Kyle Hepp

February 22, 2011

I’m a little late on posting today. Yesterday was my birthday and copious amounts of champagne meant that Seba had to block me from drunk blogging when we got home So sorry about the delay. But I have to say — it was worth it. I had a great time. I am incredibly lucky to know such amazing people.

Sadly, this is my last post about our trip to Coyhaique. Not-so-sadly, we are going back to a different part of Patagonia this weekend. So no worries, the photos of the most insanely beautiful scenery you’ve ever seen will continue. In the mean time, in case you missed my previous posts, here’s the line up:

We were in Patagonia to photograph a destination wedding there:

Preview

Full wedding post

Day After session

Of course, I also posted about our travel adventures:

Getting off to a rocky start in Coyhaique.

A few photos of the actual city itself, and some of it’s residents.

Our 2.5 hour uphill bike ride to nowhere.

The first day on the Carretera Austral.

The most amazingly blue water you’ve ever seen at the Capillas de Marmol!

Now I’m on to today’s post — our last day on the Carretera Austral. When we woke up for our second day in Puerto Tranquilo it was pouring rain and freezing. The rain let up off and on during the day, but the weather stayed crappy, so thank goodness we had went out on the boat ride to Capillas de Marmol the day before. It would’ve been a miserable trip on the water if we had went while it was drizzling and cold.

Our second day consisted of driving about 50 kilometers down another dirt road outside of Puerto Tranquilo so that we could go on a short hike to see a glacier. Of course, the scenery getting there was insane as well. So again, instead of taking us 1 hour to get there, it took us 3.5 hours because of stopping every two seconds. Here are some pictures from the drive.

This is another of those cool Southern Chile cemeteries with the graves that are like little houses.

There were several on the side of the road. But all had really nice views of pretty lakes or mountains.

Yay! We brought our tripod so we could get pictures of ourselves together!

Seba lost his hat, so he improvised by putting his fleece pajama pants on his head. The man is resourceful, you have to give him that.

I don’t know why, but I was mildly obsessed with jumping pictures this trip. I think I’m going to make it my new thing.

The clouds made it a little hard to see but all around in these mountains are glaciers. It felt really weird to be seeing in real life what I’d previously only learned about in science books.

We drove past where the glacier hiking was because we wanted to see where the road lead to. This was it. One house at the very end. We stopped and had a picnic in our truck there. There was a sign that said that road was going to be continued to go all the way to the famous Laguna San Rafael eventually.

Also near the end was this little Aerodromo.

I cannot imagine landing in a plane on this field. Holy scary. I wonder who flies to Puerto Tranquilo? Scientists that need to go in helicopters to study the glaciers?

All the bridges throughout the entire Carretera Austral were red. I wondered if there was a special reason for that. It clashed with the scenery.

Here is where we started our hike up to the glacier lookout point. It’s a really short trek, it took us about 20 minutes I think. It was raining pretty hard when we went, but the path was well maintained and the rocks we had to climb up weren’t slippery. Believe it or not, the path and lookout are maintained by the government. But some entrepreneurial Chilean bought the land directly in front of the path and since it’s private property, they charge for access to the path. I actually liked it though, since being a private owner meant they charged the same price to Chileans and foreigners alike. All Chilean national parks charge foreigners more to get in, which has to be quite possibly the worst tourism policy I’ve ever heard of.

This is the view from about three quarters of the way up the climb.

And this is the glacier once you’re up at the top. That white that you’re seeing in between the mountains is all glacier.

The guy who took our money to get in told us that the glacier is melting at a faster pace than ever before — 5-6 centimeters a day. That’s freaking scary!

Seba. Pants on his head. Man, I love him.

We took this picture to try to show how steep the path was. That’s my “This is REALLY offing steep,” face.

After we climbed up to the glacier, we started the drive back to Coyhaique so we could catch our flight the next day. It was down pouring and like something straight out of a horror movie, we got a flat tire. Fortunately the truck had a spare, and even more fortunately Seba knows how to change a tire. I do not. I would’ve died there all alone. Actually, in the half an hour we were stopped 7 cars passed us. Of those, 2 stopped to ask for help. But 1 car didn’t stop because they were right behind one of the ones that did and so they saw that we told them we were fine. And 1 other car passed us right in the beginning and we hadn’t yet gotten out the tools to change the tire, so we could’ve just been stopping to stretch our legs for all they knew. That means that only 3 cars passed that didn’t ask if we were ok. That’s a pretty high Nice People To Mean People ratio. I love the south of Chile.

To sum up all my lengthy and very wordy posts about this unbelievably awesome trip:

GO.