Puerto Natales, Chile

We are in Puerto Natales now, about to rent some equipment and get ready for a four day hike through the mountains of Chile in Torres del Paine National Park. We are wearing a lot of layers as it is freezing here-- so much for being happy to be out of the BA heat, now I wouldn't mind a little of it! We are in beanies and jackets, but it is beautiful. We were on a bus for about 11 hours yesterday, though we thought it was only going to be about 7 hours, so we arrived around 10 at night and had to desperately find a room. Luckily Naomi and Brice, who we met in Ushuaia, had recommended a place called the Indigo which was awesome and had a room! Yay! It cost us 30,000 pesos for the night, which is a lot, but it was nice and clean etc. It did only have one bathroom for the hostel but it was never a problem, really. And Thank GOD Bretty and Gina left us with a few Chilan pesos because they have been such a lifesaver! We were able to check email, make calls, get water etc. all thanks to those girls! Yay! Chile in general is a lot more expensive than Argentina, but we are going to be camping so it shouldn't be too much of a problem. We are definitely wishing we had been prepared for, like, skiing weather. People are really in giant down coats etc, it is that cold. We are so tempted to buy some fleece pants or something...I knit myself a scarf on the bus yesterday which was a really useful way to pass the time, I assure you. And I taught Levi to knit-it took him like 4 seconds to get it- so he is working on one for himself (he got sick of waiting for me to do it!). Yesterday there was this really weird guy who was on the bus and he kept his knee in Levi's back and followed him really closely in the lines at the border, it was really annoying for Levi, and the guy was HUGE and cross-eyed and really ugly, it was pretty funny, for me that is, and Levi would just give me these looks...you can imagine. Anyway I am not sure when I will be able to write again, probably not til next week since we will be in the mountains, but wanted to give you a heads up. I will try to put a map up on the blog so you can see where we are, but we really are hanging out at the tip of the world down here, it's pretty cool!!! Oh my God and I have to mention-last night on the table there was black pepper AND hot sauce. We were really excited. We put it on EVERYTHING!!!