Chile/Argentina = Puerto Natales

Other than being the gateway to Torres del Paine National Park, there is nothing special about Puerto Natales.  But since it is our last stop before the wilderness, I thought I'd devote a post to it and explore what it's like in a small Chilean town.  This is also where we picked up our rental car delivered to us at the airport.  

Driving into town, we noticed an old pier with nothing but pilings left at the waterfront .  This turned out to be our destination for sunset and sunrise.  There wasn't much of a sunset but the sunrise was breathtaking.  The bonus was it was within walking distance from where we were staying.

The town is small enough to walk to wherever we need to, so we walked to dinner at a restaurant - in a shipping container nonetheless!   And it served the sought after black cod or Patagonian sablefish!  After dinner we walked to the grocery store to stock up on necessities for the following week. Interesting that the supermarket allowed small vendors selling local fruits and shopping bags at competitive prices just outside the door.  

You will see below snapshots of the town, and random things we came across.  We left for Torres del Paine right after breakfast.  It wasn't far but part of it is on gravel roads and it took us a couple of hours to get there.  One important note, there are no gas stations after Puerto Natales so we were very conscious about conserving gas throughout the five days we were in the area.  The one tank of gas would have to last us until we cross the border into Argentina.

The old pier at dusk

Santolla - restaurant in a shipping container (outside and inside)

Delicious Patagonian sablefish

Riding the skatepark

An expressive mural on a house fence

Wooden statue of Mylodon, an extinct giant ground sloth - town landmark and mascot

Local church

Interesting abodes

Ready made cart for street vendor

Dried peppers and what looked like smoked mussels or oysters

Matcha cups in all shapes and sizes

Monument commemorating renowned Patagonian explorer Alberto De Agostini, Salesian missionary, photographer and cartographer (beside an indigenous person, symbolizing his respectful approach to the local cultures)

Just before sunrise at the pier

A dazzling sunrise with double rainbows

Rock shags ready to sun themselves at the end of the pier

Two vista points before we got to Torres del Paine - a foretaste of vistas to come

Chile/Argentina - Easter Island Pt 2

The first stop on the Historic Pathways tour took us to the crater of the extinct volcano Rano Kau on the southern tip of the island.  It is an impressive round crater dropping two hundred metres below to a lake covered with floating reeds.  Apparently there is no bird life here even though it looks like there might be.

Rano Kau crater

Close-up look at the reeds at the bottom of the crater

Hiking around to the ocean side gave us a different perspective on the crater

A Moai head on the coast, one of a few with painted eyes

Rapa Nui map showing the different sites

 On the rim of the crater is the restored ceremonial stone village of Orongo.  We were introduced to the Birdman Cult - each spring warriors would gather in Orongo from different villages and compete.  They would jump off the cliff into the sea and swim to the islands just offshore to find the egg of the tern.  The chief of the first person to return with the egg in tact would become the supreme leader of the island for the year.  For obvious reasons, competition was fierce.  These competitions ended when Christian missionaries arrived in the 1860s.

Birdman cult moai

The islands to which the competitors swam to find the tern's egg - what a beautiful stack

This is supposed to be a woman with two heads that got chopped off.

Stone village 

Petroglyph in Orongo

The way these huge stones are stacked reminded us of the Inca stone walls in Machu Picchu

Cotton plant in Orongo

The best lunch we had since we arrived in Chile - fresh tuna with veggies fresh and grilled.  It was so good we had the same thing twice on the island.

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These two moais are right at the waterfront in Hanga Roa, the only accessible ones that are not in the National Park.

These are the only moais on the island that face the ocean.  The reason is because the village is by the sea, between the moais and the ocean.  

For our pre-dawn astro, we went back to Anakena Beach but stationed ourselves on ocean side, looking at the backs of the moais.  The milky way first came up above the moais and then as dawn neared, it moved behind the moais.  What an awesome experience!

We went back to Tongariki for a last look.  There was no visible sunrise that day, we were lucky to be able to see one the day before.  We saw lots of disappointed photographers walking away from the park.

We returned to our airbnb and were surprised by a visit from Marc Ross Shields, the author of the book "Rapa Nui - A Visual Journey to the Navel of the World". Marc is associated with Green Island Tours with whom we had booked our tours.  He came over to gift us each with a copy of his book with its stunning photos.  Marc lives on the island with his family.

Marc with our group leader

This wraps up our Easter Island tour.  We had six hours on the flight back to Santiago to catch up on sleep and get ready for the next adventure in Patagonia.