Patagonia- Puerto Natales Day 2

With all the travel and early morning buses, we found ourselves pretty exhausted after the Torres del Paine day.  We decided to spend the next day sleeping in and finding a local hike to do (near town). This was a little more challenging than expected, but Kate E and Scott came up with a plan.  

They had been told about a trail that started at a family ranch ("estancia") outside of town.  So, with very limited information and very limited Spanish skills, we got into a taxi and drove out of town. The taxi driver did eventually understand where we wanted to go and we arrived at the estancia ready to hike.  When we got there, we did actually see a sign, which made us feel a little better.

Has a sign = must be legit.

Things got interesting as we headed towards the house and found Frida, the owner of the house. We paid her a small fee for hiking the trail (which we knew about) and she explained lots of things to us in Spanish about the trail.  We obviously didn't understand much, but saw the trail leading up the hillside, and figured we could just follow it.  And off we went, through the herd of sheep and up, up, up.

The whole trail is pretty steep, and we hiked through an interesting forest full of trees the locals call "lengas".

This is actually on the way down, but here you can see the forest.

 We finally made our way to the top, where we had a great view of the water and mountains surrounding Puerto Natales.  For those bird lovers out there, we were also able to see some condors flying around near the peak.

Puerto Natales from above.

While the weather wasn't too bad (no rain), we were glad that we had spent the previous day in Torres del Paine when the weather was slightly better.  However, we enjoyed our hike and headed down for snacks and hot tea at Frida's house.  

Frida was so generous as she continued to bring out more food the longer we sat in her kitchen. We talked....understanding little of what each other was saying. Even Frida's son/brother/relative(?) got in on the action when I asked to take a picture with Frida.  We had a great time and eventually our taxi showed up to take us back into town. 

He is drinking "mate".  Argentinans/Chileans LOOOOVE mate.

Back in town, we cleaned up for our evening activity- cooking class!  We decided it would be fun to learn how to make some local cuisine.  The menu included a Lamb Stew-like dish called Chupe de Centolla and a dessert called Kuchen de Frambuesa (yep, they stole the German word "kuchen").  

We had a wonderful chef (a French woman, so you know she's good), who helped us create this wonderful dinner.  We all took turns adding ingredients to the lamb stew.  Scott liked to pretend he was Emeril and said "BAM" a lot. 

BAM!

After much preparation of the stew and the dessert, we sat down and enjoyed our creation. It was all very delicious!

The finished product! YUM!

We enjoyed our more laid-back day in Puerto Natales and prepared for another travel day to Punta Arenas the next day.