We arrived uneventfully at the tiny airport in Puerto Natales after 21 hours of travel at approximately 4pm. A short $14 ride from the airport brought us to La Plaza De Armas in the town and we walked to our hostel from there.
Puerto Natales is almost entirely oriented around tours and excursions into Torres del Paine Park, and the idea of going all the way there without going to TDP is pretty crazy. On the other hand, January is peak season and we’ve heard the most popular hike, the W, which takes 4-5 days is full of people. The hiking trails might not be so bad if everyone gets started at different times, but the campsites are crazy full, and the refugios, hostels with dorm beds, were going for $110 per night without food and $180 per night with food. The W hike is totally our kind of adventure, but we’ll have to come back and do it off peak. There are plenty of other cool things to see and do without falling into the tourist trap on the first day.
Priority one was finding an ATM. Priority two was locating the bus station and acquiring two tickets to El Calafate, Argentina to find our friends on Saturday. Priority three was finding food since Jess had only eaten two granola bars all day. And we had to do this all while avoiding the vicious attack puppies we saw all over the town. Stray dogs in South America are not to be trifled with.
The bank and the grocery store were on the way to the bus station so we easily completed our missions and even found a local butcher from which to acquire some local steak for our first Chilean meal.
Back at the hostel we prepared a delicious Philly-cheese-steak-like meal on pita, enjoyed delightful showers (our first for those who are counting), marveled that the sun was still up at 10pm, and figured out how to spend our next 36 hours in Chile.
Awesome start!!! Yes homeless dogs outside of US are very different…
Yes, I will be tallying your showers for the entire year.
Sponge baths count as 0.5