Summary of heading south through Patagonia

I have always liked blogging mainly because I hope it means my friends and family get to share my experiences with me as I go, because I am notoriously bad at the question when I am come home.
How was it?
Yeah it was okay.
This time like other times I haven't travelled alone so maybe that's why I resisted telling my tale so to speak! But I am now on my tod and able to reflect.

So this is the abridged version and firstly I apologise mostly to Sara Grain about any typos or spelling mistakes!

So where have I gone.........South America...Patagonia.
I have always wanted to go and about 18 months ago I docked in Puerto Montt which sits at the top of the area broadly categorized as Patagonia, under a grey drizzly day and at a loss of being back a ashore. Even the clouds didn't part to share the beauty of this place and take a little sting out of the tail of losing Fish.
I can still recall looking out the breakfast bar of the holiday inn hotel at the sky willing them to part  in a wish for a sign from Fish.

Roll forward 6 months and as I struggled to get out of bed and feign interest in the world I instead decided to enter a marathon (no I didn't run or would I say I do now) in Patagonia....Boom motivation to do something and to go somewhere I have always wanted to go. HA HA HA
It helped a bit but I have learnt that training (or not really in my case) for marathon and having a holiday in Patagonia planned isn't going to **warning exceptional honest bit coming**  magically make you stop being exceptionally sad and having suicidal thought.
Anyway moving on here is what you really tuned in to. I recruited a couple of buddies, Leslie you were missed, and fortunately Katie is way more organised than H or I (no offence H) and determined where we shall stay on our journey. H was media tracking sek the best shots on our journey...... not sure of my role!
(I am currently not doing as good at either.but hey!)

Sooooo, rocket plane to Santiago....
Landed early morning popped to our hostal
Rio Amazonas
(Great affordable, good breakfast, good english good location)
First stop find a coffee, in  what turns out is the equivalent of Starbucks...Rosa something....or as it shall forever be known....the cafe where croissants are worth stealing.
As that is exactly what happened to the lady next to us, yes we could say she was taking a while to eat it..... but ultimately a lesser fortunate man walked past picked her croissant off her plate began eating it and said something and walked off with in. Quite the long haul flight early morning experience (1st world problems)
Anyway coffee was good and we moved on to discover a theme still continuing in my travels.....
Museums closed and arguably nicer coffee bars just around the corner.
We covered 10miles on foot so to cover all we  saw would  be too long. And yes I was counting that as part of my training, but shh don't tell H and Katie.

Cerro Santa Lucia: from foot didn't look much but totally worth it great views of the city and a good little story behind it including statue of the peruvian dude who kind of set up Santiago
Churromania: McDonalds for churros good but could prob find better though didn't really seem to be a thing here
Palacio and Plaza Armas funny been to both before and still worth a visit as pretty sure you can walk through the Palace and I didn't do that last time.
Mercado Central, awesome fish market and go in expecting to be harrassed by restaurants and that empenadas are the size of pasties!
Cerro San Cristobal bit of a queue for the funicular but turns out we are marginally obsessed (cue the next day excursion)
Not religious so can'tcomment on that but its the femal bejesus on a hill, fantastic view and monster candy floss. Probably best taking a day to catch the bubble and explore the rest of the hill

Bella Vista (Patio) Barrio, suburb not sure what we call them in the UK what is Swaything to Southampton......?
While we strolled around the Barrio we felt most comfortable in the Patio like an outdoor spruced shopping mall/restaurants. Designed for tourists (dare I say it we fell hook line and almost sinker) or not it was lovely and a drink and a waddle home was perfect. 

We had tossed the coin between attempting a half arsed  day skiing risking injury in the Andes and Valparaiso. 

Valparaiso
-a hidden gem......
-‎a town with a cultural backdrop
-‎shorts beach towels (packed) but not required 12deg sea and air temp  and a massive railway in the way
-‎it's a dock.....
-‎but the town behind sparks a million words largely for the street art and funiculars (31 I think,  we found 2 and maybe saw 5) as its pretty much uphill 

They cost 10p to go on and ther first one was built on 1860 or something we did really end up on that one
-‎Paulo Nebrada a famous poet (who knew?! Not us) but what an awesome house not just for the view which was all we could take pictures of but man after my own heart. Every room a different theme and color a snapshot of his life and where he has been. A carasoul horse  in his lounge and a chair called the cloud that was a rocker and looked super comfy. 

Early start ther next day to fly south 4 hours and then drive back 3hrs (carbon footprint pretty high) just shows the relative remoteness of where we were going. After the dissapointment of Katie booking seemingly the only window seat without a window (still chuckling at that thought) on the long haul this flight  south over the Andes  didn't dissappoint though talk of the film Alive and who would eat who first was probably a bit morbid.

Patagonia Camp (take a bow Katie, well chosen) I don't think any picture can do it justice. We were day one of the new season glamping in style understandable because on a clear night as you started through the roof at all the amazing stars you woke up to frozen pipes and no heating! After adjusting my blanket ratio three fold I slept like a baby pinned under a mass of wool unable to move. 

I wish I could remember our comedy waiter's name, who despite our tactic to move tables and hopefully get someone else will still had the pleasure of him creating random changes to our order, not  bringing us bread (to be fair a second round) but my favorite the aerator on the red wine not knowing how to use it and then there being one on the white eine bottle,  who knew!

Torres del Paine
Fairly appropriate to have pain in the national park name for where we were to  do a marathon but in the native language means towers or blue mountains (I think).
We were blessed with the weather as I have since seen videos from people of the wind and rain while doing the marathon. We had a tiny bit of rain overnight once that was snow higher up otherwise we had glorious weather clear skies and then you can but be in awe of this area. I think the pictures speak for themseleves. 

The hunt for the puma (fairly sure its mythical like a unicorn) but everyday they warned us about Pumas and even said they had been seen around the camp.......not even a paw print!
Marathon day should probably get a mention here as it was one of the driving factors to go and now almost a week after as my calfs no longer feel like guitar strings waiting to be plucked and snap and having gone for a little jog, I still wonder how people do it and not least when its that bloody hilly and you are running up roads where they are warning cars its steep, sorry running up is a slight overstatement!

I pretty much doubled the longest distance I had run and mentally I think the scenery saved me, though the ominous start of fog at breakfast didn't bode well!

I think I excellled at taking pictures still not many but enough to remind me of the insanely windy (and could be windy) and steep route. I was torn between pausing and enjoying and wanting to semi race. That lasted the first 15-17miles when I was still smiling and hadn't reached the monster hill and charging along at an okay pace thinking I might just make this. Then came the monster hill at 17-18 miles.....followed by a monster downhill and then the initial thought of its only 6 miles to go.....thats fooooorrrrrever.....I am boooored how can I keep my legs moving. Well I could count backwards and then back up from 60. Surprisingly this kept me amused for a very long time.

Oddly I didn't want to finish as the line got closer I worried about the finish, how long everyone had been waiting the fact that I wasn't euphoric or excited about finishing I was just plain sad, hard to explain.

Hanging with my medal after 5hour 38 mins of running or I should say jog walking though apparently my jogging was fast as peoples walking. How people manage to punish their brains and bodies through that frequently or faster if at all is still mind boggling to me

People talk about getting addicted to running but I can safely assure you that is not the case with me, still don't like running! But don't mind it taking me to super cool places like Torres del Paine. 

I have now gone south waved goodbye to H and Katie and cruised around Punta Arenas for a day or two, found some penguins crossed the Magallena Strait 3 times by two different ferries, drunk a lot of coffee and learnt about the truly tragic loss of the native people in this part of the world adn how quickly it happened.

Tierra del Fuego: an island named so becasue of the smoke that could be seen from the indigenous people making fire when Magallenas first approached and yet they are no  longer here to enjoy the land they once peacefully roamed eating Guancos and foxes........ Guanco tastes alright to be fair!!!