Chilean Patagonia
2003 Feb 4-13

These pictures were taken on a trip to Chilean Patagonia (Punta Arenas, Puerto Natales, and the Parque Nacional Torres del Paine) on 2003 February 4th thru 13th with Darren DePoy and Jen Marshall. We took the trip after a week-long engineering run at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO) during which we redeployed the ANDICAM at the 1.3m telescope for the SMARTS consortium, and installed a new data-taking computer on the OSIRIS IR imager/spectrometer in advance of its redeployment at the 4.2m SOAR telescope later this year. Since Jen and Darren had a 4-meter run a week after the end of the engineering run, rather than return to the US we stayed in Chile and took a trek to Patagonia.

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Image Sources:
DCSN* = Rick Pogge's Nikon CoolPix 2500
IMG_02* = Darren DePoy's Canon PowerShot 220
I took most of the images here, but where I'm in the picture the photographers were either Darren DePoy (who also shot all of the IMG* pictures he's not in), Jen Marshall, some random passerby, or the auto-timer.


Feb 4: La Serena to Santiago by Bus
From CTIO we spent the night in La Serena, and next morning took a bus to Santiago. The bus was a luxurious "Salon Cama Platinum" (no South American chicken buses for us). 6-odd hours later down the Pan American Highway we arrived in central Santiago, the capital and largest city of Chile, on a hot smoggy 90+ degree day.
 

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Feb 5: Santiago de Chile
We spent the 5th seeing the sights in Santiago, the most photogenic of which was the Mercado Central with its fish and vegetable vendors. We also purchased additional supplies in Santiago and packed our gear in preparation for our flight to Punta Arenas on the morning of the 6th.
 

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Feb 6: Punta Arenas to Puerto Natales
Our flight from Santiago arrived in Punta Arenas on the Straits of Magellan around noon (after a brief stop in Puerto Montt). It was a whole lot cooler and very windy. We picked up our rental truck and immediately drove north to Puerto Natales on the Last Hope Sound (Seno Ultimaesperanza). We spent the night in Puerto Natales before heading to Torres del Paine.
 

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Feb 7: Puerto Natales to Cueva del Milodon & Torres del Paine
From Puerto Natales we drove to the Parque Nacionale Torres del Paine, stopping along the way to visit the Cave of the Milodon National Monument, where Eberhard found a well-preserved skin and droppings of a Milodon in a cave. The cave is about 30m high and fairly deep, and was the also home to human settlements some 12,000 years old (much post-dating the last milodons). From there we drove into the park under cloudy skies and got our first look at the mountains in the park.
 

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Feb 7 (cont'd): Guanacos (Torres del Paine)
The Torres del Paine park is home to large heards of Guanacos, wild relatives of the domesticated Llamas and Alpacas. Here is a herd that we drove through just after entering the park.
 

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Feb 7 (cont'd): Refugio Pudeto, Lago Pahoe & Lago Grey
We parked the truck at Refugio Pudeto, intending to catch the motor launch across Lago Pahoe to the Refugio Pahoe camp, which would be our basecamp for a trek to Glacier Gray. The guide book was wrong about the boat trip times, so we had about 6 hours to kill. We had lunch and then hiked up to a nearby glacial falls that feeds Lago Pahoe, then drove out to Lago Gray to see the icebergs at the end of the lake. These bergs break off of the end of Glacier Gray. A fierce wind was blowing off the distant ice fields, making it much colder than at Pudeto, and blowing lots of spray off the lake. By our return to Pudeto at 6pm, it was still blowing, making for a bumpy ride to Refugio Pudeto where we pitched camp for the night, from which we would start our trip to Glacier Gray the next morning.
 

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Feb 8: Refugio Lago Pahoe to Valles Frances (Campamento Italiano & Glacier Frances)
The day dawned windy and very rainy. We cooked a quick breakfast, then retreated to the tent to consider our plans. The wind and rain were clearly originating from the ice fields behind Glacier Gray, so going there would just be going straight into the teeth of the bad weather. On the opposite side of the glacier, shielded by the Cerro Paine Grande, is the Glacier Frances. We decided to make for Campamento Italiano, up the Valles Frances, and go instead for that glacier. We chose well in the end, while it did rain on us that afternoon at the glacier, things were likely much worse closer to the big icefields. Most of the hike was in sun, but the winds were very strong, nearly blowing us over in a couple of cases. In the afternoon we reached Campamento Italiano where we pitched our tent and then took a brief and rainy day hike up to the Frances Glacier. The camp was in a beech forest, so shielded from wind and spitting rain, which thankfully died down towards evening, giving way to a peaceful if very dark night.
 

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Feb 9: Return to Refugio Lago Pahoe & on to Las Torres Camp
We broke camp at Campamento Italiano and hiked (in much less wind) back to the refugio at Lago Pahoe in time to catch the 12:30 boat back to Refugio Puteno. From there we loaded up the truck and shifted camp to Las Torres at the other end of the Park. Las Torres would be our base for a trek to the Torres del Paine the next day. At Las Torres there was sun and NO WIND! A good afternoon to take a shower at the camp and stretch out some.
 

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Feb 10: Day Trek to the Mirador Torres del Paine
The high-point of our trip was a day trek from our base camp at Las Torres to see the spires of the Torres del Paine. The trek took about 9 hours and covered about 20 miles (and about 2500 feet of altitude gain, as recorded below on Darren's wrist-watch altimeter). The day dawned clear and cold, but got progressively more cloudy, ending in rain and wind by evening. After a long uphill trek, the final hour was a steep scramble over a boulder field, at the top of which was a ridge that led into the circe of the Torres. This is probably one of the most spectacular vistas in all of South America.
 

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Feb 11: Return to Punta Arenas
The day dawned with extremely high winds that were blowing our tents down, so we decided to bug out and return to Punta Arenas. We later learned that the sustained windspeed in the park was in excess of 100 km/h (gusts were, of course, stronger). Our final view of the park was of the Paine massif in the early morning light seen across Lago Sarmiento. Along the way back, we saw this pair of Darwin's Rheas by the side of the road to Puerto Natales.
 

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Feb 12: Seno Otway Penguin Reserve
Seno Otway is a sound on the opposite side of the peninsula from Punta Arenas (about 60km away). It is the site of one of the two main nesting areas for the Magellanic Penguin. The Magellanic Penguin is also known as the "Jackass Penguin" for its characteristic donkey-like braying call. On this day the juvenal penguins hatched in the previous month were down on the shore learning to swim.
 

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Feb 12 (cont'd): Fuerto Bulnes & Punta Santa Ana (Straits of Magellan)
Fuerto Bulnes was the first permanent Chilean habitation in Patagonia, established on a bluff overlooking the Straits of Magellan in 1836. The weather here is terrible, so they moved the settlement north to modern Punta Arenas. Nearby is Point Famine, where Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa's ill-fated settlement was located in the 1530s. All but one of the 300 colonists died of starvation. Punta Santa Ana is the furthest south you can reach on the South American Continent proper, the true furthest-south being Cape Froward, which has no roads leading to it. Because Chile claims a wedge of Antartica, the roadhead above the point is the geographic center of Chile, marked by an appropriately long and thin monument.
 

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Feb 13: Isla Magadlena Penguin Reserve (Straits of Magellan)
This is the largest nesting area of the Magellanic penguin in the world. The island is home to about 60,000 nesting pairs, as well as nests of gulls and cormorants. At the time we arrived, the juvenal penguins had shed their fluffy feathers and were starting to learn to swim for the first time. The island is reached by the ferry boat Malenka that runs 3 times a week for a 1 hour stay at the reserve, which is run by the Chilean Forest Service (CONAF).
 

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Feb 16: Home to the snow...

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Updated: 2003 Mar 4 [tabulizer v1.2]