The Long Journey Back Home

We had one more morning to do a hike and since there was really only one trail left around where we were camping, that is the one that we chose. We had some trouble finding it, wandering around near a bridge and finding a cabin where the map showed the trail starting. Finally we just wandered the road until a trail showed up. We had thoughts of going cross country for a while, so we were happy to find a path. The path led us down to the water where we found abundant sea life. I am not sure if this is what you would refer to as an estuary, but it was a calm area with much sea life.

 We spent some time turning over rocks to find strange salamander looking animals underneath. We only hike for a short time, just a couple of hours before heading back and catching a bus back into Ushuaia. We had an early bus to catch out of Ushuaia in the morning, so we had to make sure we were all packed up and ready to go. We were now saying goodby to Patagonia and South America, but it would be a long trip to do so.

 The bus ride was just how we were expecting it to be - long. There were some good views to be had of mountains and lakes along the way, but mainly we were just dealing with sitting on a bus. We had a long lunch time border crossing back into Chile from Argentina. The late afternoon was highlighted by a ferry ride to get from Tierra del Fuego back onto the mainland.

 In the evening, we arrived back in our first city of Punta Arenas. Here we found an excellent restaurant to enjoy our last night in Patagonia. I sure enjoyed the trip and was thrilled that I got this opportunity to visit a place so awesome with my father while he still was able to get after it in the mountains. We spent the evening at the first place we stayed at and in the morning, we caught a cab to the Punta Arenas Airport. From there we flew to Santiago. We had an extremely long layover there. Dad had the thought that he wanted to go into the city and see the museums. Since it was Sunday, they were all closed. The cab driver all gave him encouragement to take a tour anyway, but I think by that point he and I had enough riding around in vehicles.
Instead, we just hung out for about 8 hours doing our usual of playing cribbage and reading books. We were excited to board the plane when they finally let us. Our seats were going to be very terrible, so when the flight attendant had to move too Asian males because they could not speak English or Spanish from the exit seats, we jumped at the opportunity to fill them, even if it meant that we were in entirely different seats on the plane. I watched Moneyball and then was able to sleep a lot of the trip to Los Angeles. From there, we split up and I took a plane ride to Las Vegas where Mom and Carl picked  me up at the Airport. From there, I just had the 3 hour drive back home to Springdale to see my family. And boy was I happy to see them again!