Some of the guys from Navimag, Mike, Di, Chris and Magie

Bingo on the last night

The Navimag boat to Puerto Montt

Just a quick stop here, three days on board apart from that. Great scenery though

Strange ferry to Puerto Eden, small indiginous settement

In Puerto Natalis, a nice meal out turned sour when they added lots of supossedly free mouses to the bill. We soon put them in their place though!!

The boat

Another angle

Us at the top

The view!!! Spectacular

Nearly there

Me again

Lauren, a steep climb to see the towers

Lovely views most of the way

Hurry up!!

Me

Lozza

Me

More Glaciers, in the French Valley

Lozza

The Grey Glacier

Lozza

Beginning of the great walk in Torres del Paine

Lovely scenery, and this was just the start of the walk!!

Me

Punta Arenas, nothing much to report here although Scott and I did have a particularly late and drunken night in some very strange bars!!

Boat crossing on way to Punta Arenas

End of the road in Usuaia. 18,000K to Alaska!!!

Chile And Mendoza (Argentina)

Back in Chile now after a bus ride from Usuaia. Have spent a couple of days in Punta Arenas to stock up on camping stuff and the on to Puerto Natalis to head into Torres del Paine national park for 5 days walking and camping.

Was a beautiful trip, did manage to stub my toe really badly on day two though and had trouble walking the rest of the way!! Worth it for the views though.

Since then we have taken the Navimag boat trip up from Puerto Natalis to Puerto Montt. A couple of days in Varas near the Osorno volcano updating this site and visiting the Alerces Andino National Park, lots of hugh trees here but we only managed to find one, should have gon on a very expensive guided trip I guess.

Next was a few days in Valdivia, a coastal towmn with forts to protect the Spanish invaders from invaders. Good brewery there too called Kuntsmann, great honey beer.

Next was on to Pucon, from here we climbed the mighty Villarrica Volcanoe. This was about 1 5 hour climb from the top of the ski lift to see the active crater at the top, amazing seeing the lava bubbling right in front of you. Then you get to slide back down in the snow so going down takes about an hour!!

Then on to Valparaiso, one of Santiagos satelite beachy areas, the town of Vina del Mar has much better beaches and feel to it. Nice place, bloke who ran our hostel ripped us right off for a ride back to the bus station though!!!

After this we headed back into Argentina to the wine region of Mendoza, greta place, met up with John from the Antactic trip there for about a week of visting the mountains, and lots of winery tours and general boozing. Bought a coupke of bottles of seriously good wine for even better prices!!

From here we made our way to Peru.

The gang

New Year Champers

Out with the old and in with the new. UFO in the background!!

Cheers Ears

Costa playing the useless waiter, not much acting required. HOHO

New Years Eve party, Lozza and Rebecca did some kind of strange act. Was well received though

Ringing in the New Year

And even more so

Scary really

Gus the compere for the New Years festivities / Zodiac boss

Another base

More zodiac cruising

The boat with an active crab eater seal in front

Brad and an incredibly large ice berg, this little beauty was about 1.2K long!!

Down they come

Not the highlight of the trip seeing these bases but did have a minke whale swim right next to the zodiac here!!

And again, was a bit dark unfortunatly

This was amazing, three hump backs bubble netting to feed for about 40 minutes right next to the boat!! Incredible

Long walk up for a quick sledge down

An Argentinian base we visited, still no where near the pole

I think this little chap is a Weddell seal, possible a leopard one though

This is a crab eater seal, I´ve been corrected for those of you that read this previously!!