Our Grand Adventure - 1 of 10

**A note to our readers. "Our Grand Adventure" entails 10 blog posts. Due to the web page limitations of Blogspot, only 7 of the posts appear on this screen. (And as we post more posts this month and next more posts of our adventure will be pushed into the back pages of this blog.) So in order to see the higher numbered posts you have two options: scroll to the bottom of this screen and click the "Older Posts" link or pick and click on whichever post you want to read from the menu on the right hand side of the screen. It is as easy and smooth as a Kuntsmann beer on a hot day in Chile. Enjoy!


We are back to the doldrums of life in Temuco. Afternoon cafes, jostling for tomatoes at the corner vegetable market, walks to Jumbo for cream cheese, Pisco, and wine, and succulent desserts from the local German bakery. Yes, it is tough duty to be back in Temcuo. We have one week left before we move on over to Argentina. Sarah is conducting more interviews, and I am busy contemplating the big questions of life in Spanish, i.e. “I have already ordered a hot chocolate with coffee, thank you.”, “When will you have more of the chocolate cake with fresh whipped cream, tomorrow?”, and “Do you all have any bacon?”

These questions and other important ones like: “Do I have time for a siesta this afternoon?” need some time and attention, and I know that I am just the person to provide such answers. But if truth be told, while Sarah has been off working each day, I have been recovering from another bout of post adventure blues. Only this recovery has taken longer because our recent adventure was grand. In fact, it wasn’t just grand, it was fabulous.

The days were filled with activities from sun up to sun down. We had wine and/or Pisco Sours at every dinner, oftentimes enjoying a cold beer at lunch. We went hiking and backpacking in Torres del Paine. We saw condors high in the alpine sky and boated out onto Ocean islands to see Humboldt Penguins, Red legged Cormorants and Flightless Steamer Ducks. We braved wind storms and rain bursts, endured the heat and chilling cold, and enjoyed vistas of mountains and panoramas of the Pacific. We met couples and families from Germany, Holland, Belgium, England, the U.S. and Chile. We watched the sun set after midnight on the Straights of Magellan and dined like kings on steak tartar, pork shoulders, Congrio, oysters, Salmon, steak tenderloins, fresh pastas and even Beaver. We took more pictures than a National Geographic expedition and probably wish we had taken more, given the multifarious tones of the Austral light. We played cards and slept on airplanes and made our way through some of the most desolate wind-swept areas of the earth. We were awestruck by the size and immensity of the glaciers we saw and we most certainly fell into bed each night exhausted from the activities of the day. We did all of this in less than 2 weeks and as our travels came to a close last Friday, we all wished that we had booked 2 more weeks of travel in Patagonia.

Because we have so many photos from our whirlwind adventure, we have decided that it would be fun not only to post a number of them on the blog entries that follow but also to give our readers a link or two for compilation albums on Snapfish. This way you can see more snapshots of the trip, lingering your day away with views of mountains, vistas and wildlife of Chile. Look for these links on the last blog post for this trip. (Post #10)

Instead of one long and rambling blog post that details the day to day, we have decided to combine posts with different parts of the trip. We hope that you enjoy the musings and the photos. To give you all an idea of the overall structure of the trip, here is the itinerary we followed:

Day 1: Bruce and Jane arrived, lunch and dinner in Temuco.
Day 2: Drove to Villarrica for fresh juice, lunch in Pucón, continued drive south to Puerto Octay.
Day 3: Hiked to waterfall near Puerto Octay. Once in Frutillar. Dinner at Hotel.
Day 4: Flight to Punta Arenas, lunch in Puerto Natales, drove to Torres del Paine.
Day 5: Boat ride across Lago Pehoé to start on the W Trail, quick hike up to Lago Grey, then hiked over to Cuernos, passing the Glaciar Francés.
Day 6: Continued on W Trail from Cuernos to Chilenos, including hike to the Torres.
Day 7: Hiked out from Chilenos, caught a bus back to the car, short 5 km hike to scenic spot on Lago Grey, drove, drove, drove, and drove to Hostería del Payne (amazing views).
Day 8: Drove out of the Torres area with lunch in Puerto Natales. Dinner in Punta Arenas including a drink in the Shackleton Bar.
Day 9: Bummed around Punta Arenas, flight to Puerto Montt, night in Puerto Varas. New Year’s Eve dinner in a fun, family owned Italian restaurant. Fireworks on the lake front.
Day 10: Drove to Chiloé, visited Penguin colony, stayed on the bay in Dalcahue with a wood fired hot tub.
Day 11: Drove around Chiloé visiting the old churches and a late afternoon pizza and beer with one of the most outgoing waiters in all of Chile.
Day 12: Drove back to the mainland with lunch in Puerto Varas. Drove up to Valdivia for the night with dinner at the famous Café Haussmann. Crudos and Tártaro!
Day 13: Drove back to Temcuo, lunch at our favorite restaurant, and Bruce and Jane departed for Santiago and the U.S.
Day 14: Slept.