14/2 A hanging glacier

Tuesday 14 February The hanging glacier

Breakfast at 8 then into the park and straight up the trail to see the hanging glacier. 2.5 – 3 hours round trip. It was pretty steep and slippery in places but Stewie powered ahead in his thongs. We made it gold silver and bronze for Australia, followed by the Americans, who hadn’t been told it was a race, then Dan the sax and Tim/Luke/Jennie. We passed Gordon and Yvonne on the way down – they soldiered up and were deeply unlucky to find the glacier clouded over and rain falling when they reached the top. Her leg is taking a long time to recover. The vegetation was very New Zealand-ish. Ferns, big elephant-eared succulents, gnarled pine trees. There were several waterfalls cascading from a few hundred metres up at the base of the glacier. A very satisfying and memorable hike.

Not a mouse, just a very friendly local

So many jigsaw worthy shots on this walk......

maybe not this one though

Sam had a very good minestrone waiting for us at the bottom and then we headed off along president Pinochet’s new highway. We were expecting something quite grand but it was very narrow and often a poorly surfaced dirt road. But apparently much better than whatever was there before. The crew had put a lot of trouble into decorating the truck with pink balloons for Valentine’s day and the Poms had all done Valentines for each other and the crew.

We reached camp at Futaleufu around 6pm. It was a very lush green site next to a river on a working farm. There was a good large indoor cooking space, which tended to fill with smoke. Yvonne did a cracking good tuna/rice/pasta dish that ticked all the comfort food boxes. There had been talk of a dating game but Tim gave up on trying to get people to be in it.

Very surprised to find internet in the campsite – although very narrow bandwidth. I got priority to try and contact Courtney for her birthday. I sent an email just to be sure then tried skyping the home phone. Could hear intermittent ringing and once even what sounded like her voice but could not hold a call. Then Cordy came on Skyp – but still could not raise a chat. At least she realised that we were thinking of her and trying before our battery ran flat and we lost everything.