Patagonia

I always dreamt of visiting Patagonia one day and last year during my world trip this wish finally came true.

El Calafate was the starting point for a tour leading me to Perito Moreno Glacier. It was an amazing trip through the eternal ice. I never thought water can have such a crystal clear blue colour. As I am not finished editing the video from the trip I just want to give you an impression with this short time-lapse:

During my hikes to Mount Fitz Roy in El Chaltén I got to know Nico, a young guy from Germany. We teamed up to do the five-day W-Trek in Torres del Paine National Park together. During our first day we had every weather condition you can imagine. It was altering literally every 5min. Rain, snow, hail and from time to time even sunshine. But not without strong (and when I say strong I mean 120km/h) wind. I tried to capture some time-lapses but my camera was constantly moved even though I tied it to rocks and other stuff. Snow was blowing horizontally in our faces during waiting for the sequences to finish and when we finally came back to our tent our fingers were blue and frozen.

On the second day the wind was even stronger becoming a nightmare to walk against. We had to cross an exposed section on a hill. A nice lady, Marguerite, was trapped because of the squalls. We crossed the section I took of my bags and tried to run back against the wind almost standing still. When I finally reached her, I took both her bags grabbed her arm and helped her across the hill where Nico was guarding our backpacks. We escorted Marguerite back to the base camp where she invited us to a cup of hot chocolate. It never tasted that good before… Unfortunately we still had a couple of kilometres ahead of us to get to the next camp. On our way we came to a big lake. The wind formed small tornadoes on the water surface. As the sun was shining rainbows popped up in-midst of them. We have never seen anything like that in our lives. Needless to say that we were stunned.

Thank god the weather changed (except the wind) the next days and we had a great time hiking through incredible landscapes. With the sun shining on the rocks the snow started to melt. This caused big avalanches to pop everywhere on the mountains around us. We experienced the brutal force of nature (from a safe viewpoint). It was awesome!

On our last day we got up early. Still being dark outside we hiked up to the “Towers of Blue” (i.e. Torres del Paine) to experience the sun’s morning glow on the mountain tops.

I am so grateful that I met Nico. Without him carrying our tent and some more stuff I wouldn’t have been able to take all that camera gear with me and take these shots. Thank you!

The biggest thank you goes out to Gloria and her family who hosted us in Puerto Natales for over a week. You are an amazing family and I wish you all the best! Gloria, Oscar y todo la familia Seguel Albornoz. Muchas gracias una otra vez para acoger a nosotros! Eres el mejor!!

It’s about time – for pictures!