Greetings from Punta Arenas and apologies for the radio silence. I have been in the Torres del Paine national park for the last 4 or 5 days - that's a bit vague, i know, but kind of losing track of time here.....

I need to finish/correct the Calafate entry - plus, of course, write this one.....

Well - the bus journey from El Calafate was pretty straightforward - just long & boring. Oh, and tedious. It was dull, too..... - my itinerary details said it would take 5 & a half to 6 hours - but it took 7. The border crossing took up over 2 hours - the problem being on the Chilean side - which just can't cope with the volume of people that a 50-seat coach disgorges. And given that they must get 2 or 3 coaches an hour in season - it's a main route from El Calafate to Puerto Natales. Anyway, we got through in the end...

The reason why the journey is dull is simply that the scenery is pretty monotonous & it just goes on for miles - a lot of it is also on gravel roads where the coach, inevitably, goes slowly..... - things livened up when we did eventually cross the border into Chile - we were shadowed by a Condor - "hmm, fresh meat - oh! gringo - my favourite" - if you've ever seen a Condor glide you'll know what i mean - simply majestic - this one gliding along on its 3m wingspan - every now & again it gave a desultory flap of its wings & resumed gliding - now that's flying with nonchalance - before getting bored & flying off....

Anyway, i stayed over night in Puerto Natales at the Lady Florence Dixie Hotel. Puerto Natales is a funny sort of place - the kind of town where all the tourists are in transit - there's a nice vegetarian restaurant, though, called El Living - run by some English people - www.el-living.com.

Lady Florence Dixie is one of those amazing characters from history - in 1878/1879 she travelled with her husband & two friends throughout Patagonia - she wrote a book called "Across Patagonia" - noted that the indigenous population was in danger of becoming extinct (by 1947 they were) - and took home a Puma she called "Affums" - which, upon being released into Great Windsor Park, went on to consume the deer - so was subsequently removed to a zoo.....

Another interesting character is Bernard O'Higgins - born Ambrose Bernard O'Higgins in Ireland in 1720, he went off to South America to seek his fortune - he arrived in Lima (at that time Peru & Chile were one territory) and became involved in engineering & building new roads for the Spanish Army - he later became Governor General of Chile and so everywhere you go in Chile you'll see streets & parks named after him - although he's better known as Bernardo O'Higgins, which is vaguely comical and was even bestowed with the title Don Ambrosio - although he did not, in fact, invent tinned rice pudding - that was Lady Ambrosia of St. Ivel, as you know.....

Another Irishman who made his mark was William Brown - born in County Mayo in the late 1780's he is regarded as the father of the Argentinian navy...

Anyway - so on leaving Puerto Natales i went into the Torres del Paine - which is now a national park. Very beautiful with fabulous scenery, lots of lakes & rivers and unpredictable weather. Oh, and very windy. Apparently it is not windy in winter.

The name Torres del Paine means "towers of blue" and refers to the way the mountains can appear blue in certain lights. The park was created a "Biosphere Reserve" by UNESCO in 1978 - which sounds like it is surrounded by a giant bubble - but it doesn't appear to be. Where's Michael Jackson when you need him? He knows all about bubbles. Or indeed a West Ham fan - as they are forever blowing bubbles. Not many people know the origins of that, by the way. It goes back to when Joseph Rowntree opened a chocolate factory in Upton Park - shortly after production began he noticed that some of the bars of chocolate were going out with what appeared to be air bubbles in them. He thought that he would have to bring them all back & destroy them - but he found that people loved these bars - and so the Aero was born. Having discovered what his workers were up to - i.e. blowing bubbles into the chocolate - Rowntree trained & employed more local men to blow the bubbles into the chocolate bars. Being a philanthropist he wanted to give something back to his talented workforce and so set up West Ham Football Club - and the rest is history. Sadly, when Nestle bought Rowntree they closed the factory (along with many others in the UK) and transferred production of the Aero to Switzerland - where they now use cuckoo clocks to put the bubbles in the chocolate.

Interesting snippets like this warm the cockles of the heart, don't they? This story (& many others) can be found in The Big Book of Little Lies by Adam Woodhew and Eve Itt - although you'd need to look under Woodhew Adam and Eve Itt on Amazon.....

I stayed firstly at the Hosteria del Torres and then the Hosteria Grey. The Hosteria del Torres is set in 4,000 hectares of privately owned land - making it unusual as all the rest is national park. It is owned by a family of Croat descent - interestingly a lot of Croations, English & Germans settled in this region. The Hosteria Grey sits at one end of Lago Grey (Lake Grey) - and its restaurant must have one of the best views of any restaurant in the world - overlooking the lake; the glacier and the mountains - which at sunrise take on pinky/goldy colours......

In order to get to the Lago Grey you have to cross the rather fierce looking River Pingo - i suspect it is rather grumpy at having been given such a silly name. There's a Lake Pingo, too:

Bernardo O'Higgins to Emminent Explorer:

B0'H - Why, oh emminent explorer, have you called this lake and this river "Pingo"? What does it mean?

EE - My lord, 'tis the name of my daughter's teddy bear

B0'H - Gadzooks man, you can't in all seriousness name a lake and a river after a teddy bear! But if you are - then my daughter's teddy bear is called Affums - i insist you call it that!

EE - My lord oh, and Governor General (i forgot that last time) - i promise to call the next river & lake i discover Affums and they will be bigger than Pingo!

Sadly that was the last anyone ever heard of the Eminent Explorer and Lago Pingo and Rio Pingo remained much to everyone's chagrin....

Amyway - you cross the Rio Pingo by means of a wibbly-wobbly bridge. Now, the designers here kind of knew what they were doing - unlike the designers & engineers of the Millennium Bridge in London. If the bridge just wibbled as people stepped on it - then they'd simply slide off it into the turbulent waters of the Pingo. So to counterbalance the wibble they factored-in a wobble. So you wibble & wobble across the bridge - that has, as an added bonus, a bounce as it is also a suspension bridge. Quite why they designed it like this i don't know - other than to frighten the bejayzus out of innocent folk - crossing it is a little disconcerting until you get the hang of it. The other daft thing is that it's designed for only 6 people at a time to use it. So when the 50 people turn up wanting to go on the boat trip across Lago Grey to see the glacier at the same time as the 50 people coming back from having been on the boat across Lago Grey to see the glacier, then it can take a while for everyone to get across.

Bonkers.

The Condors are just amazing to watch - and what makes life interesting is that they often fly over just to see what you're up to - they are either curious or maybe hoping you'll peg-it while they are there & can have a quick snack. As with most (if not all vultures) they eat carrion. Another great bird of prey to watch is the Chilean Grey Eagle (also known as the Black Chested Buzzard Eagle) - it has a remarkably short tail so that it looks for all the world like a giant moth - and a wingspan up to 6' - it has the amazing ability to just hang in the air - wings outstretched but still as it scrutinises whatever has gained its attention - eerie..

We saw lots of Rhea; Gaunaco; Flamingo; silver fox - but no Puma or Geoffroy's Cat. Allegedly there are between 35 to 50 Puma in the park but they don't seem to know about the number of Geoffroy's Cat.....

Anyway, the Torres del Paine is a great - if very expensive - place to stay & walk & gawp at the scenery - away from the hotels it is blissfully quiet. The hotels don't have TV, radios and papers - so you just vanish from the world. They did, in fairness, have limited Internet access but the connections were hopeless & kept dropping out...

The journey from Torres del Paine to Punta Arenas took about 5 hours - and once out of the park the landscape is just monotonous scrub - although you do get to admire the handiwork of the early settlers who burned huge tracts of forest in order to clear land for grazing. These being the same settlers who drove the indigenous people from their land; almost wiped out the Guanaco & Puma and decimated the landscape.

Punta Arenas itself is a fairl dull port town on the Magellan Strait - important as an oil & gas terminal. I am here to catch a flight up to Puerto Montt - but while here have had time for lunch at La Luna - www.laluna.cl - very good!

On leaving Punta Arenas i discovered that it has the most amazing cemetery - with ornate mausoleums and fancy tombs. There are big Croatian, British, French, Italian & German communities here - in the 1850's the Chilean government was keen to settle this part of the country and encouraged European settlers with inducements of free land and free food (for 6 months)...

Also on leaving the town of Punta Arenas for the airport we passed the offices of Standard Wool - the driver told me it was an English company - and so it appears to be - based in Bradford and with offices in China, Chile, New Zealand and - er, Dewsbury - the website (www.standard-wool.co.uk) is just about the most useless on the internet (baa none) (tee hee)