Today we went back up to the Parque Nacional Torres del Paine.
We filled the HiLux up on the way out of town and Diesel costs about 62 pence a litre.
As we passed the piers, we spotted a Skorpios boat docked. When we were getting married, Joan had some crazy idea about hiring a motorhome in Buenos Aires and driving down to Patagonia, though we had never been to South America before, didn't speak the language, Joan had no idea of the distances involved nor the state of the roads. Sadly a couple of months before we were due to go (having not organised anything, including most of the wedding, nevermind the honeymoon), the Argentinian economy collapsed and things looked a bit unstable.

So, having seen an advert in the Grauniad, we booked at the very last minute a Volcanoes, lakes and glaciars holiday, the most part of which involved a cruise from Puerto Montt to the marvellous glaciar San Rafael with Skorpios Cruceros. The boat we saw today might have even been the same boat. It brought back many happy memories which kick started the love affair with all things Patagonian.

We drove through the park today on a big circuit. The photos speak for themselves as the park is exhaustingly photogenic and even prettier than the pictures. What was very noticeable though and maybe captured in some of the videos is the wind. It roared! In places it was frightening trying to open the car door.
Getting through the park took the best part of a day with all the photos taken (not all reproduced here.)
At the car park near Lago Grey, Joan spotted a motorhome like the ones she had wanted to hire all those years ago. They were a Hi Lux with a motorhome cabin on the back, not the Hymer integrated motorhomes you see in Europe. She now understood that with the roads in Argentina being so rough and rocky, only a 4X4 would suffice and survive!
We came across another overturned car on the way home, but all passengers out and gone this time.
Approaching Puerto Arenas, we passed the cave of the Milodon. It was a piece of the frozen milodon found here by his uncle that roused Bruce Chatwin's imagination to travel here and write his travel classic, "In Patagonia" with its tales of monsters, myths and Welsh cowboys. Though we own a copy, neither of us has ever read it.
From the sublime to the ridiculous, both buzzing with the sights we had seen today and blasted by the winds, we watched a film in Spanish on TV called "El Doble del Diablo" about Uday Hussein and his doppelganger. Weird.