Torres Del Paine (Patagonia)-The Final Morning

I awoke the next morning to a group of no less than a dozen German tourists milling about my "bedroom."  I had my computer open and I was sleeping sitting up so as to not make it look like I was intentionally sleeping there, and that I actually belonged there.  I even took a nice hot shower that morning as I had done the previous night there.  

I gathered my things, walked to the Welcome Center, where I took a shuttle back to the Park Entrance.  There, I caught I bus back to Puerto Natales.  

My plan for the foreseeable future was to pop on over to Argentinian Patagonia, and in particular Calafate, and then after a few days there, somehow make it to the Marble Caves in Chile Chico, and then back up to the Lake District for a week.  Now, transportation in Patagonia is not as easy as the rest of Chile, so I would have either had to rent a car or hitchhike (which is actually quite common Chile).  But I was stressing a bit, because I do not like to rely on strangers, and renting a car was a dubious proposition as it would have had to be a one-way trip.  

But as they say, "the best laid plans of mice and men oft go astray," and these were not even very good plans.  I received a call from my client requesting that I come back the following week, which was in about five days.  So I had to do a little triage on the rest of my trip.  

Should I just go to Argentinean Patagonia and skip the Lake District altogether?  Should I go to Argentinean Patagonia, fly to California, then fly back to see the Lake District, as well as the Marble Caves, for a couple weeks? I eventually decided that the cleanest way to finish my trip was to ditch Argentinean Patagonia, and save that for when when I go to Argentina, and head to the Lake District as quickly as I could.  Then I would see as much as I could in the Lake District.  As for the Marble Caves, it shares a lake with Argentina, so perhaps I could pop over from Argentina in the future.  If you do not know what the Marble Caves are, you should google pictures of it.

So that morning, I booked a plane ticket from Punta Arenas to Puerto Montt for the next morning, and booked a bus ticket from Puerto Natales to Punta Arenas very late that night.  Now my planned trip looked more like this:

It was going to be another night of sleeping upright, but at least I would get to sleep in a chair with a backrest on both the bus and the airplane.  That seemed like a luxury at that moment.

Even though my Chile trip was cut a bit short, I still felt fortunate in that I would still be able to essentially see all of Chile.  If the call from my client came any sooner, I would not have been able to do this.  I would have had liked to have 9 weeks of uninterrupted travel time, but instead, I got 8 weeks, which still isn't too bad.  

That night on the bus, I pondered the uniqueness of Torres Del Paine, which has everything--lakes in every shade of blue, majestic snow-capped mountains, forests, crystal clear rivers, and glaciers--all in one place.  Is Torres Del Paine the most scenic place that I have visited thus far?  I can say that two days out of the week, it is indeed.

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