My Adventures and Travels

When I went to Patagonia in January of 2014, I knew I'd be heading back the following year. This time, my mom and her husband met me in Punta Arenas and we took an "Active Adventures" tour with tons of hiking. Many of the places (Perito Moreno & El Chalten) I had been to, but several I hadn't (Torres del Paine). I don't normally see places by tour, but it was nice to step away from planning every bit of transportation, food, and lodging for awhile-especially after weeks on the road!! This first batch of pictures is from our four-day "W" trek in Torres del Paine, Chile. And we're off! In our bus to Torres del Paine (blue towers) National Park We saw guanacos and rhea on the way Ready to start! Up, up, up we go. Great views and decent weather for day 1 After we dropped our packs off and had lunch at the first refugio, we continued up, up, up. We made it, and as we arrived, the clouds lifted! These are the towers the par...

The United States uses dogs to search for explosives and drugs. Chile uses dogs to make sure you're not illegally transporting produce into the country. I'm sure there is a good reason for this, but it makes going through customs at the border a time-consuming ordeal! I had friends who were stuck at the border crossing for 4 hours so I was a little nervous about it, but I think my bus got through in about an hour and a half. Since the border dividing Chile and Argentina is the Andes mountain range, it's quite a scenic location! We had to get off the bus, go inside, and everyone had to go through a line to get stamped "out" of Argentina. Then go through another line to get stamped "into" Chile. Then we went back to the bus, where they take all the luggage out from below, and it goes through a metal detector (apple detector?) while dogs sniff all the bags. While that is happening, passengers take all their other luggage from the bus and put it on...

My route to Pucon wasn't direct or even really intentional. I'd read about it when I stumbled upon a blog, while searching for different bus routes that would bring me south, into "official" Patagonia. And by "official," I mean a place that was actually in my Patagonia travel book. Anyway I read about Pucon and it sounded neat, but I wasn't planning on going there. From the bus station in Pichilemu, I got the bus to a tiny town called San Fernando. I was planning on buying a ticket there to a town called Osorno-because from there, I could get a bus to Bariloche, Argentina. Well in South America, you generally can't buy a ticket until you are physically in the town you need the ticket from. So...I arrived in San Fernando and went to every ticket office, and NO ONE had a ticket to Osorno. So I looked around at all the advertised places that the different bus companies offered and one did go to Pucon. So I bought a ticket. Then I got online (most bus ...