My reason for traveling to the end of the world was as much for the mystery it held in my mind as the rare, few, intriguing photos that I had seen, In order to acquaint myself with this place, I picked up a copy of Bruce Chatwin's In Patagonia; where he details in both fact and fiction his journey through this vast and barren land on his ultimate quest to replace a piece of Mylodon skin (an extinct giant sloth), which he had been given as a child. Parts of the book were very interesting, but much of the book seemed to ramble, which made Patagonia seem even more distant to me. Upon leaving Santiago, I was still very uncertain as to what I should expect, and my anticipation and excitement as we flew South over tall mountains, deep fjords, and two volcanoes that had begun to erupt that same morning. When we arrived in the town of Punta Arenas, we stepped outside the airport into winds that were consistently gusting above 120 km/hr, which is around 70 mph or hurricane force winds. Looking for a hostel that day was not so much fun because we kept getting blown into each other and the buildings as we were walking down the street, so needless to say we did not venture out too much except to see a few of the sites.The next day we took a bus to Puerto Natales, which is a small town that serves as the base camp for all of the hikers preparing to hike the Torres del Paine National Park. We only spent the one night there preparing, and then set off the next morning for our five day hike through mountain passes and glaciers. The park itself consisted of lakes ranging from glacier blue to emerald green to a royal pacific blue. It also had sharp, jagged mountains topped with glaciers that rose out of the ground and was a stark contrast from the wide open grassy plains that cover most of Patagonia. The hike proved to be rewarding not only from the beauty it possessed, but also from the stress it provided us. When we began the hike my brother was still recovering from a previous knee injury, and this caused him to favor it on the hike, which also caused him to hurt the other one. So, we divided out the heavy weight of his pack to make the trek a little easier on his knees because there were still four days of hiking left. However, later that day when we had almost finished our 10 hour hike, he began to feel sick and was then really ill all night and the following day. Luckily we were staying at the camp two nights anyway, but the third day he worked his way through and finished out the hike with us to experience the enormous Glacier Grey. This glacier extends far beyond what the eye can see and constantly grumbles like thunder as moves slowly down the valley toward the water.After finishing the hike, we continued on to see some of the other highlights of Patagonia. First, we returned to Punta Arenas to see a penguin colony that consists of well over 12,000 penguins including their babies, and after, we crossed the Straight of Magellan to the Tierra del Fuego of Argentina.The Tierra del Fuego means "Land of Fire," and it was called this because when old sailing ships used to pass through the area they would see an enormous amount of fires continuously burning around the area. The reason for this was because the Indians (Fuegians) would never put out a fire since it was hard to start, and they would even take the fires with them as they traveled in their wooden canoes. However, I am going to reserve the rest of the Tierra del Fuego for my next blog entry. Till next time, Cheers.