Yesterday night I wouldn´t go to sleep. Chilean wine on the table surrounded by interesting people that I will probably never meet again. Una brasileira, who hasn´t been to the Amazon yet. One New Zealander, who is going from Peru to celebrate the February Carneval in Brazilian Salvador dancing samba. One Japanese girl, working as a teaching assistant in Indiana. One Swiss guy, who has been travelling for eight months already, having started in Guatemala, later spent two months in Colombia and, after the parcel from his mother arrives, is going hiking in Patagonia. Two more Brazilians, one of whom has met a Lithuanian before (not like the rest...). And the last Brazilian with long hair, who is very supportive of Turkey joining the European Union. Come together for one night which could not end... I asked them how do they find so much time to quit everything and just travel around the world... Well, none of them has a lovely job. And before going to such a journey you have to save... although this means so very different things for a Swiss and a Brazilian.

And on your way around the globe you can lose and rediscover yourself. It is a dangerous and exciting way. Not sure whether this is possible for the group of fifty of so Americans that I met on my plane from Santiago to Punta Arenas, Chilean Patagonian capital. They all had golden tags with names and surnames that signified they are part of some expedition heading to the Falkland islands, to M. Pleasant. The ladies had fancy hair-styles ready for a queen´s ball and the gentlemen - ´North Face´ jackets, small digital ´Sony´ cameras and much good spirit to keep smiling all the time till the plane hit the land in the end of the world... not a smooth landing in the winds of the Magellan strait. Guys from ´La Chimba´ hostel call such travellers ´chocolate-box´ tourists as they only pick the postcard views on their way.

I don´t know. Just bought some tortillas, cream cheese, chocolate and water... and in an hour will be heading to the mountains. To meet the pumas and Andean condors. Hopefully, to survive in the wilderness. Anyway, I have a compass and a flashlight, what could happen to me?



Here in Punta Arenas, the sandy point (and the windy... ) I had alittle walk before moving on to Puerto Natales and the Patagonian wilderness. And what I discovered is that the most beautiful cemetery I have seen in the world is in the end of it... All the sailors and capitans of shipwrecked fleets lie here... from as far as Croatia...