Provincia de la Ultima Esperanza

So, we are finally making some headway! We’re all the way to Puerto Natales, Chile, now after a little over a month from landing in Ushuaia, Argentina. We’ve traveled through wind, rain, sun, hail, rainbows, and freezing cold nights to get to where we are and have had some pretty awesome experiences so far.

We’re back on the road, and it feels good. Sometimes, especially in the morning, it feels terrible. I think my sleeping bag must be the most comfortable place in the world, because it takes a Chilean Army Truck to get me out of it sometimes. In the morning, the team practices our gastro-intestinal orchestra, while singing the praises of our favorite breakfast, polenta. It’s loved and hated with vigor, and no meal of it’s yellow grains passes without a debate over it’s merits and shortcomings. Wallace’s quest to make it taste ‘just like cornflakes’ continues.

The pampas: thousands and thousands of square miles of low hills, spotted sheep ranches, clusters of grass. The wind is so fierce that little vegetation thrives here. Only small, thorny bushes, and short trees that look as though they are permanently in a wind tunnel.