Adventures in Chile 2011

To celebrate Joe successfully defending his thesis and me finishing my postdoc, we decided to take a vacation in April and May in Chile (with a side-trip to Argentina). This was a bit late to visit the southern parts of Chile as winter was rapidly approaching but it turned out to be a bit of a blessing since we avoided the crowds. Our plan was to do a fair bit of hiking with some sight-seeing mixed in. Because of the lateness of our arrival, we decided it was best to start in the south and work our way north. From Santiago, we flew to Punta Arenas and took buses from there to get to Puerto Natales to hike Torres del Paine and to El Chaltén to hike around Monte Fitz Roy. The terrain makes overland travel north through Chile from Punta Arenas impossible so we flew to Puerto Montt. From there, we took the bus to Castro then Chonchi to hike along the beach in Parque Nacional Chiloé. After that, it was on to Pucón to hike in Parque Nacional Huerquehue. That was the end of our hiking trips and the rest of our holiday was spent playing tourist in San Pedro de Atacama and La Serena. We'll post more details of the hikes later but, for now, you can take a look at our photos here.

Map with the places we visited in red.
(Modified from the CIA World Factbook)