My stomack bug of a few days has finally cleared up (thanks to Flagyl) but after the big dinner, I was not so keen to head out on the bike again. Besides, the Hotel De Paine at Serranova is in such a brilliant position, I could just see here on the lawn and gaze at the view! Which I did later in the day.
So we met our local Chilean guide, a women called Josepher (as in Josephine) who described where would go, up to Lake Gray, then she rode on the back of JC's motorcycle 15km to the walk. The workers were repairing the road in sections, so it was either very good, or a little exciting when they put a lot of water on the gravel!
There is a large restaurant there, and JC stayed while we went walking for a couple of hours to a lookout over the lake to the glacier and mountains. The walk took us through a 300 year old Beech Forest with three types of deciduous Beech's which was very peaceful. None of them are the same species as the one in Tasmania, but all look very similar.
We then walked along a kilometre of beach to a lookout high enough to see the glacier and Towers. It was overcast but there was no wind at all, apparently a very rare thing. It was incredibly quite and I felt very relaxed, despite the temperature being about 5 degrees on the hill top (and about 10 down near the hotel). When we came back we had soup for lunch in the cafeteria.
The others went on to another site under the Towers, but it required another 50km of gravel riding, which I was pleased to forego. On my return, I just sat by the river and thought about life, and how it had brought me to this magic place.
No comments:
Post a Comment