oh boy, what a lot of mozzies - we had to get some head nets!...

They have a Florida Panther here, but very elusive. In fact, it is the same as a Mountain Lion or Cougar - all the same thing. Elsewhere, a Panther is a black Jaguar or Leopard. Simples....

Note 'U' shaped snout. Just over the side of a boardwalk....

Look carefully for all the stripy babies nearby, again just near the boardwalk....

We drove over to the Biscayne National Park on the east coast of the Florida peninsula for a quick look. This is Miami from there - we didn't have time to visit. It has a very large Art Deco precinct that would be worth a look sometime...

Shark Valley is a 24km loop road through the National Park to either cycle or go on a little wheeled 'tram' ride. We cycled. Half way around there is a mid-century lookout tower which is quite striking....

On our way back to the airport we visited some Cypress forests in the Big Cypress National Preserve, just next to Everglades National Park. At the very end it rained heavily, making freeway driving to the airport that night a bit exciting!....