After flying into Buenos Aires, we departed the next day for Bariloche, Argentina, on the northern edge of Patagonia. A short hike up Cerro Campenario gave us our first taste of the kinds of scenery we'd be seeing for the next few days.

Martin, Ernst, and Marianne, the "Swiss Contingent" of our group, on the trail down from Cerro Lopez.

The entire group took a cable car up Cerro Catedral, also not far from Bariloche, and spent the rest of the day hiking down from the summit. The horizon is dotted with Andean peaks, many of them volcanic in origin.

The trail around the summit of Cerro Catedral is a very rocky affair.

The valley leading to Refugio Frey, and the promise of lunch.

Rather than cross the Andes entirely by bus, two of us signed up for the Cruce de Lagos, a crossing involving a series of buses and small boats across a string of high mountain lakes. This is the Tronador volcano, near the Argentina/Chile border.

A rowboat in a reed-choked lake near Puella, Chile, in the Chilean Lake District.

The Osorno volcano looming above the Rio Petrohue, outside Puerto Varas, Chile.

A Magellanes penguin in the Otway penguin colony, not far from Punta Arenas, Chile.

The Otway penguin colony sits on a bay not far from the Strait of Magellan, and presents a typical Patagonian scene, with windswept, chilly waters, snow-capped coastal peaks in the distance, and the customary forbidding clouds of this climatically unstable area. Storms routinely sweep in from the Pacific, often blowing out again just as quickly as they arrived.

Morning on Last Hope Sound in Puerto Natales, Chile, the jumping-off point for one day of sea kayaking, followed by five days of hiking and camping in the Torres del Paine National Park.

On our way to the park, we stopped for a short hike to get a close look at the Serrano Glacier, just one of the countless glaciers in Patagonia.

Transferring to Zodiacs, we headed up the Rio Serrano. As we approached the park, it was time for a short portage, since the falls on the river aren't exactly jumpable!

Above the falls on the Rio Serrano, we got our first look at the Torres del Paine park. From the left, Paine Grande, French Valley, the Cuernos del Paine, and just visible to the right of center, in the background, one of the towers from which the park gets its name.

We spent the next day on a 30 km, all-day hike up, then down, French Valley, with a total elevation gain and loss of over 600 meters.