Evolution seems to have favored the fluffier street dogs down here

I have it all mapped out! The last chapter of my trip! What a scary thought indeed.  With today's purchase of the last two plane tickets, all I have left are a couple of bus tickets that can't be bought ahead of time, and I'll have all the major moves of the next month and a half set in stone. It's crazy to think that my big trip is nearly done, but I still have some pretty awesome places left to see in the next month and a half, and I'm excited for what comes after that, too.

I'm still in Santiago, seeing friends and getting the last-minute gear I need before I head south. I leave on Friday, taking a night bus down to Pucón, a city in the Chilean Lakes District that (due to my southern Chile road trip with my sister two years ago) I know to be startlingly similar to Boulder, Colorado. From there I'll head on to Valdivia, a pretty cool-sounding place that I'd like to check out, and then further on south through Puerto Montt, where I'll catch the 24-hour bus ride to Coyhaique. From there it's just another short (i.e. 7 hours) bus ride to the Valle Chacabuco, the site of the first park where I'll be working.

The future Patagonia National Park is located near the town of Cochrane, in northern Patagonia. It used to be ranching land for cattle and sheep, but now it's owned by Doug and Kris Tomkins, who are, or maybe were (can't remember) owners of the Patagonia clothing & outdoor gear company. (And the company is named that because Doug Tomkins, along with Yvon Chouinard, the other founder, took an epic road trip in a VW bus all the way down the Panamerican Highway to Patagonia in the 60's. Sadly, I will be arriving in Patagonia not by hippie love bus with surfboards strapped to the roof, but by regular old Chilean bus. But I digress.)

I'll be in that park for 3 weeks, from October 28 - November 18. The work there is mainly trail building, native species restoration, and removing old fences from the ranching days. I'll be sleeping in a tent the whole time! Internet access will be slow and patchy, but I will try to write if I can.

Then I fly even further south, to Punta Arenas, and from there I'll get to Torres del Paine, (from what I hear) the absolutely most beautiful of Chile's national parks. I'll be volunteering in that park (doing the same type of thing, I think) for 11 days, and then it's one plane ride all the way back up to Santiago. Two more days in the city to try and stuff as many bottles of wine as I can into my suitcase, and prepare to pay severe excess baggage fees in the airport, and then I'm back stateside on December 3! And there will be one happy family plus one wrinkly new niece or nephew plus one Spanish-speaking Australian all waiting for me when I get there. Yeah, life is good. :)