For today we had two options - hiking with Alejandro for 9 hours or biking with Alexi (our new second guide). Everyone (except for a single guy from Denmark) opted for biking :) And it was a GREAT day. We were part biking (mostly downhill), part going by van (mostly uphill). The weather was great, we had a fantastic view onto the Torres (see the three peaks in the middle). Lot's of Guanacos (these are the lamas you see in the picture). For lunch we had a great B...

In the afternoon, we walked towards the "horns", two very weird mountains with three layers of differently-colored stone. This is a 5-hour hike - too long for our taste, but it's a nice landscape. Look at the trees in the picture - these have been burned in a huge fire, like the majority of trees in the national park. Walking through this forest is sometimes like being in a ghost movie. The funny part is how the fire was started. A couple of years ago, a hiker ...

We do our first easy hike (2 hours) towards Cerro Paine Grande and back. It's a beautiful day and we meet a number of very nice people in our group. Christopher, a guy from Boston working in the biomedical research area. Raha, a iranian girl who's now an assistant professor in engineering Colombia (amazing vita!). Again, surprisingly many scientists here :) And Alfredo, our second guide who is studying Eco-tourism, apparently one of the standard educations of the...

We flew into Punta Arenas where the Cascada tour people picked us up for our first day of our Patagonia tour. We met Sarah and Daniel, two New Zealanders who are on their honeymoon, and drive north towards Torres del Paine together. We get a first impression of the incredible distances here in Patagonia by driving 3-4 hours through the Pampa to Puerto Natales. Many Guanacos (a sort of Lama), Rheas (a sort of ostrich) on the way. Some condors in the sky. The lands...

Anja and I met up in Santiago. After having found the nice beach in Concon, I took here there for another day-trip. That day the weather was great and it is less cold. Unfortunately, we only got pro surfboards (way too small for us), so we had our least successful surfing attempt today - didn't stand on the board a single time. I got hit by the surfboard over the head (again!). This time in the face, and as a result I got a beautiful black eye for a week. Some t...