El Lodge at Parque Patagonia

It says something about the hotel we stayed in for the last two nights that guests arrive and leave by plane.  (We didn't!)

Not only is it incredibly remote but it's also very posh.   The food there has been the best we have eaten in Chile.  It's a bit of a shame about the weather but today has started dry and clear with a lovely sunrise while we were having breakfast.

Today we needed to drive back to Coyhaique,  260km along mainly rough gravel roads.  We got off to a bad start when we discovered one of our tyres was flat.  The toolkit provided by the hire company was totally inadequate but we eventually found a helpful guy who got some tools out of the workshop at the hotel and changed our wheel for us.   He wouldn't take any money for his efforts - said it was his job.  He did say it was extremely dangerous for Europcar to send us out in such a place without suitable tools.

After this 1 hour delay we finally got going and made extremely good time driving back to the same hotel in Coyhaique that we stayed in last weekend.   We have just eaten nice pizzas at a restaurant that is a 'dead ringer' for the Square Orange cafe in Keswick (only a bit bigger) 

Early start tomorrow to head for the airport where we have a ridiculous 2.5 hour flight north to Santiago before catching a 4 hour flight back south again,  flying over where we are now.  This is because in this long, thin country all flights go via Santiago.

Tomorrow we will be at Torres del Paine where we suspect we will be out  of communication for a few days again.