MUNGO EATS Latin America

We left Puerto Natales today, heading toward Torres de Paine.  It is pretty cool at night now and the mornings start off pretty brisk.  It is getting harder and harder to get an early start.  We are not aiming for an alpine start…just earlier than 10 am.  We finally left the campsite at 10:30 or so.  Since our start was quite late, we decided not to rush to the park and to take a detour.  We decided to visit the Milodon cave.  The milodon is a prehistoric sloth-like  creature, that lived at the time of saber-tooth tigers, and parts of it’s skeleton, fur and feces were discovered in a cave down here about 100 years ago.  The area has made it their mascot and you see pictures and likenesses all over, including a lifesize statue of the creature outside the door of it’s cave.

No fear though, the creature was a herbivore!

The cave itself was just a big deep groove cut into the rock be a pro-glacial lake.  Big, deep, but not too exciting.  After wandering through the cave, we went to a lookout to see what we could see.  It was an absolutely perfect fall day.  The sun was warm, there was only a faint breeze and the sky was clear blue.  The leaves are starting  to change colors, so every once and a while you see some stunning colors.

The scenery was very beautiful.

I love the gnarled trees.  They show signs of a very hard life.  Even though we are having perfect days, Patagonia is know for it’s ever present winds, and the trees show evidence of this. 

Not too hard to figure out which way the prevailing wind blows in this part of the world. 

Tonight we are camped just outside the boundary of the park…we think.  It’s another case of which map do you believe.  One map has had us camping in the park, one does not.  In any case, we are on the shore of Laguna Amarga, which is a salty lake.  The Torres are directly behind the lake and even if I get turned away from the park gate tomorrow, I will leave happy, because look at what I get to look at tonight.

The famous “torres” are the 3 spikes on the right of this formation.  We hope to get a better view of them tomorrow.  For now, we just have to watch the sun go down over them in the distance.

Goodnight all…let’s hope we get moving a little earlier tomorrow.