16th November 2011.
Our last day today at Torres del Pines but not leaving until 3 pm so time for another quick hike. Sue and I thought we had seen everything but the Park had one last surprise for us.
We decided to take a short and easy hike down to Lake Sarmiento to see the Thrombolites, these are formations made in the lake which looks like white coral. The melt lake has receded over many millennia and so the Thrombolites have been left standing high above the water level and on the beaches of the lake. I was a bit unsure how worthwhile this hike would be but sure enough the park came up to its very high standard of surprising me yet again. These formations and the colour of the water were just spectacular. I have said on a number of occasions that if an artist were to use the bright colours for the water in a painting everyone looking at his work would say he had got it wrong.
On our way back to the mini bus the winds picked up to a level we had not experienced before and our guide got us to stand in a stable position when big gusts were about to hit us. We could tell a gust was on its way as the lake water was getting whipped up into a mini tornado and as it moved across the lake we knew we were about to get a big blast. Walking behind Sue and our guide was like returning in a group from a very heavy night at the local pub. None of us had control of our movements and were staggering all the way back to the bus.
We returned to our hotel and enjoyed a very good lunch and then got on our minibus for the 5 hour road trip back to Punta Arenas. We checked back into our hotel Diego de Almagro who had made a good job of looking after all my Polar gear. Sue and I are now in place to start meeting the South Pole team as they start arriving over the next few days.
