It’s been a whirlwind few months with work, the holidays, birthdays and vacation.  I’ve only just started to sort through my pictures from Chile and Argentina.  We spent the last month traveling around the Southern Hemisphere – mostly in Patagonia, hiking parts of the Paine Circuit.

We did this wonderful hike through Mountain Travel Sobek – an adventure travel company we’ve used before and will continue to use again and again.  Now that we’ve been home for about a week, I’ve had some time to reflect on the pictures, some of which are shown here.  The hikes were epic and more technical than I anticipated.  Altitude was not an issue during this trip – length/duration was on a daily basis.  We averaged about 11 miles a day; and our group had very experienced hikers – those that have the time to hike difficult terrain on an almost daily basis.  Had I to do this again, I would beef up my mileage for the 2 months prior to leaving – train as I would for a half marathon.

Punta Arenas, Chile was our first stop.  The city is the largest city south of the 46th parallel.  It is basically a pit stop before continuing on for treks or going further south to Antarctica.  This was the town square at 10:30 pm:

Punta Arenas is on the Straits of Magellen and along the coast, there were many places to stop and sit and view Terra del Fuego.  For summer it was cool, about 50 F, but windy.

Our trek started in Chile, heading out to Puerto Natales and then to Torres del Paine.

The vastness of this glacial lake and the Torres above took my breath away.  The area  is a climbers paradise and I’m sure that my love will head back to climb again.

Los Cuernos – or the horns – our next main point was equally breathtaking:

For me, the glaciers along Lago Grey were my favorite – I had never seen glaciers before and they are stunning:

And finally, as a history buff, we made a stop in the little town of La Leona, Argentina – known for a couple things: a hideout of Butch Cassidy and Sundance Kid before they went to Bolivia and the restaurant’s lemon pie.

I’m sure that this will not be our last hike – I’m hoping the next one will be as epic as this.