Or first two days at Torres del Paine

Written by Christopher, typed by Mom, edited by Christopher and Dad

12/3/10 

          After breakfast, We were supposed to go on an excursion all day, but I didn’t feel good enough.  Dad and I slept to 1:00 pm.  We had lunch, and went on an afternoon excursion, when we felt a little better.  We had a nice hike up a mountain to a viewpoint called the Mirador Condor.  The view was beautiful.  It was very windy.  About 50mph.  We started walking back down.  There is a little channel that accelerates wind speed.  In the channel, the wind speed got up to 100mph!  If I weighed 50 or 60 lbs, I could have started flying.  I had to be held by Dad and our guide’s hand to make it through.  That is definitely the fastest winds I have ever been through.  That was even the fastest wind Mom and Dad have been through.  The wind was so hard Dad’s sunglasses flew away somewhere!  L We got back, and saw all the option for the next day’s excursions.  In the afternoon we are going to go horse-back riding!  After that, we went to dinner.  The food was great!  We got back to our room.  We started to sleep.

12/4/10

          After breakfast, we went to Laguna Azul, or Blue Lagoon.  Mom didn’t go, because she didn’t feel well.  On the way to the lagoon, we saw two endangered animals.  The guanaco and the condor.  We saw at least 1000 guanaco and about 10 condors!  A guanaco is very similar to an alpaca or a llama.  A condor is a giant bird with a wingspan of up to nine feet!  We saw lots of packs of guanaco.  We even saw a few babies.  We also saw a few jump over fences. 

Guanaco jumping over a fence.

When we arrived at Laguna Azul, we took a small walk.  It was pretty windy.  The lagoon had waves two feet tall only created by wind!  The wind was so strong, I could bend back and not fall over. 

I'm not falling down!



This is Laguna Azul with the towers in the background.



These are the two foxes we saw.

On the way back, we saw a couple foxes running together.  We also saw flamingos.  When they are born, they are white.  Then, the flamingo eats little animals and they get their pink color. 

These are the two flamigos we saw.

We arrived back at the room.  We had lunch.  After lunch we went horse-back riding.  We even crossed a river! 

Crossing the river on my horse.

 My horse’s personality was to go fast when we were far behind a horse, and eat when we are stopped or walking slow.  One of the other horses in the group was peeing.  The wind got harder and a few drops landed on Dad.  Eeew!  We went horse-back riding for two and a half hours.  In the middle my butt started to get sore.  At one part on the way back, we galloped around a small lagoon.  When we got to the edge, all the horses walked through.  The horses were a lot of fun.  We got back to the room and my butt started to feel really sore. We had dinner.  The food was super good!  We got back to the room and started to sleep.