Feeling a bit ChileNov 1, 2009
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A move across the border today as we drove into Chile meaning yet another new bus! Although I have to say that this is a great way to see the scenery and definitely preferable to flying in my opinion.
We arrived at the Argentinian border just before lunchand found the customs guys playing ping pong!! I suppose it was in the middle of nowhere and they cant be that busy but it was quite a funny sight. Once we´d filled out the slightly ridiculous number of forms there we drove a short distance to the Chilean border where we had to take all the luggagge on-off the bus for inspection. No ping pong tables here and there was a frantic fruit eating and woodwork hiding session as we were not allowed these things into the country. After we´d made it through there we had a lunch stop (steak sandwiches!) before bording a different bus which took us into the Torres del Paine national park. There we had to change buses again (!!) but this time for a proper reason. The bridge which took us over to our hostel at the bottom of the Torres del Paine themselves was so narrow, only certain buses could fit - it really was a ridiculously tight squeeze and we had to walk over because it´s in such bad condition. Reassuring eh? The ride was good though because we saw so much wildlife up close. At one point we had 6 condors circling over us and we also saw grey foxes, guanacos (similar to llamas), flamingos and various other birds.
We arrived at the hostel (or refugee as Walter likes to call it) and a few of us decided on a brisk walk to a nearby lake because we´d been on the bus all day. That definitely helped to work up an appetite and we had a surprisingly good dinner in the hostel - 3 course meal infact, aided by some very cheap and lovely wine.
The downside of the hostel was having to share dorms and I was in with 5 others, including the tour guide. I was a bit worried about lack of sleep, particularly after all the problems in Canada but I have a new sleeping secret - few glasses of wine, a melatonin pill and listening to my Ipod. I had a brilliant nights´sleep!
