patagonia is a place...

So when I told people that I was going to Patagonia over Christmas break I was surprised at the amount of people that did not know it was an actual place, many people just know of the company Patagonia. But it is an actual place and a beautiful one at that.

My friends an I spent 3 weeks in Chile, 2 and a half in Patagonia (10 backpacking) and 4 days in Santiago. My bag was lost on the way down there and we had a difficult time trying to communicate with the airport workers what had happened. Luckily the hostel owner in Punta Arenas had a sister-in-law that forked for LAN and took care of getting my bag. It only pushed us back a day but luckily we built extra time into our schedule. We spent 2 nights in Punta Arenas and then one night in Puerto Natales and then went into the Torres Del Paine National Park.

When I look at my pictures it is still hard to believe that I was there. It is easily the most beautiful place I have ever seen. We were extremely lucky with weather. We had one bad day with 60 mph winds which knocked me over and took Omar's glasses. Liz got stuck in a bog on the day we went through the pass but Omar helped get her out. We met people from all over the world and someone that goes to Auburn. We had a trail family from Texas.

We hiked for 10 days and then went back to Puerto Natales for 2 days and then to Punta Arenas for 2 days. On our way to the Punta Arenas airport there was a strike and we had to walk around it and were luckily picked up by an airport worker and our flight to Santigo was only delayed 20 minutes. We spent 4 days in Sanitiago and met up with someone from home who guided us around the giant city.