It's time again - I love doing these blog entries knowing that you guys at home are following closely (hi mum and dad!) even though I know that I have nothing resembling a writing talent. So please bare over with me if the entries are not very bloggerish and have more of a narrating nature. Basically, I am doing this to remember all the small details that you forget when you are home again back in your old routines.

After the last blog entry and one night in a bunk bed in the amazing refugio in the national park in Pucon we headed towards Puerto Varas - one of the most southern cities in the Lake District in Chile. We arrived in the beautiful city that is located near a huge lake surrounded by three volcanoes (pics will follow) - amazing views (again). We got there in the afternoon after a 5-6 hour drive and booked our full-day canyoning trip fro the next day before checking in at our very nice (too expensive) hotel (we booked this place when we were still scarred from the horrible night at the party hostel in Pucon, thinking f*** it, we'll just pay whatever necessary to get a good nights sleep). Anyway, the canyoning the next day was so much fun. For those of you who don't know what canyoning is it is basically following a river from the top of a mountain down stream in a canyon. We experienced natural waterslides, 6-14 meter jumps and rappelling through a waterfall. Our guide was this crazy small French guy who loved is job and knew every cm of the trip by heart so you felt completely safe jumping from 10 meter cliffs into the ice cold water. We had to wear 2 wet suits because the water was so cold, but as we kept moving the entire time we were fine. We were on the tour with a really sweet Chilean family that gave us great tips for our upcoming trip to Puerto Natales. After a day of canyoning we went for a run, and had a nice dinner at a cheap, local restaurant and went to bed.

The next day we took our car for a final trip to a hiking spot (Cochamo) 100km away along the lakes, where we went for a small hike, took a swim in the river, visited some touristy waterfalls and ended the road trip with "Onces" (aka afternoon tea) at a restaurant surrounded by nature and animals - we were the only foreigners there so we felt very authentic (two blonds not speaking a word of Spanish). We were so full after 4 pieces of cake and tapas that we just went home, spent some hours on the Internet planning our trip and went to bed. The next morning we had a flight from Puerto Montt to Punta Arenas (Patagonia), which went very smoothly (we even got to fill up our bags with mini wine bottles at the local lounge for our coming trekking tour).

We had a few hours at the airport in Punta Arenas before our 3 hour bus went to Puerto Natales - the kick-off city for treks in the national park Torres del Paine. We arrived at our cute little hostel with very nice staff and went for a walk around town to figure out where to get the gear that we needed to do the W trek 2 days later. We didn't really feel ready as all the people we had met doing the trek were quite experienced hikers, with tents on their backs and trekking shoes and poles. We only had our sneakers and flip flops but the city was filled with rental shops so no worries. We rented rain gear, hiking boots and even walking sticks, transformed Andreas' rolling suitcase into a backpack and were ready to go. Or as ready as we could be.

To Be Continued